In a bustling Thursday night preview of the International Center of Photography’s (ICP) annual Photobook Fest, held at the institution’s Lower Manhattan location through Sunday, October 5, a few booths seemed to capture and quell the anxieties of the present political moment.Among stacks of books of unconventional dimensions brought by 70 publishers, filled with photographs or image-related literature, it was the booths that brought art off the page and unabashedly into the political conversation that most enticed visitors to flip through.Spanning two open floors, I heard Spanish spoken more openly at the Photobook Fest than at any other fair I’ve been to this season.On the second floor, I found Queens-based, Peruvian-American artist Nicole Motta attracting a crowd of attendees, who riffled through a selection of community family photographs. Motta said she organized her exhibition at the fair, Sin Poder No Hay Paraíso (Without Power There is No Paradise), in just seven days.Nicole Motta at the Photobook FestNicole Motta invited viewers to engage with community members’ photos, including her childhood images.Motta curated a selection of images by 12 New York City artists, highlighting love and resistance, and printed them on white T-shirts, which fest-goers shuffled through as we spoke. She saw the exhibition as a way to reclaim power through images under threats from the Trump administration. The shirts were selling for $120, all of it going to mutual aid and immigration causes, according to Motta.“We’re trying to highlight immigration and working families,” Motta said. “Because I was seeing all of this scary imagery on social media, I realized we just lack so much community.”Motta noticed that participants weren’t on their phones when they came to interact with her tactile exhibition. “There is something really beautiful about this, coming together and seeing that there are real people behind the works that we’re making and also really having the conversations with the people here,” she reflected.Martha Naranjo Sandoval’s contact sheetsDownstairs, Brooklyn-based photographer Martha Naranjo Sandoval, whose press Matarile Ediciones represents immigrant photographers, stood under a banner that read “No human is illegal.” One small photo chronicled birds in Cuba, another was a sensual documentation of hair, one series chronicled queer motherhood, and Naranjo Sandoval’s small, matchbox-sized book featured the artist’s film contact sheets.“People tend to forget the humanity of immigrants,” Naranjo Sandoval said, explaining the banner text, whose phrase is also scrawled on Matarile Ediciones packaging.Anthony Hamboussi at his booth for his press L Nour EditionsUpstairs, the Egyptian, New York City-based photographer Anthony Hamboussi represented his press L Nour Editions, which he named after his daughter. In 2019, Hamboussi curated a show titled Our Land, reacting to the Brooklyn Museum’s controversial show This Place, which many criticized for “art washing” the Israeli occupation of the Palestine. He brought along his own photography books, including a collection surveying NYC’s industrial waterways.Hamboussi, whose grandfather was Palestinian, also brought a book, “Through Pictures and Posters 1967–1986” (2025), featuring a collection of posters from Palestinian resistance groups. Recently, he said, people have approached him in sympathy about Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, but he emphasized that his poster series is meant to draw attention to the long history of Israeli occupation.Elijah Gowin and his daughter (right)Not far away, photographer Elijah Gowin and his daughter manned the table for Tin Roof Press, started by Gowin in 1998. He described photo presses as a way to make photography more “democratic,” in contrast to gallery-priced works. Gowin’s press prints the work of Japanese-American photographer Osamu James Nakagawa, who sought in 2022 to photograph every Japanese incarceration camp established in 1942. This year, Gowin printed the photographer’s work in newspaper tabloid format, selling them for $20 each.“This project is about news and current events,” Gowin said. “When I saw on the news the dialogue about who is a real American, I said, ‘This is a great time for this project to be brought into a tabloid format.’”The VIP preview crowded quickly.Fair-goers look through Motta’s T-shirts.The festival spanned two floors of the ICP’s lower Manhattan building.