"I'll go and hold their hand with my hand by following their cursor with my cursor."   David Alpert is an artist and curator living and working in Kansas City. His curatorial work involves interaction, connection, and collaboration with others. His work is performative and driven by a desire to bring people together. The pandemic has been a unique challenge to David who is currently in the Curatorial Practice program at MICA. We talk about how he has continued to create collaborative work during the Covid shutdown. David was the finalist selection for the What is Your Reality in the Pandemic Era show created and hosted by friend of the show, Ajuan Song of the Orange Art Foundation and the finalist was awarded a spot on the Real Photo Show.   https://www.alpert.online   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.

www.charcoalbookclub.com

Photographer and educator, Harlan Bozeman and I recorded at Penumbra Foundation at the end of his residency there. Harlan is a 2024 Catchlight Global Fellow and we talk mostly about his work in Elaine, Arkansas that was recognized by Catchlight. The years of work that Harlan created and still creates in Elaine is now called “Out the E” and Harlan speaks extensively about how this town, its people, its history, and the photographs he’s made has impacted his life and his own identity. We also talk about Harlan’s family ties to the Wadmalaw Island and Gullah communities. 

https://www.harlanbozeman.com/ | https://www.catchlight.io/news/visual-storytellers-awarded-2024-catchlight-global-fellowship | https://www.catchlight.io/about-the-global-fellowship

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Harlan Bozeman is a lens-based artist whose research-driven practice has focused on confronting the erasure of Black culture and its histories, and investigating the legacies of slavery and its aftermath in the American South. His previous work explored the Gullah Sea Islands communities, specifically Wadmalaw Island where his family is from, and the narratives that serve to prolong their cultural significance.

A graduate of the University of Arkansas, Bozeman earned an MFA in Studio Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2023. Bozeman holds a BA in Journalism from DePaul University in Chicago. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, British Journal of Photography, Der Grief, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Bozeman is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Agnieszka Sosnowska | Bryan Schutmaat | FÖR

Bryan Schutmaat and Agnieszka Sosnowska join me today to talk about the process of publishing Agnieszka’s monograph, FÖR (Trespasser). Agnieszka shares her journey from Poland to Boston to Iceland, and how she considers herself a teacher and a provider before thinking of herself as a photographer. Bryan and Agnieszka detail their time together looking at the work, along with Trespasser’s co-founder Matthew Genitempo, and the book was later designed by Trespasser’s designer, Cody Haltom. We also have a wide ranging conversation about the legacy implications of publishing your work, the differences in editing color photography, and the importance of being a smaller imprint.

https://www.sosphotographs.com |||
https://www.bryanschutmaat.co |||
https://trespasser.co/shop/for

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Agnieszka Sosnowska was born in Warsaw, Poland and was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and a MFA from Boston University. She is currently an elementary school teacher. She lives on farm in East Iceland. Sosnowska has been the recipient of a number of grants, including a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship to Poland and an American Scandinavian Fellowship to Iceland. She was awarded the Hjálmar R. Bárðarson Photography Grant awarded by the National Museum of Iceland. Her series was awarded the Director’s Choice by the Center awards in 2017 and she has been in the Top 50 of Critical Mass on 3 occasions. Her work has been exhibited in the National Museum of Iceland and The Reykjavik Museum of Photography. Sosnowska's monograph, FÖR (Trespasser) was published in 2024.

Bryan Schutmaat is a photographer based in Austin, Texas whose work has been widely exhibited and published. He has won numerous awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Aperture Portfolio Prize, and an Aaron Siskind Fellowship. Bryan’s prints are held in many collections, such as Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pier 24 Photography, Rijksmuseum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He co-founded the imprint, Trespasser.

Joe and I talk about his life in photography and his long tenure teaching photography at Fordham University. His current show Being and There is now up at Aurelia Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

You can view the show at: https://www.aureliagallery.com/current-exhibition

http://www.josephlawton.com

https://www.instagram.com/joelawton_photography/

Joseph Lawton has taught photography at Fordham University for over thirty-five years, and served as the Director of the Visual Arts Department at Fordham, as well at Hunter College, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. The recipient of the Light Works and the Southeast Center for Photography grants, his work has been published in the New York Times, and in Life and Time magazines, and is included in numerous public and private collections, including Bibliothèque Nationale. Exhibitions include PS1, Canton Museum, and OK Harris Gallery. A catalogue of his photographs from the New York State Fair is available through Light Works, Syracuse University, and his recent book, Plain Sight, was published by waal-boght press.

