The Decisive Moment with Martine Assouline

0:00Alex Assouline:We step into the world of luxury publishing with Martine Assouline, the co-founder of Assouline, whose volumes have redefined the art of the coffee table book. Since founding Assouline in 1994 with her husband Prosper, she has built a leading luxury brand publishing over 2 ,000 titles that span travel, art, hospitality, fashion, design, and more. Her editorial vision includes the acclaimed travel series known for vibrant, colorful covers created by her that celebrate the most sought-after destinations. Under her creative direction, Asseline has become synonymous with craftsmanship, transforming books into cultural touchstones that grace interiors around the globe.

0:42Alex Assouline:Martine, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a beautiful afternoon here at our New York City headquarters and I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. Bonjour. So, Martine, you come from different backgrounds, lived in different parts of the world. How has this shaped your eye in storytelling? I think it's the time that I put in doing what I love. And I think that I can express that that came at the beginning. I instinctively and I learn through different very important books that I've done, through the eye of photographers, through the authors with whom I made books, sometimes with joy, sometimes with more difficulty, but always, always learning in what I wanted to do, which was to use the image to tell a story, I think.

1:51Alex Assouline:Because you founded the brand 32 years ago now with Prosper, your husband, and you really saw a gap in the publishing industry, right? So you had the need to fill it with these beautiful titles. What was the force that you saw and you wanted to go after? We loved images first. We loved photography. We loved to discover. We loved beauty. Prosper was completely in the world of magazines because he did a lot of magazines. And I was following that with much interest. I was in the world of communication, of fashion and beauty, and I was confronted in doing images for the press, for the people, but not with a sense of storytelling.

2:51And what we loved with Prosper was to discover old books.

2:57Alex Assouline:You really transmitted that love of beauty and culture to both your sons. And we really have to thank you for that. I want to go back a bit on the travel series. So this series is known for vibrant covers, very colorful, that you personally create. You hand draw the symbols even on the cover. Can you talk to us a bit about the creative process of the design for this? Okay, first of all, I have to say that those collections, those kind of books are done very far from the touristic books because they try to fundamentally give to the reader the sense of a place, the DNA of the place, the spirit, the soul.

3:49And that it's a very big work because it's a structure without structure. And it's a storytelling visually that takes the hand of the reader to making by sequences and by all the work to understand the place to want to discover or not. But to spend a beautiful moment like that, it was...

4:17Alex Assouline:We can see that. Yeah, so for me it was first to find colors. After it was to try to find a title which means something. Okay, and Ibiza, Bohemia was really easy to find. Other are more difficult, but this one was, you know, Ibiza is Bohemia. and the people who go to Ibiza love Ibiza because of that. And the drawing came along. I cannot say why because it's I hear music and I try something and I like it. You listen to music while you create. Yeah. And that inspires you. Yeah. I love that you listen to music while creating a book, creating the layout and really setting that scene and picture to get immersed into it.

5:17Alex Assouline:What type of music? It's different per book? Do you have specific playlists that you create beforehand? How does that work? What's your process? I try to choose music to be in the mood of something. So a book, for example, I'm working now on a book on a champion. I cannot say the name because we are doing it. I saw the images and I said, okay, I'm going to choose some of the images that impact me very, very strongly, put them together. And then I spent the weekend trying to start some layout. I put shaft, for example, because it was something, you know, very strong, going fast and putting me in the mood of what is the movement, what is the strength of the mind of the champion.

6:13That was obvious. Okay, so another time it's something more, let's say romantic or something more exotic. It depends, but it's always obvious because I know a lot of music. It's not only my time of being a teenager that I knew everything by heart. I always try to follow what's happening, but even music from films, sometimes it puts you, you know, makes you travel, makes you dream. That is the idea.

6:55Alex Assouline:It helps guiding you in a sort of way. Exactly. Well said. The travel series is a big part of what Asseline does, but it's definitely not everything what Absurden does, right? So you released around 100 books just last year, fantastic stories that goes from heritage and anniversaries of hotels, of big luxury brands, even DNAs of countries. For you, what do you decide deserves to become an Absurden book? It's so instinctive that it's difficult to say, but I think it's, first, it's about beauty. Second, it's really about sharing something which is interesting and trying to tell it visually. I love the text of the authors that I find, that we find.

