Zach Clark: It wasn’t planned this way, but I’m really glad Lindsay’s book, And to be Held, is where the series ends. The work in the book is from a larger body of work trying to work through the difficulties, beauty, and complications of intimate relationships.  I had mentioned on the first day I had come to some realizations about what was different between the practice of a lot of photographers and whatever my very photo heavy practice is. 

Printmakers like to think of themselves as inherently collaborative makers, usually because the work has to be done in shared spaces because the equipment is huge and expensive, so we’re all used to a coordinated dance through the space. There is also this spirit of experimentation with printmaking, that you never know what exactly might happen when the ink leaves the matrices, which is of course in hilarious contention with some printmakers complete fetishization on the perfect ideal edition. It’s totally commonplace in printmaking to have printers who understand a certain medium better to print work for other artists and to translate their vision on to the page. I think printmakers and photographers share a mutual obsession with craft and technique and even sometimes chemistry, but in general, I think printmakers tend to have a “lets see what happens” mentality in their practice. I think beyond the romance I hold for lofty ideas about printmaking’s traditions and potentials, I align myself with this camp for that reason; I like being surprised together. 

I think over this last year, I’ve learned photographers maybe hate to be surprised? I’m making a giant generalization here, I know, but I’ve found in even the most carefree photography friends a deep desire for control. That comes off judgemental or as a bad thing, I’m sure, but it’s not meant to be. More so its an acknowledgement of the drive of photographers. First off, technology has reached a point one can achieve the ultimate control through photo editing software and endless options for customization of printer profiles for digital printing, which I don’t think is a quest to achieve an ultimate perfection, but one’s personal idea of perfection, which is entirely part of the process and point of view. From there, of course, I’m speaking from the outside here, but I think part of that desire for control, especially right now, is that with photography, all you have is that image; the conversation about technique and materials and all those other aesthetics that provide side conversations in a lot of other work quietly. An image doesn’t need to be “true”, but it does need to be intentional, even in its unintentionality, which requires dedication and control, and maybe requires working alone. I think this last part is really where I have departed from the camp of photography.
I like to think that with Dodeca Meters, we found where these worlds meet. I’m really proud of this collection of work, and extremely grateful for all of my collaborators’ willingness to be part of this project and for trusting me to translate all of their hard work into these weird little books. I hope you are all able to see them and appreciate them too.

Zach Clark is an artist, educator, and curator based in Oakland, California; the publisher of National Monument Press; one half of Chute Studio; a collaborative Risograph publishing studio; author of A Mixtape Left Behind, a monthly music and memory newsletter.

National Monument Press is the publishing project of Oakland based artist Zach Clark focused on supporting the investigation and documentation of uniquely American stories through small edition artists’ books, zines, and printed matter, conceived of and completed largely through collaboration with other artists.

Kareem Michael Worrell is a Boston-based photographer born and raised in the city’s historic Roxbury neighborhood. Worrell began creating haunting Polaroid portraits of his peers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His practice crystalized on a 2004 cross-country roadtrip, where he began an ongoing photographic investigation into movement, light, and intimacy on the road. His work has appeared in The Boston Phoenix, SF Weekly, Marble Hill Camera Club and exhibited with CA53776V2.gallery. Worrell is currently compiling fifteen years of road photos for a series of self published photobooks, Lonely Highway, and worked with author Ricky Tucker to document New York City’s iconic Black and Latinx LGBTQ Ballroom scene.

A collection of ball photographs can be found in Tucker’s 2022 non-fiction book And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community.

Lindsay Buchman is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and publisher based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores image-making and writing through print and lens-based media, artist books, and installation. Pivoting between text and image, she is primarily concerned with the intersections of language, intersubjectivity, and site to puncture a sense of concrete time and space—both cognitive and embodied.

Buchman holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from California State University Long Beach. Exhibitions of her work include the Penumbra Foundation; San Francisco Center for the Book; TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image; LA Art Book Fair at The Geffen Contemporary, MOCA; New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1; Tokyo Art Book Fair, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; SPRINT Milano, Spazio Maiocchi. She has participated in artist talks and panels at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and the International Center of Photography. Her artist books are included in collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, SFMOMA, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and the Flaherty Fellowship, and her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Lenscratch, and The Hopper Prize Journal. Buchman has been an artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lower East Side Printshop, and the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University; she is a 2025 Light Work AIR. As an extension of her practice, she runs an independent artists’ books and publications project, Seaton Street Press, to collaborate with artists through publishing and distribution.

Sara J. Winston is an artist and contributing editor at Lenscratch.