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The 6th edition of “Volumes Zurich”, the annual fair of the independent publishers dedicated to publishing art books and zines, was concluded in Zurich, recently. This Fair has been attended by more than 80 publishers from Switzerland and abroad, most of them were artists and designers who have their own publishing houses.
Switzerland is undoubtedly one of the first countries in the word to allow independent publishers, after many scholars and artists from central Europe came to Basel (a city located at the North of Switzerland) at the beginning of the modern era to print their works while the Catholic Church considered such matter offensive to the Christian religion or even violating the teachings of the Church.
In recent years, a number of visual artists, including painters, art directors and photographers, began to establish their own publishing houses, whereas printing books is considered as an art in itself. As a result, dozens of successful publishing houses were launched, including “Patrick Frey” publishing house, which was founded by the reputed critic and artist Patrick Frey in 1986. Nowadays, it is a renowned international brand, with about 300 diverse publications.
This Fair provided the opportunity to the public to acquire many exclusive books, mostly limited or not available publications, which are hard to find in bookshops. The Fair, also, attracted many publishing and translation agencies, whose representatives were seeking to purchase the copyrights of publishing and translating books, particularly, to be distributed in other countries outside Europe – in the United States and East Asia, many of them managed to get good deals.
