Nan Richardson has worked as an editor, writer, and curator for over twenty years, on nearly two hundred book titles, at Aperture, Random House, and Chanticleer Press, as well as with museums and small publishers in the United States and Europe. In 1991, she founded an artistic, socially conscious, and photojournalism-oriented publishing company called Umbrage Editions (formerly a packager known as Umbra and specializing in visual books), and has published nearly seventy books under the imprint. Umbrage Editions became members of Fractured Atlas in 2005.

Nan, would you please tell us about the mission and work of Umbrage Editions?

Umbrage is a publisher, a curator, and an art space. We also represent the cultural and educational program of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Speak Truth to Power, which I founded with Kerry Kennedy 10 years ago. It’s a human rights organization that produces plays, events, colloquia, films and more. In some sense, I like to think we are a think tank doing research and development at the intersection of arts and social change.

How do your traveling exhibitions come about? Which one(s) are you particularly proud of?

Well, we’ve had so many exhibitions and they are all great in their own way: Divided Portraits, which confounds the traditional view of the disabled; Havana: The Revolutionary Moment, recording Fidel Castro’s historic entry into Havana in 1959; Diamond Matters, the world’s most precious stone from mines to tiaras; Remains of a Rainbow, Hawaii’s endangered flora and fauna; Torrijos: The Man and the Myth, about the late charismatic Panamanian leader, just to name just a few…

Our current exhibition is Eddie Adams: Vietnam. Eddie worked me with me on Speak Truth to Power, and we often talked about doing a book of his work until he became ill. After his death, his wife, Alyssa Adams, and I started talking. She has a keen eye, is a designer herself and the book just started. It was a herculean task — we sorted through thousands of negatives, radiograms, lost prints, unidentified materials, piecing it all together laboriously, choosing only 200 images for the book, and 60 for the exhibition. Alyssa made all the hard choices, with help from Hal Buell who was Eddie’s bureau chief at the AP during Vietnam, designer Marie Suter, and myself. We met weekly for months. And the book feels right somehow — it sums up the man and his work, and his time.

And every exhibition visitor, even though they have seen Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of South Vietnam’s national police chief executing a Viet Cong prisoner — whether they are kids who weren’t yet born during Vietnam or marines who were in the war themselves — every one of them stops for 10 minutes before the contact sheet that includes that picture, just mesmerized.

And upcoming is Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold by Tim Hetherington. Tim’s work is visually strong and he’s the real deal — a very serious, intelligent, thoughtful journalist who becomes a real expert, and has a fine political understanding. Long Story Bit by Bit is a very layered, subtle picture of a small country settled by former American freed slaves. Liberia has been wracked by 20 years of brutal war and a leader who is on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Court. Hetherington’s work examines the nature of power, greed, and fear.

How has the publishing world changed in the last 10-15 years? How has this impacted Umbrage Editions and/or your way of doing business?

Well, the trope that you grow or die continues — 90% of books are purchased through seven retailers, the big chains. But there are more indie publishers than ever. The internet has helped that a lot — the niche can live, albeit on air, with the search engines’ evermore powerful capacity to find something. But how to make a loud enough noise to get your name up there on Google…? We do feel like the Whos in Horton Hears a Who at times. So we platform: books to exhibitions, to films, to plays. We have some arrows in our quiver that make all the difference: great connections, great projects, great authors. The quality level is never sacrificed — there we hold the line… and so far we continue.

How can interested folks browse your publications? Do you have a storefront?

We sell our publications online at umbragebooks.com and at our gallery at 111 Front St., second floor, New York City. We also sell them through our distributors, Consortium/Perseus and (in Europe) Turnaround, as well as through all the usual online sources.

What motivated you to become a Fractured Atlas member? How do you use your FA membership?

I was thrilled to find out about Fractured Atlas — the nature of our work means we often need to find support for our projects. We use our membership mostly to take advantage of the fiscal sponsorship program, and other helpful support you offer. I know that some of our freelancers have also gotten health insurance through you. Plus the Fractured Atlas staff is smart and attentive, and just nice!

What’s next on your horizon?

We have an amazing book called LAOGAI (subtitle being hotly debated) coming out for the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. It’s filled with never-before-seen, smuggled-out, clandestine photographs of the world’s largest slave-labor economy at work, and has essays by leading scholars and dissidents. And yes, it comes with an exhibition as well! It is shocking, powerful, and makes one think of what the gulag was to Solzhenitsyn — a machinery of suppression on an awesome scale. And we in the consumer-oriented West don’t care where they come from as long as we can buy our sneakers cheap….

How can we learn more about Umbrage Editions?

Our website, umbragebooks.com, is a great source of information about our exhibitions and publications. In addition, we’ve been fortunate to get some press recently. Eddie Adams: Vietnam has been covered by The New Yorker and was also the subject of an NPR story. Even Page Six of the New York Post did a piece on Eddie Adams. (Love it when we make the tabloids…)

“Eddie Adams: Vietnam” is on view at Umbrage Editions through April 30, 2009.

Images:

Top: Eddie Adams - Sunset patrol by Memontagnard soldiers at Plei Me about 210 miles north of Saigon, during an attack last weekend by a large number of Viet Cong guerrillas. The defenders were beseiged for several days before they beat off the attackers. 1965.

Bottom: Tim Hetherington, LURD fighter. Tubmanberg, Bomi County. 2003.