Right off High and Main Street in Medford Square, Palm Press sits in a Moderne-style building accented by intricate stone molding. The self-described photographic atelier, owned by Gus Kayafas, provides a wide range of image-based services, from darkroom and digital printing to photo scanning and framing.
On February 15, 2025, Palm Press officially launched a new arm of its business: a photography bookstore, becoming the only one in the Greater Boston area.
With an inventory of over 5,000 of the used books that Kayafas has acquired over the last fifty years, along with a regularly expanding collection of new publications, Palm Press Bookstore promises to be a new hub for photography education.
Dating back to the 1960s, Kayafas forged his way into the art world under the tutelage of Harold Eugene Edgerton, famously known for patenting strobe technology and creating images like Milk Drop Coronet and Shooting the Apple, now a household name in most Photography 101 courses. Through his working relationship with Edgerton—and drawing on his own background in physics and mechanical engineering—Kayafas experimented with practically every photo printing process and built a deep well of photographic knowledge that ultimately prepared him to build MassArt’s photography program from the bottom up.
After several years of exponential programmatic growth spearheaded by Kayafas, he left academia to start Palm Press in 1976, printing portfolios for photography powerhouses like Edgerton, Rosalind Fox Solomon, and Jack Lueders-Booth for respected entities such as the New York Times archive and National Geographic. Along the way, Kayafas built an extensive photography book collection to complement the atelier’s offerings.
Studio manager Ross Kiah is Kayafas’s protégé and the brain behind the store’s new venture. Kiah graduated from MassArt in 2019 when he began helping Kayafas on a part-time basis with framing projects.
In a recent conversation with Kiah and Kayafas, Kiah shared: “This was Gus’s library. We had boxes and boxes of books. We still do. I said, ‘Gus, we need to make space. We need to sell some of these books. We have this storefront and it’s on a main street. We should have some place that people can walk into.’”
Beyond serving as a photography-focused library for the Greater Boston community, Palm Press will also offer educational workshops for the public, artist talks, and technical demonstrations.
“Ross and I have often said that books are how you learn about photographs,” Kayafas notes. “Twenty years ago, you learned through galleries, or going to the MoMA.”
“Books are sort of a democratic way to look at a whole body of work,” Kiah remarks, “especially now with a lot of galleries closing, books have become even more important. The great part about the books is looking at something that maybe you didn’t think you were going to like, and you actually love it. Or the other way around—you thought you were going to love this book that’s a hundred dollars and you say, ‘Maybe I don’t like that that much,’ and then you find something else.”
Palm Press’s business model uniquely positions the organization to meet several needs of Boston’s visual arts community. Whether you want to print your portfolio, process your film, learn about platinum printing, or peruse the extensive photo library, there is ample opportunity.
“There was a void for a place to gather and look at photographs, books, and be around other people who are interested in the same thing,” Kiah shares. “When I was a student, I wished something like this existed, especially a place that was a lab as well. I see Palm Press as a place where people can drop off some film, have it processed, scanned, pick some images, then have those printed. While all that’s happening, you might look at some books and maybe pick one up. I really want it to be a place where people feel like they can hang out for a while and not have to spend money.”
Already the storefront has been met with a positive reception, with over a hundred visitors leafing through Palm Press’s impressive inventory at its grand opening. Patrons of all ages and levels of photography experience were in attendance—some parked themselves around the store’s community table in conversation, while others thumbed through the pictorial cornucopia displayed across the bookshelves. Community partners, like local brewery Deep Cuts, even donated a few kegs of beer to kick off the celebration.
Those that step through Palm Press’s doors are guaranteed to immerse themselves in an amalgamated image-based world of photography history and modernity. With a warm greeting from Kiah and a memoir-worthy account of industry experiences from Kayafas, visitors can expect to experience a neighborly third space where community members of all experience levels can expand their photography knowledge and forge relationships with peers.
Palm Press is located at 19 High St, Medford MA 02155 and is open Wednesday–Friday from 10am–6pm and Saturday from 11am–4pm.
