Chris Boot started working in photography in 1984, for the activist Photo Co-op in South London (now Photofusion), where the first book he edited and produced was Bodies of Experience, Stories about Living with HIV/AIDS (Photo Co-op/Camerawork, 1989). Working for Magnum since 1990, his roles included as Director of their London, and then New York offices, before he focused on making photobooks, as Editorial Director, Photography, at Phaidon Press. Books conceived and commissioned by Boot at Phaidon include Different by Stuart Hall and Mark Sealy, and Boring Postcards (1999) and The PhotoBook – A History by Martin Parr (2004). Boot also authored Magnum Stories (2004) for Phaidon.
In 2002 Boot started his own publishing house, Chris Boot Ltd, editing and publishing fifty titles over the following decade, including photobooks by Keith Arnatt, John Davies, Luc Delahaye, Phyllis Galembo, Stephen Gill, Joy Gregory, Sunil Gupta, Jacqueline Hassink, Tim Hetherington, James Mollison, Martin Parr, Ingrid Pollard, Simon Roberts, Mikhael Subotzky and Larry Towell. Awards won by Boot’s books include two ICP Infinity Awards, and a Lucie Award for Publisher of the Year, for Infidel (2010) by Tim Hetherington.
Between 2011 and 2021, Boot served as Executive Director of Aperture, New York. During the period, Aperture magazine relaunched, with noted issues on social justice themes including Queer, Vision and Justice and Prison Nation. 150 books published during Boot’s time at Aperture included The New York Times Magazine Photographs by Kathy Ryan (2011), Petrochemical America by Richard Misrach (2012), Hail the Dark Lioness by Zanele Muholi (2018), Black is Beautiful by Kwame Brathwaite (2019), The New Black Vanguard by Antwaun Sargent (2019), and To Make Their Way In The World; the Enduring legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (various, including Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Carrie Mae Weems, 2020).
Chris is now based in London, working independently.
