Chicago-based photographer Kira Crugnale founded UNCLE in 2024, an independent publisher dedicated to photography in print, launching with FORTUNE, a text-free annual featuring fifteen photographers from around the world and a sequencing-led format designed for sustained looking.
The name is a joke and a protest. “UNCLE is a tongue-in-cheek reference to giving up,” Kira Crugnale says, “born out of frustration with the endless scroll and the flattening of photography in our digital age.” To say uncle is to admit defeat, to acknowledge the thing that has worn you down. But the publication that follows is anything but defeated. It is, instead, a deliberate refusal.
FORTUNE, the debut issue of UNCLE’s annual publication, brings together fifteen photographers from around the world in a 76-page, 8.5 by 11 inch softcover, offset printed in the USA on 100lb satin text. There are no captions. There are no essays. Without text to anchor meaning, images unfold through juxtaposition alone, forming loose narratives that shift with each reading and place interpretation entirely in the hands of the viewer.
“I was desperate to create space for the types of photographs that require a bit more time,” Crugnale says, “the kinds of images that resist conforming to the algorithm.” Sequencing and pace do the work that words typically do.
The curatorial approach values resonance over uniformity, allowing a range of photographic voices to coexist without being explained or smoothed into coherence. The result is a publication that rewards attention rather than speed, built on the conviction that sustained looking is something worth preserving, and that print remains the medium best equipped to enforce it.
Alongside the annual, UNCLE collaborates with photographers on individual monographs and special projects, working through editing, sequencing and design to shape each body of work into a considered printed form.
Kira Crugnale is a Chicago-based photographer and founder of UNCLE, an independent photobook publisher dedicated to preserving photography in print.
Website: uncleprojects.com Instagram: @uncle_projects
FORTUNE, UNCLE Vol. 1, 2024. 76 pages, 8.5 × 11 inches, perfect bound. Full-colour offset printing. 100lb satin text, 110lb gloss cover. Printed in the USA.
