2020. First containment. Jonk, French photographer, is working on two books in parallel, each representing several years of upstream work. At the end of confinement, they are ready. At that time, he had already published five books with four publishers. As everything has always gone well, he offers them first. In vain. He prospects more broadly. No answers, or they are negative.
One of these two books is Naturalia II, with a beautiful preface by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The first volume was released in March 2018 and the sequel was due three years later. The summer of 2020 is coming to an end, so there is little time left to make this project a reality. Convinced of the quality of this book, he decided to self-publish it.
The second book is Post-Winter: an illustrated post-apocalyptic novel. Combining photography and fiction, Jonk thinks this project is the most successful of all. In the world of books, it is also a first of its kind. He presented it to many publishing houses, adapting his presentation to the criteria of each: text only, text and a few photos, summary, etc. Despite this work, negative responses followed one another: publishers of fiction do not make images, publishers of images do not make fiction, and a world crisis having passed through there, none were inclined to publish a UFO.
The book projects for the following years being numerous, he came to an obvious conclusion: “we are never better served than by ourselves”. He will therefore also self-publish this second project. And why stop there? He might as well give a beautiful setting to this new adventure!
Jonk Editions was born!
Jonk therefore created his publishing house to publish his own projects. Once the machine is launched, he realizes that it would be a shame not to also publish artists whose work he likes.
In 2023, for the release of the book The Lost World, Jonk Editions becomes Editions Tempus Fugit.