KARINE: I eventually found a connection to him and showed him my work. He wants the photographers
to be happy and to make the books they want. He goes to extreme lengths, even sometimes spending
extra. It's unique. I don't think there is any publisher nowadays who has that level of commitment and
also so much freedom for the artist to make the book and invite them throughout the whole progress.
M ARC: Tell me about that process. I hear it's very unique. You go there and participate in the printing?
KARINE: I went to his publishing house in Germany twice. The first time was four years ago, after he
saw my maquette and liked it. He actually appreciated that I had made a maquette by hand. These
days a lot of photographers make PDFs and email them, and he doesn't respond well to that.
MARC: So how did that go in Germany?
KARINE: He asked me to come for a week, so I went and I ended up waiting for a week. It's part of
the ritual. It's almost like a rite of passage. I didn't take it personally because I had heard about that.
We were asked to be in this library by nine o'clock in the morning, sometimes earlier, and I just sat
there. We were not supposed to go out. He provided lunch. He has a chef; he has a good chef who
is also a photographer.
MARC: You lived there?
KARINE: He owns an old building next to the printing house with a couple of apartments on each
floor, so you're put up. You don't have to pay; you're invited. While you wait in the library, you're
provided lunch. There were a lot of other photographers and also curators, as he does a lot of projects
with museums and also academics. Everyone is basically treated the same way which is pretty amaz-
ing. The first time I went, Carlos Saura, the filmmaker, was there. He is in his eighties and started
a new career as a photographer, something nobody knows. He was putting together a book of his
work about the Franco era. So he was there—and he too had to wait in the library with us, and we
had lunch with him.
MARC: That’s pretty amazing.
KARINE: Yes, you meet very interesting people. So I spent a week waiting for Steidl to sit down with
me and start the process.
MARC: And when did that finally happen?
KARINE: It happened on the last day I was there—at 7 PM.
MARC: You're kidding.
KARINE: He apologized. I think he had overbooked himself, and it was the last week before they
closed for the summer. He told me, okay, sorry we didn't do anything this week but you'll come back.
That was four years ago.
MARC: So you went back again after that? That's a crazy story.
KARINE: Eventually, I went back for two weeks. It was an interesting experience. We picked the paper
and did the layout with a designer and worked on the colors.
MARC: And at some point, the finished book arrived in the mail?
KARINE: After almost two months, it was delivered to my house in Brooklyn.
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