If you were anywhere near Los Angeles this past weekend, you likely felt the city buzzing with all manner of book artists, publishers, and other sorts of print-loving geeks gathered for Printed Matter’s 2026 LA Art Book Fair. The fair is an annual celebration of artists’ books hosted by the New York-based non-profit Printed Matter. Since 2013, the LA Art Book Fair has served as a gathering place for artists’ book publishers from around the world to distribute their work, connect with broad audiences, and nurture new and longstanding relationships with other publishers and artists. This year’s iteration was hosted at ArtCenter College of Design, where 250 exhibitors set up shop to share their work with each other and the public.
I had the joy not only of attending the fair myself, but speaking with Printed Matter’s Executive Director, Lesley Martin, prior to the event’s kickoff. Martin joined Printed Matter in 2024, but she’s been attending the legendary Printed Matter Art Book Fair both in New York and LA for the last 25 years. Before Printed Matter, she worked as an editor and creative director at the photography publisher Aperture. There, she worked closely with artists to make books and push the form of what a photo book can be. “I was always interested in trying to push and open up the photo book world, which can be very conservative in its thinking towards a greater intersection with the wider world of artist books,” she tells me from a very groovy conference room at the Marciano Art Foundation in LA, leading up to the fair’s launch. “I thought I was getting into photography, but really I was getting into books.”
“I was always really inspired by the Printed Matter book fairs—I’ve gone to every single one in New York. I love how the printed page brings together an artist’s vision and can contain it,” Martin continues. ”I always loved the Sol LeWitt quote: ‘Art shows come and go, but books stay around for years.” Years feels like an understatement, Mr. LeWitt!
The LA Art Book Fair is helmed by Printed Matter Director of Fairs and Editions Maia Asshaq, Fairs & Editions Coordinator Sanjana Iyer, and Fairs & Editions Associate sgp. This team is on the frontlines of reviewing applications and selecting show participants. It’s from these submissions that salient themes from each show organically take shape. “Looking at different subcultures within the larger print landscape is usually what emerges,” says Martin. “In LA, in particular, it’s nice to be able to highlight the different communities and subcultures that come together and are embedded in California and Pacific Coast/West Coast culture.” These sorts of themes are especially teased out in the Project Spaces put together as part of this year’s fair. Martin highlights an archival display of newspapers by “Chicano in Print” and “¡Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation—From the Collection of Archivos Desviados” which traces the network of influences and connections between three activist coalitions of the 1970s through magazines, newsletters, posters, flyers, mockups, and original documents. “Both of these are historical, but they resonate with what’s going on today,” says Martin.
The core mission for the Printed Matter Art Book Fair is to provide a platform and space for connecting, sharing, and discovery. “We bring a framework of understanding that now is a really critical and crazy time, and it’s important to provide a platform for voices that might not ordinarily be heard, or to look back at efforts that inspire us,” says Martin.
Artists’ books have always been a critical art form, but it’s undeniable that celebrating and preserving space for book arts is increasingly essential in a modern era dominated by the digital realm and, of course, AI. “It’s a moment when algorithms and external cultures are really beginning to dictate how we think about narrative, how we think about reality, how we think about communication,” says Martin. “Printed Matter has always believed in its mission to sustain the conditions of being able to encounter artist-made objects that you can take home with you, that you can gift to people. Being able to draw attention to an object where you’re slowed down and turning the pages, and there’s a tactility to it, and there’s sometimes you’re smelling the ink on the page, and that really does require a different type of attention. We are all becoming very trained by the eternal scroll, and I think that slowing down and encouraging connection is a large part of the artist book experience.”
We are all becoming very trained by the eternal scroll, and I think that slowing down and encouraging connection is a large part of the artist book experience.”
Preserving this sort of space and outlet for physical, material engagement and expression is at the heart of Printed Matter as an organization, and the Art Book Fair by extension. “Printed Matter has always considered itself part of creating a safe haven for books that are contained counter cultural voices and things you’re not going to find in the mainstream, but we are dedicated to finding audiences for them,” says Martin. “That’s one of the things that really drives the Art Book Fair too; we’re gathering 250 exhibitors from all over the country, all over the world, and they come together in this space. There’s a sense of discovery, there’s a sense of surprise. You might pick something up that comes from a stranger you’ve never heard about, but that encounter can change how you see the world and how you think about an issue. In this moment, artist books preserve a unique space of accessible, democratic, person-to-person, transmission of ideas.”
In this moment, artist books preserve a unique space of accessible, democratic, person-to-person, transmission of ideas.
While Martin is now on the other side of the fair as a member of the Printed Matter team, it’s clear that first and foremost she is an avid book arts fan and genuine lover of the fair itself. “I’m always excited to find something new, to touch base with people who have been coming back for years. It’s a sort of desert oasis that blooms at a certain time of year,” she says. “It’s really nice to catch up on what people are making, and how people are thinking about ink on paper in the many different ways that that can manifest.”