The Classroom
On second floor of 950 S. Raymond Ave
The Architecture of Fire(works): Between Spectacle and Catastrophe, with Kevin Cooley and Aline Smithson
Fire has long been both a subject and a force in Kevin Cooley’s work—something he has observed, documented, and even orchestrated. But when he lost his home and studio in the Eaton Fire, it ceased to be just an artistic fascination and became an inescapable reality. In this talk, Cooley shares the journey that led him to publish The Wizard of Awe, starting with meeting a fireworks maker named Ken Miller. Miller’s life was defined by fire in ways both mesmerizing and tragic. Now, standing in the aftermath of the fire that changed his own life, Cooley confronts these themes from a new perspective. What does it mean to document destruction when you yourself are affected? How does an artist engage with disaster without becoming consumed by it? Cooley will discuss the unintended consequences of his work with Miller, the burden of witnessing, and the unexpected ways in which photography, storytelling, and personal loss intersect. Cooley will be joined in conversation with Aline Smithson, an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator, and editor based in Los Angeles, California. In 2007, Smithson founded LENSCRATCH, a photography journal that celebrates a different contemporary photographer each day. Presented by The Eriskay Collection.
Ground Sea: Examining depression, memory, and loss through an artist book, with Kanthy Peng, Michael Guo, and Muxi Gao
Ground Sea is Kanthy Peng's debut artist book. Through it, she portrays the depressed body as a receptor and amplifier for signals from the future, questioning whether it is the individual—paralyzed by an impending catastrophe—that requires treatment, or if it is society—numbed by relentless progress—that needs awakening. This talk will be hosted by Michael Guo from te editions, with artist Kanthy Peng and designer Muxi Gao from Company Per Form. They will discuss the creative process and design principles behind Ground Sea, exploring the socio-political conditions that shaped the project and examining how the design, layout, and material choices reflect and reinforce its conceptual framework. Presented by te editions.
The Power of Local Publishing: An experiment on ethical publishing within a local context, with Lucas Birk
Lukas Birk (Fraglich Publishing/Myanmar Photo Archive) offers insights into the challenges and opportunities of ethical local publishing, using the Myanmar Photo Archive as a case study. This talk highlights both his successes and failures in over a decade of experience, emphasizing the importance of empowering local communities through accessible publications and rethinking global publishing practices. The publishing industry remains dominated by a Western-centric power structure in which books produced in the USA or Europe about less economically developed countries rarely make their way to the latter. In fact, more historical information about many less economically developed countries can be found in libraries in New York or London than in local universities. Publishers have a responsibility to address this imbalance and Birk offers an opportunity to discuss how. Presented by Fraglich Publishing/Myanmar Photo Archive.
Photography from Yemen, with Ibi Ibrahim
Ibi Ibrahim presents Photography from Yemen, the debut publication of Makan Press. This photography book is the first survey of contemporary Yemeni photography, featuring fourteen artists from Yemen and its diaspora. Co-edited by Ibi Ibrahim and Lizzy Vartanian, the book not only includes a presentation of each artist's work, but also writing about their practice in their own words. Through reflections on his fifteen-year career as a visual artist, publishing process, and upcoming projects, Ibrahim highlights the importance of giving Yemeni photographers a platform to share their work and tell their stories. Presented by Makan Press.
Blue Sun with Genesis Báez, Jenny Calivas, and Lacey Lennon
Genesis Báez is joined by Jenny Calivas and Lacey Lennon for a conversation celebrating the release of Blue Sun, Báez's debut monograph. Spanning a decade of photographic work, Blue Sun offers a glimmering examination of Puerto Rican matriarchal kinship and diaspora through studied images of the elemental and generational. Using Blue Sun as a departure point, these artists will discuss cross-practice themes of invocation, place-making, environment, photographic process, and performance. Presented by Capricious.
Las Tareas de Mercedes, by Ana Victoria Jiménez, with Andrea García
Ana Victoria Jiménez’s work is key to the visual history of feminism in Mexico. Her archive documents the movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, including Cuaderno de Tareas, originally conceived as a planner to track the hours women spent on domestic labor. In this project, Jiménez photographed her colleague, Mercedes Maya, performing household tasks. Though some images appeared in exhibitions, many remained unpublished—until now. Las Tareas de Mercedes is a photobook of this work that makes visible the unpaid labor that sustains daily life. Andrea García will discuss the book’s significance, its creation process, and the collective effort behind it in this talk. Presented by Miau Ediciones.
