Twenty-two limited-edition books in 34 years may not sound like an efficient time-to-product ratio for a publisher, but Michael Torosian does not measure success by arbitrary printing quotas. Rather, the fine-art photographer turned proprietor of the Toronto-based Lumiere Press sees printing as an extension of the photographic print. “Which is the original? The print or the book?” he muses in the introduction of Lumiere Press: Printer Savant & Other Stories. The run of 400 copies, typeset in W.A. Dwiggins’ Linotype Eldorado, are designed and hand-bound by the author.
I have been on Torosian’s mailing list for over two decades, and an admirer of the books he has created on photographers he deeply admires. Samples of the books he’s made of their work, as well as his own photographs, supplemented by the essays he’s written and reprinted by others, make this volume both readable and collectable.
