At 180 Maiden Lane, high above Manhattan’s Financial District in New York City, sits Library180, a nonprofit reference library founded by Nikki Igol, an image researcher and archivist, and Steven Chaiken, co-founder at SN37, a creative agency representing visual artists with whom the Library launched in partnership with. Together, they have built an extraordinary archival resource that houses more than 3,000 rare and out-of-print publications spanning art, fashion, erotica, and subculture — an archive three decades in the making. Free to visit by appointment, the library has quickly become a magnet for artists, students, and creative teams seeking inspiration in the tactile world of print.
As someone who grew up in a world without the internet, I immediately felt a deep connection to what Steven and Nikki are building. For me, inspiration once meant spending entire days in libraries and archives, leafing through magazines and books, letting myself dive into images and texts with no interruptions, no algorithms steering my gaze. Those hours were voyages: I would lose myself in stories, surrender to fantasy, and sharpen my eye in ways that felt both intuitive and profound.
That is why Library180 resonates so deeply with me. What in my generation might have felt almost ordinary — the act of sitting at a table, flipping through pages, immersing in the totality of a magazine — today has become revolutionary. In a culture of infinite digital scrolling, Library180 reclaims the slowness, the materiality, the collaborative spirit of print. It reminds us that research can be an experience, not just a transaction of data.
I truly admire and praise this initiative, and I strongly encourage our PhotoVogue community of creators in New York to experience it firsthand. Library180 is not simply an archive, but a space where imagination is reawakened — where the tactile act of turning a page becomes once again a radical gesture of discovery.
To understand more about the vision behind Library180, I spoke with co-founder Steven Chaiken, who shared how the project was born, why it matters now, and what it offers to a new generation of image-makers.
Here is our conversation.
Q. What inspired you and Nikki to transform a personal archive into Library180?
We’re flooded with an endless stream of content every day — image after image — and in many ways it’s created a vacuum for inspiration.
When Nikki and I started, the process was different. Image research meant digging through archives, paging through new and old issues of magazines, experiencing stories in context. That act of discovery sparked ideas: a new way to tell a story, a perspective on how an image could shape your eye or reframe a product.
We saw an opportunity to bring that process back to the community — to reintroduce image research as an active resource, not passive consumption.
When Nikki first brought up this idea, I connected to it immediately. Her practice, her profession, and the extraordinary archive she’s built made her the natural steward of this vision.
Q Why 180 Maiden Lane, what made that location feel right for the project?
From the beginning, it was important to us that the library’s home feel inspiring in its own right — a space where people could come to explore, learn, and dream. 180 Maiden Lane was the very first location we visited, and we connected to it immediately.
The light, the scale, the views — everything felt right. Even as a construction site, we could already see how the space would come to life.
Q What role do you think print still plays in today’s digital and AI-driven culture
Print is our constant anchor — it endures — hand-to-hand, in an archive, on a shelf — it’s revisited again and again. It lives on. You see the fingerprints, the folds, the post-it tabs. In contrast to the ephemerality of digital, that permanence remains powerful and inspirational. It’s an experience you can’t replicate digitally. — at the Library, that contrast in the experience of print is everything.
Q How is flipping through magazines in an archive different from finding inspiration online?
It refines your eye, as Nikki says. You discover what truly pulls you in: something catches your attention, leads you to another image, another story, another publication. You become the arbiter of your journey, letting inspiration and instinct guide you in real time.
And you’re experiencing these stories in their full original form — the result of hundreds of hours of blood, sweat, and craft from the people who made them.
Publishing, magazine-making, is one of the most collaborative mediums: writers, editors, photographers, designers, art directors — each incredible in their own role — coming together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Experiencing print in this context allows you to draw from that totality of a collaborative vision — in a way that digital fragments never can.
Q How do you decide what belongs in the archive?
Nikki — no one better ! Guided by Nikki’s eye, the archive holds material you simply can’t find online. The archive began with her personal collection, built over 30 years, and now holds around 3,000 publications spanning from pop to postmodern. It continues to grow through donations — we’re a 501(c)(3) — As it grows, we’ll rotate publications in and out, ensuring that each visit to the Library offers a new experience.
Q Why was it important to make Library180 free but by appointment?
We built L180 to be open, accessible, and built around the idea of active engagement with an archive.
By-appointment makes the experience more intentional. It allows us to manage demand — which has been overwhelming (we’re fully booked into 2026) — and it ensures Nikki can be present with each visitor, helping to guide them if needed. Appointments are booked by the hour, but once you’re in, you can stay as long as you like.
Q How do you imagine photographers and visual artists using it as a resource?
When we launched, it was a guess — we believed it could be an incredible resource for the community. Seeing artists, students, and groups in the space has made it real. The energy is immediate.
When teams from magazines, brands, or agencies visit, watching them draw inspiration from the archive and exchange ideas in real time is thrilling. It proves the model—and it’s deeply rewarding.
Our hope is that it continues to fuel ideation and inspiration — generating ideas and perspectives that we’ll see reflected back out in the world.
Q The “smut room” is already a talking point. Why was it important to preserve that side of magazine culture?
The smut room — another stroke of genius from Nikki. When we first saw the space, there was a back area we weren’t sure what to do with. Nikki had always wanted to create a backroom concept with part of her archive, and the smut room was born.
It’s a bit of a misnomer — it’s not really “smut” — but the name stuck. A huge part of Nikki’s collection sits on the erotic fringes of fashion, art, and pop culture: publications that pushed the boundaries of image-making. Not hardcore, but an exploration of sexuality, form, provocation. And the images are incredible — issues of Viva with Anna Wintour as fashion editor before Vogue, a twelve-page Jean-Paul Goude spread, and so much more.
You definitely won’t find these online — we’re even cautious about posting them on Instagram. Preserving them here keeps that edge of culture alive, visible, and accessible.
What do you hope people feel when they first walk into Library180?
More than anything, we want people to feel inspired — to leave with ideas they didn’t walk in with, and to bring them back into the world.
Library180 is a reminder that the act of research can itself be an art form — one rooted in patience, attention, and curiosity. In a cultural moment where images are consumed and discarded at lightning speed, Steven and Nikki invite us to slow down, to touch, to notice, to think. What at first glance could be mistaken for nostalgia is in fact radically forward-looking: a call to remember that creativity flourishes not in the noise of infinite content, but in the intimacy of true discovery.
What makes Library180 even more special is the incredible knowledge and refined taste for fashion images and magazines that transpires from the collection itself. This is not just an archive of printed matter, but a living testimony to decades of visual culture, where each title, each issue, each page reflects a discerning eye and a deep love for the craft of image-making.
For me, walking into Library180 feels like stepping into a space where time expands, where inspiration is allowed to unfold without urgency. For those who, like me, grew up with the ritual of print, it feels like coming home; for a younger generation, it may feel like a revelation. Either way, it is an extraordinary gift to New York’s creative community — and one I cannot recommend strongly enough to our PhotoVogue artists and beyond.
