zug press is an artist collective that also operates as a studio focused on independent publishing founded by Zhu Gaocanyue and Zuya Yang and based in Brooklyn, NY, Providence, RI and Hong Kong.

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Upcoming Events 

April 10, 2026 | Providence
✾ 𝙏𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙡 𝙄𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙚 1: 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚
Photography as Engagement



May 7-10, 2026 | Los Angeles
✾ Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair



Past Events

March 21, 2026 | Boston
✾ Multiple Formats Art Book Fair


March 7, 2026 | New York
✾ Tidal Issue 1: Shoreline Book Launch



December 13-15, 2025 | New York
✾ Press Play, Pioneer Works



November 14-16, 2025 | Seoul, Korea
✾ Unlimited Edition 17 - Seoul Art Book Fair 2025



October 11, 2025 | New York
✾ New York Queer Zine Fair



October 2-5, 2025 | New York
✾ ICP Photo Book Fest 2025



April 26-27, 2025 | New York
✾ Other Islands Book Fair (Pratt)



April 5, 2025
✾ Unbound Art Book Fair (RISD) | Rhode Island



Feb 21—23, 2025

 ✾ Jersey Art Book Fair 2025 | New Jersey



February 1-2, 2025
 ✾ Land to Sea, Lunar New Year Market | New York



December 19, 2024
 ✾ The International Center of Photography, Free Third Thursday x Late Night ICP Holiday Market, at Chinatown Basketball Club’s table | New York



December 7–8, 2024

✾ Pioneer Works, Press Play | New York



October 19, 2024
✾ The International Center of Photography (ICP), Nifty Fifty, at Chinatown Basketball Club’s table | New York



October 19–20, 2024

 ✾ 9th Singapore International Photography Festival, Photo Market | New York



October 13, 2024
 ✾ CBC 3x3 Autumn Classic Tournament Mini Market | New York







Tidal Issue 1: Shoreline


 Women, Photography, Asia and Beyond

Tidal Project engages in supporting women artists working across photography, moving image, performance, installation, and other experimental approaches across Asia and beyond. Beginning with a publishing series, Tidal flows into artist monographs and extends to collective, curatorial, and discursive practices.

The first issue of Tidal, Shoreline, traces the shifting boundary between land and sea, using this imagery to explore the fluidity of histories, identities, memories and representations. By Reimagining photography as a site of resistance and care, this issue gathers artists who work with archives that drift between the weight of history and the triviality of domestic life.

ISBN: 979-8-9938566-1-2

8½ x 10½ inch
120 pages
Featuring Artists: Allie Tsubota, Ching-Wei Wang (Way), Aghigh Afkhami, Kannetha Brown, Tif Ng

Editors: Zuya Yang and Zhu Gaocanyue
Designer: Zuya Yang
Logo Design: Zoe Li
Order Tidal

Unkotting
解

 A knot is a site where energies interfere, entangle, act and come into conflict with one another. As an artist, Anqi Gu works with somatic energy, embodied emotion, material and spatial language to engage with, and unknot these entanglements. Her process releases currents -- what she describes as a ritual to unknot qi stagnation into pigment.

“Unknotting” brings together Gu’s drawings and writings, creating an intimate corner of her multidisciplinary practice. For this edition, we’ve incorporated a special form of traditional Chinese knot -- the Shuang Pan Yuan Jie (双攀缘结) -- a symbol of peace and protection. May it offer a quiet sense of safety and calm to all who hold it.

3½ x 6 inch
48 pages, bind with Shuang Pan Yuan Jie.

Artist: Anqi Gu
Design: Zuya Yang

30 copies, numbered; printed in April 2025, Brooklyn, Providence, Laser Print

Production credit: Jingwen Cao

Sugar Water (1)
糖水 (1)

The first issue of artist Sha Luo’s “Sugar Water 糖水”.

This zine series begins with mysterious and uncanny imagery, extending the dimension of Sha Luo’s photographs with tactility. Guided by deliberate observation and intuitive reaction, she captures ephemeral, mundane moments, layering them with tenderness and sensibility. Through her practice, she explores the ambiguity between reality and fantasy as well as the perception of tension and intimacy.

As she describes her works: “It’s about love -- because everything connects to it.”

All photos were taken during the artist‘s residency at Hortus Arboretum & Botanical.

5 ½ x 5 ½ inch
22 pages, with with extended gatefold and french fold. Each features a unique bead design.

Artist: Sha Luo
Design: Zuya Yang

30 copies, numbered; printed in October 2024, Brooklyn
Laser Print

Production credit: Qiuyu Wu, Yuhan Shen

Touch It : Where We Call Home - Sydney Howard

“TOUCH IT” is a project by zug press that gathers artwork around a specific theme. By transforming artwork into artist interview zines and riso/inkjet prints, zug press aims to create small, physical, tactile works that offer greater accessibility to the audience, provide another form of the original work, and give an additional way to connect with the artists.

In our first collection “Where We Call Home”, we explore the notion of home with lens- and video-based artist Sydney Howard. Together, We discussed how her family shaped her artistic practice and how art served as a healing process for her. Sydney’s work emphasized the materiality and the tactility of physical objects. We explore in this zine the dynamic between material and memory in her work. Her pieces, particularly the lace photograms, are presented on paper through risograph printing.

