resources

funding

At its current scale, authors and editors each receive an honorarium of $400 at the project’s onset. After this initial honorarium, there are $200 set aside for design and production labor to be collectively negotiated once process is decided.1 Once printed, publications will be sold on a self-selecting sliding scale:

︎price that just covers production + labor
︎︎︎we imagine this applying, but not limited, to: emerging artists, practitioners + teachers, self-organizing learners

︎price that exceeds production + labor
︎︎︎we imagine this applying, but not limited, to: established artists, practitioners and teachers, educational institutions

A portion of the surplus will go towards publication authors and editors as additional compensation, and any remainder will feed back into the press’ communal funds for sustaining future publications.2

community

For paper cameras press, community is the specific group every publication forms. Community is felt when understanding is built and trust sustained on the terms through which we wish to see, not see, and sense each other, while also honoring the limitations of recognition. Community may also grow over time, and over the making of multiple publications, but desire to return takes precedence over an expectation to stay.3

community agreements

paper cameras press operates on the understanding that both photography and publishing are processes of making known; historically, both mediums have imposed acts of disclosure onto many communities. The camera, and its many mutations, “fabricates consent to be seen.”4 It is with this understanding that paper cameras press attends to the acts of ‘making known,’ within the joint projects of photography and publishing, with extensive care. One such example is through the utilization of community agreements between making + working parties:

︎there are the terms offered here on this site (all gathered here!) that describe the larger parameters of the press; 

︎ and there is also the request that each editor-co-author-trio generate co-created agreements that are carried and revisited throughout a project’s process. These co-created agreements can take any form for those gathering, but paper cameras press requests that a few things be included:

︎︎︎SUPPORT: Questions that address what members need and want, to embark on group work.

︎︎︎ PROCESS: Questions that ask how members wish (and do not wish) to receive feedback. This means that editorial style guides may differ per publication. Regardless of this contingency, paper cameras press requests that each publication rigorously describe any included images (or activities where images may be yielded) to create non-visual alternatives to photographs and augment the already-present sensory registers of any recording process.5

︎︎︎ DESIGN and PRODUCTION: Questions that gauge interest in design and print labor, as well as materials and resources.

︎︎︎ TIMELINE: Questions that ask of each other’s capacities and build towards a possible project timeline.

︎︎︎ DOCUMENTATION: Questions that address sharing images and news of process with the world, beyond documentation facilitated by the press at large.


cards for publishing

paper cameras press utilizes publications to faciltiate process; one such example is cards for publishing. Paired with a worksheet, these cards offer prompts for authors to imagine and begin a paper camera publication. Cards will soon be available for order on our site.

These cards invite authors to dream towards their curriculum through three central questions:

︎What kind of photo practice do you wish to study with others?

︎How might it practice loving observation or self-determined documentation?

︎How might it maintain harms integral to photography’s institutionalization?

micro-residency

At the head of each publication project, paper cameras press holds an initial gathering for the issue’s authors and editors, often facilitated by the editor with support from the organizer. The intentions of this gathering are manifold:

︎To provide an environment in which the authors can translate their practice in forms for (and through the combinations of) pedagogy, play, and loving observation.

︎To offer facilitation for the authors to begin generating material for their publication through collaboration and sustained attention.

︎To yield to the trust that can be built through, and departs from, making together and responding to each other.

︎For parties to share their desires and concerns, after which a responsibility to remember follows.

In the past, this initial gathering has taken the form of a micro-residency, spanning three days, virtually or in person. But this initial gathering can take many forms.  


1. Currently, paper cameras press is a small operation organized by one person. The press is seeking additional resources to increase funding in accord to W.A.G.E. standards. 

2. The decisions regarding resources are immensely inspired by the legacy of independent publishing practices. paper cameras press is indebted to homie house press, press press, prompt:, PROPS PAPER, Shelf Shelf, Weird Babes, and many more. We have been transformed by their approaches to community and the ways they sustain acts of sharing. 

3. The language and shapes of this press are immensely inspired by the inaugural co-authors, beck and Mira. Their work on the first issue coincided with the press’ foundation, and their insights, labors, love, and language have transformed the press, activated its hopes, and nurtured its possibilities.

4. Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), 27-8.

5. This practice is indebted to the many who have labored and forged practices for alt-text and image descriptions. Alt Text as Poetry offers a bounty of resources, https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/.




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