Handmade Photobook Week: Lisa McCarty & Nancy Richards Farese by Vicente CayuelaAugust 29, 2025

The Griffin Museum of Photography has recently assembled a wonderful exhibition dedicated to handmade photobooks, curated by Sangyon Joo, founder of Datz Press and Datz Museum in Gwangju, South Korea. The first of its kind at the New England museum, the showcase is dedicated solely to handmade photo books, turning its gaze to the tactile delicacy of these wonderful artifacts. The 20 books selected for their outstanding craftsmanship and powerful authorial voices are a sensorial feast, reminding us of the importance of the artist’s hand in the dissemination of independent photographic media.

Lens-based artist, publisher, and photobook maker, Laila Nahar, was invited to select her top picks as a guest critic at the exhibition. This week, we take a look at her Top 6 selections. As the last installment of this series, we feature the projects Fodor’s in Japan by Nancy Richards Farese and Postcards from Voyager by Lisa McCarty. Keep reading to discover what Nahar had to say about these projects.

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Nancy Richards Farese: Fodor’s in Japan

A 1971 Fodor’s guidebook to Japan became the repurposed artist book Fodor’s in Japan by Nancy Farese. Carved out beautifully the book with the antique red cover became the house of the carefully made accordion folds. I am intrigued by the idea, the thought process and the attention to details. The knots with the twine that give the ‘ephemeral’ nature of unique experience and the worn and faded pages carrying the stain of time blended beautifully with the images of the natural world, the season and light, the passing or resting people, the silent and transformational moments from Japan. A beautiful book object!

— Laila Nahar

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Laila Nahar: What was the motivation behind making an altered book of your travel using an old guidebook?

Nancy Richards Farese: A theme for me in the last few years has been getting images off our screens and back into our lives, both to live with them as ‘real’ objects that we touch and feel, and to create an archive of how we are living right now. During COVID I felt the value of looking back to the Spanish Flu of 1918 through the lens of the newspaper articles, letters and images of that time. What, I wondered, will our grandchildren have to understand how we are living through the most significant social and political upheaval of a lifetime, given the ephemeral nature of images, news, artifacts right now?

A book is an artifact, of course, and a wonderful format for presentation and preservation of memories from a very special trip. I traveled with George Nobechi in 2024 to Japan and took those images. Aline Smithson inspired me to consider alternative ways to engage with the images. I’m discovering the world of photo books through professional publishing, and through handmade books as mentored by Richard Smith in the Book Arts Studio at Maine Media. Inspired by the satisfaction of making a single book there, I decided to take on this project. An Etsy search led me to this wonderful old Fodor’s Japan, 1971 travel guide, actually signed by Gene Fodor. It’s incredibly precious to me!

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LH: Who are your inspirations in ‘artist book’?

NRF: Cig Harvey has inspired me by the color and whimsy she brings to each of her books to complement gorgeous imagery. I love The Journals of Dan Eldon, The Journey is the Destination, as a model for daily documentation and archiving, and for the pure creativity on every page. And then I love Adam Moss’s book The Work of Art which I turn to again and again for inspiration and a reminder that art requires diligence and play, in equal parts.

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LH: What is your dream project that may turn into a book?

NRF: I’m working on a big-thicket project of documenting this chaotic moment that we are living through. I’m collecting things, I’m photographing, I’m collaging/painting/burning/sewing. It makes me feel that I have a tiny bit of control over a dismaying world that feels like it’s spiraling downward. Working names: Mapping Dissonance and/or “What The Hell is Happening to Your Country?”. This is a memoir project, is trying to offer answers but to witness, to archive the social map changing around me—as an American, as a woman, as an artist. It’s not about hope, it’s about seeing, and beginning to ask—what happens next?

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Lisa McCarty: Postcards from Voyager

Lisa McCarty’s Postcards from Voyager made me look up in the sky that night and ponder about our place in the universe. The concept is beautifully executed in this book with a clean design choice and gorgeous Risograph prints of the images from Voyager archives. I wanted to hold this beautiful book with postcard sets in my hands. It made a lasting impression for which I would be going back to the book over and over.
— Laila Nahar

Laila Nahar: Tell me about the concept, print and design choices of this book.

Lisa McCarty: Postcards from Voyager is a book of postcards featuring images from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft archive. These strange and wondrous visions of our solar system provide a glimpse into our cosmic neighborhood, yet are rarely accessed by the general public. With this in mind, I decided to reimagine Voyagers’ dispatches as postcards – small prints designed to be held, admired, and circulated. You can even mail the prints!

In terms of printing and design, it was important to me that the book could be circulated and reproduced easily, but I also wanted to reduce my waste and material consumption as I worked to create a project that relies on multiples. Risograph printing was the perfect solution. The process allows for a lot of experimentation, but you can reuse paper as you work and you can make small editions very efficiently. Plus the ink is soy or rice based! Its an eco-conscious choice, plus the ink itself, and layering of inks you can achieve, is unique and quite beautiful.

LH: Who are your inspirations in ‘artist book’?

LM: Oh, there’s so many! But here are a few that have been on my mind and in my studio this summer: Dayanita Singh, Dust Collective, and theretherenow. All three commit to a high level in care and craft in every publication they make. And they have all explored the book form as a means of installation or display as well, which I find particularly inspiring!

LH: What is your dream project that may turn into a book?

LM: It’s my current project of course, entitled The Charles River Composition. I’ve organized a collective of 48 photographers in Greater Boston to photograph the Charles River Watershed for one year, and this work absolutely needs to be published together. That said, representing and combining series from 48 photographers is a tall order! But I’m up for the challenge and am already dreaming up ideas for the design and sequence.