Sydney Howard is a visual artist from upstate New York, currently based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her multidisciplinary practice is primarily rooted in photography, video and installation and centers around themes of memory, trauma, gender and labor. She earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2024 and a BFA from Syracuse University in 2018.


5 x 7 ½ inch
28 pages, with gatefold spread

Artist: Sydney Howard
Editorial Design: Xinyuan Qu
Art Direction: zug press

150 copies, numbered; printed in August 2024, Providence
Mono-color Risograph; Laser Print

Production credit: Tam Stockton, Yuanhui Li, Yuchen Wang

Dreaming of Being A Butterfly

In the past year, I walked around the riverside near my home day by day. A mind flying away, feet touching ground, daylight becoming dreams. I find myself waking up in sweat some mornings, feeling exhausted. An entire lifetime in a dream dissipates in a second. And the records I wrote are broken.

The illusion seems alive, the reality is still touchable. I can not tell which is more meaningful.

“Once upon a time, Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, a vivid and lifelike butterfly, feeling that it was enjoying itself. He was completely unaware of being Zhuangzi. Suddenly, he woke up, and then he was undeniably Zhuangzi. He could not told whether he was Zhuangzi who had just dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi. There must be a distinction between Zhuangzi and the butterfly. This is what is called the Transformation of Things.” -- “Qiwulun,” Zhuangzi

The butterfly is me, and me is the butterfly. It flies through every breath in, every breath out.

- Zhu Gaocanyue

4⅛ x 5 inch
20 pages

Artist: Zhu Gaocanyue

30 copies, numbered; printed in April 2024, Providence.
Risograph with black ink, hardback, laser print with white ink. Accordion.


I Have Not Broken A Leg Yet

Risograph printed photography and diary of Zhu Gaocanyue

8½ x 11 inch
6 pages with extra 3 pages glued.

Artist: Zhu Gaocanyue

20 copies, numbered; printed in March 2024, Providence.
Risograph with medium blue and black, paper back, inkjet print. Stitch bound.


    

Spirit Away 神游

During the Spring Festival of 2024, we visited towns in Minhou and Changle districts of Fuzhou, Fujian Province, embarking on a two-week documentation journey. Unlike the locals,  as the outsiders, we felt detached and bewildered when we stepped into the realm of the procession. We let our feelings guide the shutter, consciously or unconsciously, capturing moments while attempting to understand the essence of this grand event. Rather than simply observing folk activities, we aimed to present our personal interpretation of local culture through images.

As creators from different backgrounds than the local ones, we attempt to document each procession we participate in from an outsider's perspective. We immerse ourselves in the deity parade, following the crowd in a detached state, moving towards the unknown. In this book, we use fragmented images to try to recreate the scenes of the deity parades as seen through the eyes of an observer.

- Ruishen Hong & Vincent Zhou

Artists: Ruishen Hong, Vincent Zhou, Cao Yi
Automatism Studio

Color Offset Photo Book

Distributed by zug press in United States and Singapore

Obscurities 使者的云

 Obscurities is a collaboration between photographer Vera Xia (Bard 21’) and poet Yeo Meng (Harvard 21’). Both were born and raised in China, and studied in the U.S., the shared transcultural experiences and poetic sensibility toward the ever-changing world induced this pocket artist book. In Obscurities, COVID-19 epidemic, cross-nation travel, identity crisis, youth culture, political disillusionment, queer bodies build a bridge between Beijing and the East Coast. Both poetry and photography are ways of opening up the imagination and emotions; the poetry in the book does not point to photography, and vice versa. In this book, you may see a parallel universe created by photography, book design, material, and words.

Artists: Vera Xia, Yao MENG, Cao Yi

Color Offset Photo Book

Distributed by zug press in United States




This Appears to Be a Tacit Agreement Between Us (NA)
这好像是我们之间的一种默契

Crafted from segments of the artist’s personal diary spanning 2022–2023, This Appears to Be a Tacit Agreement Between Us features fragmented phrases that capture a visceral transition in the artist's life. The narrative distills reflections on personal encounters, literature, and cinema, preserving the moments of daily life.

The zine is designed in a memo-like format, mirroring the intimacy and spontaneity of a personal archive, treating each fragment of notes and snapshots as a punctum of the ephemeral.

2 x 7½ inch
16 pages with gatefold spread

Artist: Zuya Yang

20 copies, numbered; printed in March 2024, Providence
Laser Print


Photo Brick (NA)

“Photo Brick” is a 7-color risograph zine collaborated by five photographers using their own cell phone daily photos. Artists selected everyday photographs and printed them using 7 riso ink colors, layering them to create unique compositions and color combinations. This zine presents a fresh and bold exploration of the significance of photography and riso printing. The artists named it “photo brick,” symbolizing the essential and foundational nature of daily photos and its thickness reminiscent of a brick.

3½ x 2½ inch
60  Pages

Artists: Zhu Gaocanyue, Zuya Yang, Natasha Du, Ethan Brossard, Grady Sumrall 
Art Direction and Design: zug press

25 copies, printed in March 2024, Providence7 colors Risograph