Yolanda Cuomo on the Craft (and Grief) of Bookmaking
The designer behind some of photography's most iconic monographs gives a rare public lecture at The Church in Staatsburg, tied to an exhibition on loss and healing.
Saturday, August 1, 2–4pm | Staatsburg, NY
The designer behind some of photography world's most iconic monographs, Yolanda Cuomo gives an intimate lecture at The Church in Staatsburg on August 1, walking through both the technical craft and the emotional undercurrent of making a photobook. "Every book is a love letter," Cuomo has said of the work, "and sometimes, a way of saying goodbye."
Cuomo, a Cooper Union graduate who started as a junior designer at Condé Nast in the early 1980s, came up under the mentorship of art director Marvin Israel and built relationships with photographers including Nan Goldin, Gilles Peress, Sylvia Plachy, and Richard Avedon that shaped decades of collaboration. Through Yolanda Cuomo Studio, she has designed roughly 85 books—Diane Arbus's Revelations, Peress's Farewell to Bosnia, and countless other landmark titles among them—though she didn't get her own name on a book spine until 2012's New York at Night, co-published with Norma Stevens. She's received the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award three times and a National Magazine Award for her art direction of Aperture.
The lecture, titled "Love and Loss," moves through her hands-on process (typography, image editing, and the instinct for sequence and rhythm that turns a stack of photographs into a narrative) while addressing something more personal: how grief and memory find their way onto the page, and how the discipline of assembling a book can become a way of working through loss. Colleagues have described watching her lay out a book as something close to watching a jazz musician improvise, trying combinations, discarding them, finding the pairing that unlocks the whole sequence.
The talk is held in conjunction with "Artist Books of Loss and Healing," an exhibition on view at The Church through August 2 featuring photo books, embroidered books, pop-up books, editioned books, and unique objects exploring grief and recovery through the book form. Free parking on site.
The Church in Staatsburg, 5 Market St., Staatsburg, NY. More at thechurchstaatsburg.org.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
