2023 sees Dewi Lewis Publishing celebrate 30 years as an independent publisher. Founded in 1994, it is a partnership owned and run by husband and wife, Dewi Lewis and Caroline Warhurst.
Best known as a photobook publisher the company has also published award winning fiction with titles shortlisted and longlisted for the Booker Prize. It has also ventured into Sports publishing with titles that have included the highly successful biography of José Mourinho, Made in Portugal.
Its photography list has an international reputation and has included books by leading British and international photographers such as Laia Abril, William Klein, Martin Parr, Simon Norfolk, Fay Godwin, Tom Wood, Sergio Larrain, Frank Horvat, John Blakemore, Paolo Pelegrin, Simon Roberts and Bruce Gilden. The ambition of the company is to bring to the attention of a wider public, accessible but challenging contemporary photography by both established and lesser known practitioners. It publishes up to 20 new titles each year and its books are distributed worldwide. It was a founding member of The European Publishers Award for Photography, which ran from 1994 to 2016. In 2014 Dewi Lewis Publishing received the PHotoEspana’s prize for Outstanding Publishing House of the Year and in 2018 the company won both the Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Photobook of The Year Award and the Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Prize.
Caroline Warhurst has been involved in the company for most of its 30 year history. Her father and grandfather, both known as Bill Warhurst, were, for many decades, press photographers with The Times, London, with her grandfather being the Times photographer who was present at the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Caroline began working in photography at Manchester Studies, where in addition to her role as a researcher she also programmed a photographic gallery at Manchester Polytechnic. She later became a key member of The Documentary Photography Archive where she was involved in the commissioning of several contemporary photographers including Martin Parr, Clement Cooper and John Darwell.
Before establishing the imprint, Dewi Lewis was the founding Director of Cornerhouse (now known as HOME), one of the major UK Centres for Contemporary Visual Arts and Film, based in Manchester. In 1987 he established Cornerhouse Publications which achieved recognition internationally for its ambitious and imaginative publishing programme and was a winner of the Sunday Times Award for Small Publisher of the Year. Many of the titles published by Dewi Lewis Publishing since 1994 have been shortlisted for a range of international prizes and several have won awards.
Dewi Lewis is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and in 2009 he received the inaugural Royal Photographic Society Award for Outstanding Services to Photography. He has also been awarded the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing.