1 Million Images in a Book? Publishing Ed Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles Archive at Getty
Zanna Gilbert, Emily Pugh and Isabel Wade present a preview of the forthcoming Getty publication Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City, which was created using Getty’s digital publishing tool Quire and will be released in both print and digital formats in July 2025. Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles project began with Every Building on the Sunset Strip and continues into 2025 comprising an extensive artistic record of L.A., with over 900,000 images of major thoroughfares. Ruscha’s photographs constitute an unparalleled visual chronicle of both iconic and everyday sites in L.A., including popular music venues, neighborhood restaurants, and billboards promoting Hollywood’s latest blockbusters.
The Stage
On the roof of 950 S. Raymond AvePresented in conversation with No Canyon Hills & Living Earth, Friday's solar-powered stage performances will highlight musicians + conversations working towards the protection of 300+ acres of endangered native habitat from private luxury development in the Verdugo Mountains. Meet local naturalists, activists, and artists rallying to save a mountain with fundraising efforts going towards No Canyon Hills’ urgent legal defense fees.
Lula Fortune
Jordan Patterson
No Canyon Hills Legal Hour
Rachel Goodrich
Brandon
Badlands
Reading Room
On the first floor of 870 S. Raymond AveThe Reading Room is a new incarnation of the longstanding exhibitor section, Friendly Fire, which featured select politically-minded and social-justice oriented publishers. Friendly Fire made a commitment to highlighting the intersection of grassroots struggles and histories of print publishing, which this Reading Room also attempts to underscore.
For LAABF 2025, the Reading Room features a curated installation of multimedia artwork by artists from Los Angeles, China, Iran, and Mexico and a non-circulating collection of thematically relevant artists’ books drawn from an open call to all LAABF exhibitors. We invite visitors to slow down and spend time with the material you find here. On display are many different approaches to documenting the times we live in. In contrast to the rapid speed at which visitors move through the Fair, the Reading Room offers an alternative space to engage in close reading, critique, and reflection.
This years’ participants include:
Cráter Invertido / Taller XD (N15) presents an artwork drawing from their recent publication, Marx Esotérico. The work references the imaginary presence of the border—from the specters that inhabit our land to the social mourning of necropolitics in México. An altar accompanies this artwork and honors the possibility of migration, which connects all of our struggles and challenges neoliberal colonial processes. “We take this invitation to contribute to the LAABF Reading Room as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people... Palestine is near! ¡Palestina está cerca!”
Travel bans and restrictions on Iranians have been a longstanding issue, dating back to the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, which have persisted throughout periods of political tension, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. falgoush’s (K14) installation will serve as a visual and interactive exploration of the Iranian experience at U.S. borders, using artist Shirin Fahimi’s personal experience of being barred from attending her exhibition in 2020—an incident that led to the co-creation of the artist book O Lone Traveller. The installation encourages reflection on the invisible costs of border-crossing while prompting broader considerations of the societal implications of such practices. By incorporating the book as both a reflective guide and a tool for reclaiming personal agency, the installation aims to empower visitors to engage with themes of surveillance, censorship, and resistance, while underscoring the importance of independent publishing in these urgent times of self-awareness and collective action.
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive’s (B13) Fixing Papers Collection explores how people create, enforce, and contest immigration systems. These text-based artworks and ephemera use bureaucratic materials to visualize the shrouded decision-making process and fixed categories that governments impose. In doing so, Fixing Papers hopes to disorganize and unsettle the categories our lives are made to navigate.
The installation by Squeeze sour (K1) + öö (uh uh) (L15) consists of a single large structure, made of smudged Riso-printed pages that invite readers to move through the work by hand. The reverse side of the pages remain blank, gradually collecting visitors’ fingerprints as they flip backwards. The work explores the threshold of book distribution through the lens of visa redistribution—where access, meaning, and authority are mediated by touch, delay, and silence.
Extracurricular Activites
In 950 S. Raymond Ave:
Archetype Press
Open throughout the fair, Archetype Press invites visitors to experience one of the country’s largest educational letterpress studios. Stop by to explore the space, learn about letterpress printing, and create a print to take home.
In 870 S. Raymond Ave:
Riso Dessert Buffet
Participants will collectively create a “buffet table” of shapes, textures, and line work from scraps and tools in the studio. Using a wide variety of available risograph colors, participants will then create a 2-color print with these ready-mades in an edition size of up to fifteen prints. Real desserts will also be served. Taking place in the Maker’s Lab, presented by ArtCenter.
