John Paul Foster has lived, taught, and taken pictures in Japan for two decades. He is the author of four books: “Now a Geisha”, “Geisha & Maiko of Kyoto”, “One Hundred Views of Kyoto”, and “One Hundred Views of Maiko and Geiko”.

This is John’s testimonial on our work together:

“I had the pleasure of working with Raffaela twice on my book “Now a Geisha”. The first time was to select and sequence images for the book proposal (30 photos), and the second was to edit and sequence the entire book, which ended up being about 190 photos.

I had never worked with a photo editor before, so I wasn’t sure I would be happy with the results.

Fortunately, my fears were unfounded. I felt at ease with Raffaela from our first conversation on Skype. More importantly, our conversations and Raffaela’s detailed messages gave me new perspectives and ways of thinking about my images - and this was before I had even seen her edits!

This feedback was a tremendous help to me as I thought about the structure of the book.

One of the things Raffaela said that has stayed with me is that editing and sequencing photographs is a kind of alchemy. I believe this to be true, and I also believe that Raffaela Lepanto is an alchemist of the highest order.

I look forward to marveling at her magic again soon as I begin work on my next book!”