Opening to the public tomorrow for the third year running, Printed Matter’s annual LA Art Book Fair is a buzzing paper emporium filled with zines, monographs, books, photographs and periodicals from over 250 of the art worlds most creative independent publishers. This year seven of our favourite female fashion photographers, brought together by the wonderful world wide web, are hosting their own stall at the fair and they’re calling it “Girlfriends.” Members of Petra Collins’ art collective The Ardorous; Maya Fuhr, Dana Boulos, The Editorial Magazine (founded by Claire Milbrath) and Monika Mogi, alongside fellow female fashion photographers Dafy Hagai, Valerie Phillips and Rebecca Storm will be selling their girl saturated pages in the form of magazines, books and photos at table 90 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
Set up by Tel Aviv based Dafy, Girlfriends is the curatorial project focusing on all girl independent publications in the photography field. “Us gals are all closely linked together (although we’re in different parts of the world) because we have an immense love for film photography and powerful aesthetics,” Toronto based Maya tells us. “Secondly, I have to give Petra Collins some serious credit because she started an all female collective called The Ardorous which originally linked Monika and I together. We met in LA four years ago at an Ardorous/Rookie exhibition. It was an amazing platform for young artists and we’ve continued to connect internet-style, which is one of the reasons “Girlfriends” is able to happen! It’s like we’re supporting each other’s views through our art & photography on social media.”
As well as Tel Aviv and Toronto, the gang also consists of LA, Tokyo and London natives. “It’s inspiring for me that so many young, female photographers from culturally diverse backgrounds can come together and share their work,” says Rebecca. “We’re all self-published, so it can be frustrating to reach an audience when you’re creating alone. By coming together we can share with everyone—it’s special to support and to be supported by one another.”
Who run the world?
The LA Art Book Fair preview is today and it will be open to the public from 30th January to 1st February.
