Can Steidl, the Master Art-Book Printer, Survive?

"I have stayed with my publisher for nearly 25 years because of his commitment to artistic authorship," says Mitch Epstein. “He is a master of the craft of bookmaking."

In a written interview with The Art Journal, the New York-based photographer is referring to Gerhard Steidl, the revered German publisher whose monastic approach to bookmaking has become the stuff of legend – but whose business is in severe trouble. Earlier this month, German media reported that the Göttingen-based publisher had entered preliminary insolvency proceedings. Staff wages are allegedly unpaid.

The news was especially troubling because Steidl is widely regarded as the world's foremost publisher of photographic monographs. If even Steidl is struggling, what does that suggest about the rest of the industry?

Famous for rising at 5am every day and working late into the night, Gerhard Steidl built a publishing house unlike any other, where editing, design, pre-press, printing and binding all take place under adjoining roofs. Artists travel from around the world to work beside him on press, adjusting ink densities, paper stocks and sequencing until every detail is right. The promise is seductive: arrive in Göttingen with a body of work, and leave with a book.

With Epstein he made Family Business in 2005 and went on to produce a further dozen books, including the pivotal series American Power (2011) Sunshine Hotel (2019) and Property Rights (2022). Such long-term collaborations are typical. Steidl's career began in political printing before he formed a close working relationship with Joseph Beuys in the late 1960s, later becoming the publisher of Nobel laureate Günter Grass. By the mid-1990s, photography had become central to the programme. Long-term publishing relationships followed with Robert Frank, Juergen Teller, Ed Ruscha, Joel Sternfeld and Karl Lagerfeld, who channelled a stream of prestigious Chanel commissions through the Göttingen press. 

Mitch Epstein, Sunshine Hotel. Book design by Garrick Gott, published by Steidl

Alongside these established names, Steidl developed a reputation for recognising emerging talent, publishing seminal first books including Massimo Vitali's Beach & Disco (1999), Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004) and Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007). 

So, when insolvency proceedings began to filter through the photography world, the news was received with a sense of disbelief.

Writer and curator David Campany, who has collaborated with the German publisher on numerous books, including Walker Evans: the magazine work (2014), wrote on Instagram: "Sad to hear the publishing and printing house Steidl might have come to an end. It's hard to imagine the world of photographic books without the contribution and expertise of its founder, Gerhard Steidl."

Yet the obituary proved premature. Thirteen days after proceedings began on 10 July, they were discontinued after €2,967.33 in outstanding social security contributions had been settled with Minijob-Zentrale, a collecting agency for low-paid and part-time jobs. But, while the legal trigger was surprisingly small, it exposed deeper problems that remain unresolved.

According to Sascha John, a Göttingen lawyer representing many of Steidl's employees, wages remain unpaid, in some cases stretching back several months. "In some cases, lawsuits have only just been filed," he tells The Art Journal, "while in others we are already in enforcement proceedings, as, unfortunately, despite the existence of legally binding judgments, voluntary payments have generally not been made." 

Film Works, by Robert Frank. Edited by Brigitta Burger-Utzer and Stefan Grissemann. Published by Steidl.

More symbolically, Steidl has also lost the rights to licence the work of Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose decades-long relationship with the publisher formed one of the cornerstones of the business.

Yet to hear Gerhard Steidl describe the situation is to encounter a rather different perspective. Speaking to Deutschlandfunk Kultur’s daily arts podcast, Fazit, the 75-year-old publisher insists that what is happening today began not with a court order this July but almost a decade ago, when he first began planning for life after his retirement. Rather than selling the company, he says, his priority has always been succession: preserving the expertise accumulated inside the Göttingen workshops while passing responsibility to a new generation. 

‘What matters to me,’ he said on the podcast, ‘is preserving the knowledge, the expertise and, above all, the technical capabilities that exist within this publishing house and its printing works beyond my lifetime.’

His concern extends well beyond the publishing house itself. Steidl says he is trying to preserve the entire Göttingen ‘campus’ – its presses, workshops, archive and neighbouring cultural institutions along Düstere Strasse, AKA ‘Steidlville’ – as a single entity, not to mention the staff. “It is very much in the interest of my clients that an investor be found quickly to steer the publishing house back into calmer waters,” says John.

Negotiations with potential investors have, in fact, been under way long before July’s court proceedings, and, says Stiedl, have recently accelerated. Twelve serious investors have now expressed interest in securing the future of the operation. ‘Publishing in Germany is under enormous pressure at the moment, and we've been hit by a number of different problems,’ Steidl says in his interview with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. ‘The biggest issue for us is that… 95 percent of our books are exported.’