7:54But it's like the text is there and the image by themselves, they have to, you know, to tell the story. And that is all the book, I think. Now for the Thames, it's all about beauty and style, I think. So it can be everything. It can be everything. Because you have to, you want to discover, you know, what men have done and have, you know, expressed. And some are expression more interesting than others. And that is where you have to look for and to share with people who can understand that. So it's about fashion, yes, travel, yes. But all that, I want to tell it like a film, doing a film, like to compose music, you know.

8:50You have the page, like the photos, the material, like I say, being, you know, illustrations or photos or whatever. it's like the notes of something is going to be a good song or a good symphony or whatever.

9:08Alex Assouline:I really like your story about your decisive moments and with Cartier Bresson's book, right? But where were you when you found this? Because you mentioned you were at Prosper's apartment but were you not living together at the time? It was the beginning of our story, okay? of a romance, say. And so I was in the apartment. I remember it was at the end of the morning and there was a good light coming here. And his apartment was interesting because the books were not in libraries. There were like piles here or there, you know, and they were part of the decor of his place, which was very Bohemian.

9:57And it was a 19th century, extraordinary painting on the books. Everything was like that. I loved that first look. And as he was doing things, I picked up the book, The Decisive Moment, because I was attracted by the cover. And I was sitting on the floor, and I started to see the book. and so on. It kept me.

10:30Alex Assouline:And history made itself that moment. This segment of the Culture Lounge podcast is called Decisive Moments. And that actually comes from a story from you in the past, right? Can you walk us through your decisive moments? Realizing creating books was really your calling. Okay. I think that first of all, I have to say that when I was director of communication at Rochas years, years ago, one day I was with a friend, Beatrice, having a coffee, and it seems that I told her, I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be publisher. At that time, it was years before I decided to do a publisher. And I don't remember that.

11:23She told me that not a long time ago. So let's jump now. The day that I was at Prosper's house and I discovered I opened this book on the decisive moment. And I came in the first and the second and third pages and I was completely driven by this book and I was, you know, taken by this book. the images, the way they flow, the paper, the fonts, everything, and even the cover. I was, you know, completely in a surprising, in a discovering. And maybe it was for me the moment, unconsciously, that I said I want to do that. Because it was for me the neck plus ultra, I don't know how to say that in English, but of a book.

12:21Alex Assouline:Can you tell us more about this book? Yes, it's about this photographer. He's one of the most important photographers in the world. He was a reportage photographer, but it was a reportage with an eye of an artist. So he was doing all, you know, the world, and at the time, many changes. And he was doing, like, portraits of moments of hunger, or a moment of sadness or a moment of revolts, revolutions. And he was doing that as a painter. He was doing that with the strength and beauty of the image. And each image was something. It was incredible. And the book is called The Decisive Moment? Yeah. And the photographer?

13:18It's Cartier-Bresson.

13:21Alex Assouline:Thank you. So from this, you're at the office every day working on so many new projects. Is there one that you especially look forward to? Yes, but I will not be able to do it. Tell me more. I tell you more. I've always been very happy to be free on what I do. and I think that we are in a society with changing and that you have to be careful with every word of what you say because it can be misunderstood it can be taken and changed and that it's making me more difficult to be free and I would love to do a book about humanity. And because it's something that is very important for me, I read a lot of books about that, extraordinary books that I discover, even from the 20s or the 30s or today.

14:37And I would love to put all that together and to do something as well visually and in words about humanity, but I think more and more that it's going to be difficult. For the reason I said. So if I'm going to wait for the world to be again more cool and open mind, to be able to redo what I really like to do.

15:17Alex Assouline:Thank you for sharing. It was great to have you and to have this amazing discussion. Merci, maman. Mais de rien, c 'était un bon moment. Merci à toi.

15:39You