Urs Lehni (Zurich) invited to Plana – International Publications Festival (Sâo Paulo), followed by a research trip to Ceara (Brazil)

While in Switzerland, founder and curator of the Plana Festival Bia Bittencourt visited a number of design and publishing studios and met with Urs Lehni, one of the first independent publishers in Zurich. He is the founder of Rollo press, a publishing venture revolving around an old screen printing press from the Japanese company Riso, which he purchased in 2007. Rollo Press aims to produce printed matter with friends and accomplices in a way that includes all steps of the process: from concept to design, on to printing, binding and distribution.

Bia Bittencourt invited Urs Lehni to the 2018 edition of Plana Festival so he could share his professional experience and interest in traditional and fundamental impressions. The invitation was extended with an immersive trip to Ceara, where Urs Lehni could visit the last publishers of traditional studios cordel literature – popular  Brazilian printed booklets containing folk novels, poems and songs – and fotopintura – an almost extinct technique of painted portraits.

The trip resulted in the creation of the publication «Cordel and Photo-Painting in a Journey to the Sertao in Northeast Brazil», written by Bia Bittencourt and illustrated with photographs made by Bia and Urs, which is available for download in the blue box next to this text.