American Prospects by Joel Sternfeld. Designed by Joel Sternfeld, Gerhard Steidl, Bernard Fischer, Paloma Tarrío Alves. Published by Steidl.

China, once accounting for almost a third of those exports, has effectively disappeared as a market because of increasingly restrictive censorship, Steidl says, while tariffs have eroded margins in the US. Losing almost half of his export business, he argues, placed severe pressure on the company.

Few people have observed both the strengths and weaknesses of the Steidl operation more closely than Manfred Heiting. A collector, editor and historian of photography, Heiting has collaborated with Steidl on more than 20 books over nearly 30 years and, he says, he has helped Steidl financially in the past to keep projects moving.

His admiration is unmistakable, but his assessment is equally blunt. "He is not a businessman," Heiting tells The Art Journal. "He is an incredible craftsman."

For Heiting, those two qualities are inseparable. Steidl's genius – as well as his failings – lies in maintaining control over every aspect of bookmaking. Editorial meetings, colour correction, proofing, printing and binding all happened within the same complex, often with artists spending days or weeks working directly beside the presses. "There isn't another publisher like him," Heiting says. "He is the last publisher-printer."

The mythology surrounding Steidl, Heiting insists, is real. The guest house next door to the press exists because photographers might be needed at 2am while sheets are still coming off the machines. Communal lunches keep everyone together. Steidl himself opens the doors in the early morning and empties the bins at the end of the evening. Nothing is beneath him because everything, in his mind, contributes to making a better book.

That same perfectionism, however, made his business model difficult to sustain. Steidl found it almost impossible to say no to projects or artists, according to Heiting, and he remained deeply involved in every stage of production, even as new commitments stretched his time to the limit. “He was promising things he couldn’t deliver,” Heiting says.

Eden by Robert Adams. Published by Steidl.

“He did too many books,” says Heiting. “He did too many books by Robert Frank. It’s not only The Americans, but all the other books.” There were more than 35 of them over the years. The Art Journal spoke to a number of industry insiders who wished to remain anonymous, one of whom suggested that Steidl was both “servant and patron” to his artists, “publishing projects because he believed in them rather than because they had a viable market”.

Another suggested that, while he is a great printer, it doesn’t necessarily make him a great publisher. Without maintaining the necessary discipline of most commercial publishers, he instead handed artists a “blank cheque” to do whatever they wanted. “The publishing programme may simply have grown too large.” There were enormous catalogues, long publication delays, “too many Juergen Teller books” and “no obvious commercial discipline over print runs”.

“Perhaps his publishing ambitions exceeded market demand,” says another. “The photobook market has fundamentally shrunk, yet Steidl appears to have continued operating largely as before. And at 75 years old, why would he fundamentally change the way he'd always worked?”

There is reason to be hopeful, says Heiting. "People say he's insolvent. That's wrong. He's illiquid." The distinction, he argues, is important. The problem is not that Steidl lacks assets or work. Rather, a business built around expensive presses, ambitious publishing and long production cycles can quickly face severe cash flow issues. Heiting says that House of Manus – a Swiss company owned by a member of a family of master printers – is one of the leading candidates to invest, although Steidl will probably require more than one backer.

Chic, no? by Juergen Teller. Created by Juergen Teller and Anthony Vaccarello. Designed by Juergen Teller and Dovile Drizyte. Published by Steidl.

For Stiedl, that shared respect for the craft of printing – and an apparent willingness to preserve the Göttingen operation intact – makes Manus AG a more natural custodian than a purely financial investor. ‘Together we've developed a concept for how the publishing house could continue into the future,’ Steidl says in his interview with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. ‘Those negotiations have become particularly intensive over the past year. Naturally we're talking about a great deal of money, and unfortunately the economic climate has become considerably worse during that time.’

Steidl hopes to continue as artistic and technical director. It is difficult to imagine him doing anything else, even if his reign ends in downfall. He has been called ‘the Gutenberg of the 21st century’ – in reference to the 14th century German craftsman and inventor of the movable-type printing press. Heiting says: “I always reminded Gerhard, as a joke, that Gutenberg went bankrupt.”

In an opinion piece published in Profifoto, a German photography magazine, Heiting writes that the community that has benefitted from Steidl’s savant-like devotion to quality bookmaking must now step in. ‘It is not enough to simply look upon the crisis with concern, praise Steidl's virtuosity and then return to business as usual,’ he writes. ‘Those who have profited from this cultural ecosystem for decades also bear responsibility for its continued existence.'

'You can't just harvest.’