DEWI LEWIS — PUBLISHER
Dewi Lewis Publishing is a partnership owned and run by Caroline Warhurst and Dewi Lewis.
Founded in 1994, its photography list has an international reputation and has included books by leading British and international photographers such as Laia Abril, William Klein, Martin Parr, Simon Norfolk, Fay Godwin, Tom Wood, Sergio Larrain, Frank Horvat, John Blakemore, Paolo Pelegrin, Simon Roberts and Bruce Gilden. The aim of the company is to bring to the attention of a wider public, accessible but challenging contemporary photography by both established and lesser known practitioners. The company has a worldwide distribution network and is recognised as one of the leading photographic publishers in the world. It publishes around 20 new titles each year.
Dewi Lewis Publishing also works in close collaboration with a number of European publishers and was a founding member of The European Publishers Award for Photography, which ran from 1994 to 2016. In 2014 Dewi Lewis Publishing received the PHotoEspana’s prize for Outstanding Publishing House of the Year.
Caroline Warhurst has been involved in the company for most of its 25 year history. Her father and grandfather, both known as Bill Warhurst, were, for many decades, press photographers with The Times, London. Caroline began working in photography at Manchester Studies Photography Archive, where in addition to her role as a researcher she also programmed a photographic gallery at Manchester Polytechnic. As a key member of The Documentary Photography Archive she was involved in the commissioning of several contemporary photographers including Martin Parr, Clement Cooper and John Darwell. In the early 1990s she set up Photofile, a company publishing photographic postcards and greetings cards.
Before establishing the imprint, Dewi Lewis was the founding Director of Cornerhouse, one of the major UK Centres for Contemporary Visual Arts and Film, based in Manchester. In 1987 he established Cornerhouse Publications which achieved recognition internationally for its ambitious and imaginative publishing programme and was a winner of the Sunday Times Award for Small Publisher of the Year. Many of the titles published by the company have been shortlisted for a range of international prizes and several have won awards. Dewi’s own book entitled Publishing Photography was selected by Photo-eye (USA) as the Best Photography Resource Book of the Year.
Dewi Lewis was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 2004 and in November 2009 he was awarded the inaugural Royal Photographic Society Award for Outstanding Services to Photography. He was awarded the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing at the World Photography Awards in April 2012.
In 2018 the company won both the Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Photobook of The Year Award and the Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Prize.
FOREST FOR THE TREES: THE TREE PLANTERS
2022 BANFF MOUNTAIN IMAGE BOOK AWARD WINNER
Photographs by Rita Leistner
In Conversation: Don McKellar with Rita Leistner
CAN $69.00 | Hardback, 256 pages | Pub. Date October 2021
160 colour photographs
250mm W x 290mm H x 20mm
FOREST FOR THE TREES: THE TREE PLANTERS is Rita Leistner’s fourth book of photography and her first with Dewi Lewis Publishers, UK. The book features photographs Leistner made of a community of 100 tree planters she lived with over four years, who are also the subject of her feature documentary film Forest for the Trees (2021). The book is equally an accompaniment to Leistner’s large scale fine art photographs—her epic “The Tree Planters” and “Enchanted Forests”—which are in major collections in Canada and will soon be a touring exhibition. The book concludes with an insightful, intimate, and energetic conversation between Leistner and her friend and artistic partner, celebrated screenwriter, director, and actor, Don McKellar.
DON MCKELLAR — IN CONVERSATION WITH RITA LEISTNER
One of Canada’s most acclaimed and prolific stars, the multi-talented Don McKellar has enjoyed success as an actor, writer and director in film, television and theatre, often assuming multiple roles in a production. Equal parts laconic and loopy, he is best known for playing quirky, unconventional leading men and collaborating on unique, visionary independent films. He was a key player in the Toronto New Wave, collaborating with Bruce McDonald and Atom Egoyan on such films as Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991), The Adjuster (1991) and Exotica (1994). He received the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut, Last Night (1998), directed The Grand Seduction (2013), one of Canada’s highest grossing films, and won a Tony Award for co-writing the hit musical The Drowsy Chaperone. McKellar has also worked extensively in television, creating and starring in the cult-classic Twitch City and directing and co-staring in the TV series Sensitive Skin with Kim Cattrall. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and has won multiple Genie and Canadian Screen Awards. Since the onset of the pandemic, McKellar has been collaborating with Leistner on a photographic project, “Infinite Distance.”