May 13, 2005: Publishing large-scale photography and art books is an expensive venture that few Canadian publishers attempt, but MaryAnn Camilleri is not discouraged. In the spring of 2006, she will launch a new charitable foundation established to do just that.
Camilleri is the founder and president of the Magenta Foundation, which will issue its first book, Carte Blanche, in April 2006. She describes the project as "a resource book of Canadian photographers"; it will feature work by 200 established Canadian photographers. Camilleri is still in talks to find a Canadian distributor, but she already has a deal with Consortium to distribute in the U.S. and Europe.
For start-up money, Camilleri reached into her own pocket. "It was my own investment, and a labour of love," she said. She's hoping, however, that her charitable status will attract corporate grants, and one of the foundation's three employees, development director Barbara Gilbert, is responsible for fundraising. (As a charity, the foundation can issue tax-deduction receipts for donations.)
All profit made from Carte Blanche, and from all subsequent books, will go toward promoting exhibitions and publishing catalogues of the work of emerging artists aged 13 to 25.
This is not Camilleri's first venture into publishing. In 1992, she ran a Canadian-based arts magazine called Venue. Four years later, she headed off to New York to work on various photography projects, including handling the estate of Magnum photographer Inge Morath. In 2003, she worked with New-York based design firm Hello to produce 2/15: The Day the World Said No to War (AK Press).
The success of the project made Camilleri think about becoming a publisher, but the final push came when she returned to Toronto last year to care for her ailing mother. Her move back happened to coincide with Toronto's photography-based Contact Festival, where she got a chance to reacquaint herself with Canadians working in the medium. The idea for the Magenta Foundation was born from a conversation with gallery owner Stephen Bulgur about the lack of Canadian photography-book publishers. "I said, 'What the hell,' and within two months of being back, I had decided to do it."
The Magenta Foundation plans to publish four books in the next two years — two by Canadian photographers and two by foreign-based photographers.
© 2005 Quill & Quire
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