About The Waverly Press

Some archives remain in boxes and drawers for decades. The people and cultures that produced them move on, and the work is left behind—not because it lacks significance, but because no one with the right combination of knowledge, patience, and commitment has come along to bring it forward. That is what The Waverly Press is for.

The Waverly Press publishes limited-edition books and prints drawn from underrecognized archives at the intersections of pop culture, the counterculture, and the avant-garde. Each title begins with a body of work that deserves to be seen. Our role is to preserve, contextualize, and present that work for future generations to study and enjoy.

Waverly Press publications are held in the permanent collections of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, the Andy Warhol Museum Archives, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library & Archives, the Bob Dylan Center, and Stanford University’s Bowes Art & Architecture Library.

Dagon James, Founder & Publisher

Dagon James grew up surrounded by music, art, and publishing. His grandfather, Ronald Killette—better known as Buck Trail—wrote the 1960s hit song “Girl Watcher.” His father, Crickett, was a singer-songwriter and a fixture in Greenwich Village clubs and coffeehouses during the mid-1960s, while his mother was a songwriter who wrote commercial jingles for radio and television and taught him to play guitar. Culture was not abstract in the James household; it was central to his upbringing.

During the 1990s, James worked as an artist’s assistant by day and a session musician by night. He attended the Art Students League in New York, where he studied fine-art printmaking with artist and master printer Michael Pellettieri. There he developed an understanding that the physical production of an image—its scale, paper, ink, and method of reproduction—is inseparable from the work itself.

In 2003, James founded Lid, an independent black-and-white magazine devoted to rarely seen and previously unpublished bodies of work in art, fashion, and music. Published in 17 issues between 2004 and 2014, Lid was built on the belief that significant material from twentieth-century culture remained overlooked, inaccessible, or inadequately presented.

Beginning in 2013, James collaborated with London-based Reel Art Press as an editor and art director, producing books on Steve McQueen, Woodstock, Billy Name, Bruce Springsteen, Brigid Berlin, Michael Zagaris, and others. These projects brought his editorial approach to a wider audience: rigorous archival research, distinctive design, and a commitment to allowing primary material to speak without being overwhelmed by commentary.

Alongside his publishing work, James has worked across fashion, design, and exhibition production. As a creative consultant and designer for Marc Jacobs, he contributed to the label’s Blondie T-shirt and has developed branding and marketing for designers, institutions, and publishers in New York, London, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh. Some of his past design work can be viewed here.

As a curator, he has organized photography exhibitions for Billy Name (New York, 2014) and Michael Zagaris (New York, 2016), both of which remain the largest exhibitions either artist has received to date. He also oversaw the creative, exhibition, and marketing design for two major San Francisco shows: Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition (2016) and Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show (2017).

Over nearly three decades, James has collaborated with artists, photographers, musicians, designers, and estates including Gerard Malanga, Baron Wolman, Billy Name, Brigid Berlin, Michael Zagaris, Vincent Fremont, John Waters, Donovan, Klaus Voormann, Diane di Prima, Michael Stipe, Mick Rock, Marc Jacobs, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Storm Thorgerson, Jimmy Page, Ross Halfin, Olivia Harrison and the George Harrison Estate, Adam Cooper and the Michael Cooper Estate, Quentin Crisp, and Daido Moriyama.

James also manages the estate of Billy Name, the artist best known as Andy Warhol’s 1960s Silver Factory era photographer and creative collaborator.