Bookbinding: One Person’s Scraps, Another’s Treasure
The accuracy rate for printing on a risograph is about seventy-five percent, which results in a lot of scrap materials for creative repurposing. In this workshop, participants can use these scraps to make sketchbooks, notebooks, and note pads of various sizes, using a perfect binder, coil binder, or fast binding glue. If time permits, participants can make multiple notebooks. Publications by students and faculty will also be on display for inspiration. Taking place in the Maker’s Lab, presented by ArtCenter.
Office Hours
In the Library & Archives on the second floor of 950 S. Raymond AveArtists’ Books in Context: Collecting Across Libraries
Libraries across Southern California collect artists’ books – but how and why they do so can vary widely. Each collection reflects the mission, audience, and curatorial vision of its home. This panel brings together librarians from a range of libraries to share how institutional priorities shape their approach to collecting, cataloging, and providing access to artists’ books. Join us for a conversation that explores how libraries engage with artists and vendors, advocate for acquisitions, and support discovery and use – whether for teaching, research, exhibition, or public engagement. This session offers insights for librarians building collections, and for exhibitors seeking to better understand how their work enters and circulates through library spaces. Panelists include Bob Dirig, Director, Archives and Special Collections, ArtCenter College of Design; Isotta Poggi, Associate Curator of Photographs, Getty Research Institute; Jennifer Martinez Wormser, Director and Sally Preston Swan Librarian; Ella Strong, Denison Library, Scripps College; Robert Gore, Visual Arts Librarian and Curator of Artists’ Books, UCLA Arts Library. Moderated by Mario Ascencio, College Librarian and Managing Director, ArtCenter Library.
Legal Structures for Artists and Publishers
In conjunction with the release of Legal Structures for Creative Practices, a 27-page illustrated zine designed by and for creatives, A Thousand Forests will host an interactive workshop to help guide artists and publishers through a range of resources available to serve their businesses and practices. Moderated by Emerson Collective’s Jennifer Arceneaux, the workshop will feature an overview of legal structures—from LLCs and corporations to charitable and hybrid models—with Christy Brook, Emerson Collective’s General Counsel, followed by a panel discussion with creative entrepreneurs Jazzi McGilbert of Rep. Club; Michelle Woo of the Institute for Freedoms; and Justen LeRoy of Sound System. Participants will then have the opportunity to meet with working lawyers for 20-minute collaborative Q&A sessions. Presented by Emerson Collective’s A Thousand Forests.
Register for the panel discussion here
Exhibitor Projects
Dent-De-Leone presents (PR 5) a space to sit, read, and meet with Martino Gamper’s Arnold Circus Stool. In the porous outdoor space of the Hixon Courtyard, visitors to the Fair will find light, versatile, and stackable stools intended for use both indoor and outdoor. In 2006, the original design functioned as community seating for a regeneration project of the historic East London landmark, Arnold Circus. Gamper’s responsive and flexible design animates spaces to encourage connection and conversation; a seat, a table, and–turned upside down–storage. Selected titles from Dent-De-Leone and more of Gamper’s objects will be on display.
FKA CA53776V2.gallery (PR 6) is a new iteration of Alex Lukas’s dashboard exhibition space, CA53776V2.gallery. The original project was an experimental curatorial platform housed in a 2007 Ford Ranger; programming focused on the intersection of intimacy, touch, and craft on, in, and around the American road. The "space" closed when four of the Ranger's six engine cylinders began perpetually misfiring. For LAABF 2025, Lukas has reprised the project on the roof of a 2023 Subaru Outback. FKA CA53776V2.gallery brings together a curated selection of oversized bumper stickers displayed in the dubious lineage of "World's Largest" roadside attractions. Participating artists include Will Brown, Christopher DeLoach, Mike Devine, Sky Fusco, Brendan Hanna, Jesse Malmed, and Zach Ozma. Lukas publishes under the imprint Written Names Fanzine.
Radio Frequency (PR 7) is a collaborative project by Dalé Zine and Orange Radio & Homebody. An extension of the two publishers’ broadcasting practice, Radio Frequency will pop up in a 9x9 office space in room K and feature music, reading, talks, and more. The broadcast will stream online and into the courtyard.
