Making photobooks: Advice and insights from Trolley

We’ve been talking to London publishers about the joys and challenges of making photobooks. Here, Hannah Watson – Director of Trolley Books – discusses publishing books on motherhood, civil rights and London’s first ever AIDS ward

Trolley Books was founded by Gigi Giannuzzi in 2001. It quickly earned a reputation for publishing beautiful publications about challenging subjects – from Jon Lee Anderson and Thomas Dworzak’s Taliban (a series of portraits of Taliban soldiers) to Dierdre O’Callaghan’s Hide That Can – a moving portrait of a Camden hostel for homeless and alcoholic men.

Giannuzzi was considered something of a maverick: he became famous for pushing his book proposals around Frankfurt Book Fair in a supermarket shopping trolley (a fact that inspired the company’s name) and would invest in projects that other publishers might be hesitant to take on.

Hannah Watson joined Trolley in 2005 and ran the business with Gianuzzi until he died in 2013 (he was aged just 49, and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer). She now heads up Trolley and Soho gallery TJ Boulting and has continued his legacy of publishing thought-provoking content from a diverse group of photographers and photojournalists.