Cesura Publish

CESURA PUBLISH is an independent publishing house focused on documentary photography and visual research, first established in 2010 as a branch of the eponymous collective CESURA, located in a rural village on the hills in northern Italy. Determined to maintain their artistic and political independence, the collective’s members, coming from lower-economic working-class backgrounds, founded their studio and lab in 2008 in an old metalworker store in disuse, renovating it by themselves. Building on the collective’s commitment to enhancing fully independent photographic practice in a solid participatory DIY ethic, CESURA PUBLISH started printing its first publications to self-promote its members’ photographic projects. Today, CESURA PUBLISH still maintains this initial mission by publishing a selected range of photo books that results from the diverse body of work of CESURA’s eighteen photographers.

DISPACCI SERIES, CESURA PUBLISH, 2023

The fanzines are the first two editions of the Dispacci series, created by Cesura Publish to imprint Italian news chronicles on the newsprint paper.

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ANDY ROCCHELLI, UKRAINA REVOLUTION III, CESURA PUBLISH, 2023 © ANDY ROCCHELLI

In February 2014 Andy Rocchelli documented the protests in Kyiv that led to the Ukrainian revolution, also known as the Maidan revolution. Once back at Cesura headquarters, Andy realized a fanzine called Ukraina Revolution, which contains a sequence of photographs taken in those days in Maidan Square during the clashes. The fanzine, produced by Cesura Publish in the first edition of 50 copies, was then reprinted in a second edition, also in 2014.

Ukraina Revolution III, in its third edition, returns with a revised and expanded sequence of images.

We dedicate this third edition of Ukraina Revolution to our friends Andy Rocchelli and Andrei Mironov, who were killed by the Ukrainian army on May 24th, 2014, in Sloviansk while documenting the conditions of civilians trapped in the middle of the Donbas conflict.

This is a project promoted and supported by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.

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Kanta Nomura, The Yoshida Dormitory Student History, CESURA PUBLISH, 2022 © Kanta Nomura

The Yoshida Dormitory is a self-governing dormitory that historically played a central role for students attending Kyoto University in Japan. Throughout the decades, it served as a place where the community gathered for the performance of plays and music, fostering the local youth culture. In recent years, a controversy between the dormitory students and the university sparked after the institution ordered them to leave the place due to the building’s age. In April 2019, the university filed a lawsuit against them, demanding they vacate the building. The dormitory students disagreed and asked for a withdrawal. The legal battle has continued since then, with a fifteenth oral argument planned at the Kyoto District Court for November 2022. The photo book includes photographs taken by Kanta Nomura in the Yoshida Dormitory from 2008 to 2019, as well as vernacular images he collected from the Kyoto University Archives and alumni albums across generations.

The Yoshida Dormitory Students' History is the winner of the 2021 first edition of The Andy Rocchelli Grant, an international award promoted by CESURA in the name of its cofounder and photojournalist Andy Rocchelli, killed in a mortar attack in Andreevka, East Ukraine, in 2014. The book was selected as the best unpublished photographic dummy by a jury that included Arianna Arcara, David Campany, Tamara Corm, Alex Majoli, and Lucia Rocchelli and was produced and published by Cesura Publish in freedom of expression, as Andy would have wanted.

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CESURA FANZINE #4 is out. This year’s theme is “EARLY STAGE or how we started looking at things.” The publication brings together a selection of our collective members’ early works. Every image comes from the first images we took or the initial projects we developed. Each picture has been cropped to highlight the focus on the things that caught our attention at the beginning when photography was the most instinctive and pure act.

Inside the fanzine, you will find a poster of the collage inspired by this year’s theme.

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