Traditional newsprint and ink in both tabloid and broadsheet formats provide a tactile and immersive experience, connecting us to a long history of analogue communication - the moment where you sit down and take time to enjoy a physical object, and learn something new. The curatorial context, background and history of the artists is explored fully online, leaving the publications as a purely visual experience.
The aim is to take in the ethos and philosophy of each artist as directly as possible, through the work itself. Each publication is designed as a bespoke format in conjunction with the artists, responding to their original materials, concepts and processes.
Ethos.ink publications are produced in the UK with a historical newspaper press that dates back to 1878, by an expert team of printers dedicated to the highest quality of reproduction. The format allows for accessibly priced publications available to the widest possible audience; a nimble and enjoyable alternative to weighty catalogues.
Most of our launch in conjunction with major public museum or gallery exhibitions, and are dedicated to the work of a single artist.
Kate Stevens career spans more than thirty years across the fields of photography and contemporary art in London and Los Angeles, with strong ties to New York. Most recently she directed Michael Kenna – Japan / A Love Story (2024–2025), a two-year international touring exhibition presented by Nikkei, Financial Times and Peter Fetterman Gallery, which concluded its tour at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Kate directed and produced the 100-print exhibition and managed all curatorial, logistical and institutional elements, evolving it from a sponsored activation into a museum-standard cultural initiative marking the tenth anniversary of the Nikkei–FT partnership.
In 2018 she founded Ethos Fine Arts, and ethos.ink, a publishing platform dedicated to producing accessible yet finely crafted print editions with artists using photography as part of their practice. Printed on a historic British press dating from 1878, the newsprint format offers a tactile and immersive experience, with contextual essays and captions hosted online. Each title is designed in dialogue with the artist and released to coincide with major museum or gallery exhibitions.
Projects include:
Big Bambú: This Thing Called Life' Museum of Fine Arts Houston (2018);
William Klein: Photographique, for Photographisme: William Klein, Gérard Ifert, Wojciech Zamecznik (Centre Pompidou Paris 2017/18; Museum für Gestaltung Zürich 2019);
Saul Leiter: In Search of Beauty, accompanying the 2018 exhibition at Foto Colectania, Barcelona.
From 2017 to 2019 Kate worked with the Victoria and Albert Museum as an independent Editorial and Research Assistant in the Photographs section of the Word & Image Department. Supporting Senior Curators Martin Barnes and Marta Weiss, she contributed research and editorial assistance for the first four titles in The V&A Photography Library, a series of accessible volumes on key themes, works and individuals in photography, drawing on the V&A’s world-leading collection, including holdings from the Royal Photographic Society: 'Trees in Photography', 'The Car in Photography', 'Camera-less Photography', and 'Making It Up: Photographic Fictions'
From 2007 to 2018 Stevens served as Director of HackelBury Fine Art, London, curating single-artist, group and thematic exhibitions, editing and producing publications, and leading the gallery’s participation in international art fairs across Europe, the US and Asia. She developed long-term relationships with artists, collectors and institutions, and in 2014 founded the gallery’s publishing series imprint — a series of artist monographs and limited editions including:
Ian McKeever: Against Photography – Early Works 1975–1990 (2014);
William Klein: Black & Light – Early Abstracts 1952–2015 (2015);
Garry Fabian Miller: Bliss (2016);
Garry Fabian Miller: Seeing Believing (2017).
Earlier in her career, Stevens was Gallery Director at Peter Fetterman Gallery, Los Angeles (2000–2003), and Gallery Manager at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London (1996–2000).
Across these roles she worked with twentieth-century masters including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Arnold Newman, Elliott Erwitt, Willy Ronis, Marc Riboud, William Klein and Saul Leiter, and with contemporary artists Ian McKeever, Garry Fabian Miller and Doug & Mike Starn.
Kate collaborated extensively with William Klein and his Paris studio, editing and producing Black & Light (2015) from the artist’s 1952 maquette and leading research into his early paintings and photograms, later celebrated in retrospectives at Tate Modern (2012), FOAM Amsterdam (2013) C/O Berlin (2017), Espacio Fundación Telefónica Madrid (2019), La Pedrera - Casa Milà, Barcelona (2020) and more.
Originally trained as an artist, specialising in historical photographic processes — albumen, salt, gum-bichromate, cyanotype and platinum prints — Stevens’ curatorial interests centre on the photograph as a three-dimensional object and the dialogues between photography, painting and sculpture. Her work with galleries and museums is shaped by a spirit of generous collaboration across teams and departments, and by long-term relationships with artists, collectors and patrons. Each project reflects a commitment to education, appreciation and connoisseurship, grounded in the belief that an artist’s philosophy, as well as the work itself, is best encountered through a long and enjoyable path of discovery.