Three Star Books (PR 2) returns to the 2025 LA Art Book Fair with a series of new projects: STOD by John Armleder, a book of illusions and mirrors; RUG by Gerard & Kelly, a score for a musician and a dancer inspired by their film E for Eileen, composed in eleven tableaux; an intricate collaboration between BlackMass Publishing and Three Star Books— a box of printed poetic elements designed to be manipulated, reimagining the very notion of the book; and a selection of Raffaella della Olga’s latest delicate typewriter books and typed paintings.
Werkplaats Typografie (PR 1) is an alternative educational programme in graphic design. It functions as a research environment wherein participants define the content, aims, and conditions of their design practices. For the 2025 LA Art Book Fair, the Werkplaats Typografie cohort will represent the personal collection of Holly van Houten. Located in the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT), the project will take place in a slow auction format, addressing topics like value creation and provenance.
Offsite Programs
Viewing Room, presented by Quality Time
3551 Meier St. Los Angeles, CA 90066
Viewing Room is a salon-style photo book exhibition showcasing selected works from small presses around the world. QT Studio frames this show as a quiet extension of the LA Art Book Fair, and provides attendees an opportunity to peruse and meditate on selected books at Meier St, a new arts space and residency in Los Angeles.
After Party, presented by Cult Classic
Homage Brewing, 1219 N Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
A celebration of LAABF 2025 with music from Kelman Duran, 8ulentina, Lara Sarkissian, Stoni O Dragão, and video from Alima Lee.
Signings & Launches
N13 Exotika Magazine
Signing of Cyberhorny: Navigating a Sexual Dystopia, by Nastya Valentine.
O5 Shining Life Press
Launch of Floorpunch: No Exceptions 1995-2000, by Shining Life Press.
B7 Table of Contents
Signing of Book of Details, by Mariah Robertson.
M11 Artery
Signing of Garden Savage and I think therefore A.I., by Arvin Flores and Escape Routes, Timestamp, Shifts, by Mai Saporsantos.
D11 INFINITIF
Signing of ZILCH, by Maxime Le Bon.
D26 Metabolic Studio
Launch of The Fires We Live With, with Lauren Bon and Lita Albuquerque.
B18 New Dimension
Sun Shining in the Back of My Head, by Lia Kantrowitz.
O9 New Poetics Publishing
Signing of Birth Rehearsal, by Jenny Calivas.
B4 SALT AND PEPPER
Signing of City of Roses, by Sly Morikawa.
P1 Skylight Books
Signing of Talking About L.A., by Désirée van Hoek & Norman Klein.
B7 Table of Contents
Signing of Book of Details, by Mariah Robertson.
A6 The Eriskay Connection
Signing of The Wizard of Awe, by Kevin Cooley.
D23 Draw Down Books
Launch of Design History Reader: An Emerging Vision for a New Narrative, edited by Kristen Coogan.
O9 New Poetics Publishing
Signing of Birth Rehearsal, by Jenny Calivas.
B7 Table of Contents
Signing of Book of Details, by Mariah Robertson.
D21 te editions
Launch and signing of Ground Sea, by Kanthy Peng.
H6 Volker Renner
Signing and launch of player & xxl.
D26 Metabolic Studio
Launch of Fires of the West, with Lauren Bon and Richard Neilsen.
G5 SUPER LABO
Book signing by Arto Saari.
B7 Table of Contents
Signing of Book of Details, by Mariah Robertson.
D9 Building Fictions
Launch and book signing of DBL, by Paul John.
G12 Capricious
Signing of Blue Sun, by Genesis Báez.
C14 Central Server Works Press
Limited edition print signing by Sensie.
O1 Daniel Shepard
Launch of Stock in Bangkok - Thailand Sticker Collection, by Daniel Shepard.
D5 Ediciones sin resentimiento
Launch of Kesté - Refugio y renacimiento, by James Rodríguez.
G7 Kodoji Press
Launch of All Preconceptions Collapse, by Sabine Schründer.
D7 Matarile Ediciones
Signing of Picadero, by Carlos Jaramillo.
F19 Max Pinckers
Presentation of Colour Theory, by Max Pinckers and Victoria Gonzalez-Figueras.
G5 SUPER LABO
Book signing by Arto Saari.
B1 WORK/PLAY
Launch and signing of I Love You Always, All Ways, by Julien James.
F1 Zatara Press
Signing of Six Cinder Blocks on Top of a Wall, by Justin Fiset.
F14 BOOK AND SONS
Signing of Brooklyn Lot Recordings, by Yasuyuki Takagi.
D7 Matarile Ediciones
Signing of Picadero, by Carlos Jaramillo.