If Print Disappears,
We Lose More Than Paper
By Marwan El-Mozayen
The recent financial troubles at Steidl are more than publishing-industry news. They are a reminder that beautifully made books and magazines are less secure than we might like to believe.
A Great Name In Photography Books
For some publishers, print is just a medium. But there are still publishers for whom the physical object is an essential part of the work. Steidl unquestionably belongs to the latter.
Founded by Gerhard Steidl in Göttingen in 1969, the publishing house has become one of the great names in photography books. Robert Frank’s The Americans, William Eggleston’s Chromes and Bruce Davidson’s Outside Inside are just a few examples, alongside projects with Karl Lagerfeld and Bryan Adams.
If you own photo books, take a look at your own bookshelf. How many Steidl books are sitting there?
Steidl stands for top-notch print quality. Paper, reproduction, binding, color, and typography are treated as part of the work itself. At SilvergrainClassics, we identify strongly with that philosophy. Since the beginning, Steidl has been an example that we look to: not simply a purveyor of photographs and words, but a maker of physical objects whose quality respects them.
That is why the news from Göttingen matters to us.
A Warning Sign
Print Is Difficult
Print is just harder than digital publishing. Period.
Paper is expensive, and difficult to transport and store. Finished books and magazines need warehouses. They have to be packed and shipped around the world. Printers, bookbinders, and specialist craftspeople are needed to make them.
But the limitations of print are also part of its creative power.
Print Forces Decisions
A digital image or article can be edited tomorrow; a printed page cannot.
When creating a book or magazine, you have a fixed format, a certain number of pages, a paper, a sequence, and a final reproduction. If you make a mistake in your factual research, or choose the wrong color profile, or even just miss a typo, those mistakes are there for all to see for as long as the paper lasts.
The moment when you approve the publication for print feels strangely familiar to analog photographers.
It’s like releasing the shutter. Until that moment, you can reconsider, adjust, and hesitate. Then you press the button and let it go, let it come into being.
That finality is not a weakness. It forces us to reflect on what we are creating.
We Need Both Print and Digital
A photograph on a screen and a photograph on paper are not the same thing. Size, surface, reproduction, sequence, and the relationship between images all become part of the experience which is intentionally designed – not influenced by random screen size or brightness.
A good photography publication is one of the essential forms in which photography exists. This is why we at SilvergrainClassics don’t consider our commitment to print as nostalgia.
But digital media allows us to discover new photographers and reach readers around the world. We need both.
We should not assume print will always be there simply because it is there today.
Print is not dead. Far from it. But neither is its future guaranteed.
Its limitations, physicality, and permanence are part of what makes print worth protecting.