Here are some of the recordings I made at the 2024 Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. I had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with over 20 attendees. These conversations come from our first interactions for me and the guests with each other and I did not see the work before the recordings. That meant the description of the work had to be fine tuned just as it does for a portfolio review. So what you will here is similar to a portfolio presentation. I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. One last note, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will be selected by our jury and invited to spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. One full scholarship and five partial scholarships will be awarded. Student discounts and need-based scholarships will be available to those selected who qualify.

Apply Now: https://www.chicoreview.com/2025

alexander laurent rubalcava 02:30 https://alexanderlaurent.com ||| https://www.instagram.com/alexander_laurent

Daniel Frost 14:25 https://danielfrost2.mypixieset.com ||| https://www.instagram.com/danfrost.jpg/

Katharine Kollman 19:05 https://katharinekollman.com ||| https://www.instagram.com/cassec0u/

Rashod Taylor 30:10 https://www.rashodtaylor.com ||| https://www.instagram.com/rashodtaylorphoto/

Here are the final recordings I made at the 2024 Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. I had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with over 20 attendees. These conversations come from our first interactions for me and the guests with each other and I did not see the work before the recordings. That meant the description of the work had to be fine tuned just as it does for a portfolio review. So what you will here is similar to a portfolio presentation. I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. One last note, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com ||| @chicoreview @charcoalbookclub

Dom Marker: 01:10 https://dommarker.com ||| @dommarker

John Bonenberger: 08:30 http://www.johnbonenberger.com |||

Judson Womack: 16:40 @judwomack

Justin Gibson: 25:10 @justinlgibson

Mariana Mendoza: 32:05 https://www.marianamendoza.com ||| @marianamendozam

Mike Hazard: 37:25 https://www.mikehazard.org ||| @mediamikehazard

Sarah Mei Herman: 43:35 https://www.sarahmeiherman.nl ||| @sarahmeiherman

Susan Weiss: 50:25 https://www.susanweissart.com ||| @susanweissart

Tejasvir Singh Rekhi: 56:40 https://www.tejasvir.com ||| @tejasphotos

Todd Cooper: 01:07:40 https://jasontoddcooper.com ||| @toddcooper

Daniel Power of PowerHouse Books and Yolanda Cuomo of Yolanda Cuomo Design join me for my 200th episode to talk about their famed collaborations including their latest, Larry Fink: Hands On / A Passionate Life of Looking (PowerHouse). This was a really fun and enlightening episode. It is filled with great history and great humor from two incredibly influential figures in photography who also happen to be two great friends. Daniel and Yo talk about their own histories and achievements as well as the love and dedication that went into this last book they worked on with Larry Fink before he passed.

https://powerhousebooks.com ||| https://yocuomo.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Founder and Publisher Daniel Power started powerHouse Books in 1995, and was joined by Craig Cohen in 1996. The early years had Power and Cohen tag-teaming on a few books at a time, raising the bar each season when, in 1998, powerHouse Books had its first best-seller, Women Before 10 A.M. by Véronique Vial. Power and Cohen followed up that success in 1999 with the critically-acclaimed cult monographs X-Ray, by François Nars, and Life is Paradise, by Francesco Clemente and Vincent Katz.

In Fall 2006, powerHouse Books launched The POWERHOUSE Arena, a laboratory for creative thought: exhibitions, installations, presentations, displays, viewings, performances, readings, and retail therapy—all drawing upon photography and popular culture as sources of inspiration. Located at 28 Adams Street in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, the 10,200–square foot marquis showroom and retail space is unlike any other in New York City, featuring a soaring 24-foot ceiling on the 5,000–square foot ground floor, and an equally impressive 5,000–square foot mezzanine, with over 175 feet of glass frontage, designed by esteemed architect David Howell Design. Attached by a central staircase is the Arena Skylounge, a 560 square-foot, mezzanine-level, multifunctional gallery, VIP lounge, and green room. These stunning spaces have hosted a series of landmark exhibitions and events, and are now available for private hire.

Yolanda Cuomo is an experienced art director and avid educator. As Principal of Yolanda Cuomo Design, she provides the creative vision, direction, and passion behind all of the Studio’s work. Cuomo and her team work collaboratively with their clients, which include leading publishers, museums, authors, editors, artists, and photographers, to develop memorable and meaningful cultural and commercial projects.

Cuomo’s recent projects include the design of two books with photographer Pete Souza OBAMA, An Intimate Portrait and SHADE, A Tale of Two Presidents, a seven hundred page book entitled An Anthology about Paolo Pellegrin curated by Germano Celant that accompanied an exhibition at the Maxxi Museum in Rome, Italy, a book about Bob Dylan called DYLAN BY SCHATZBERG and the book A Life In Pictures: Steve McCurry. Throughout 2013, Cuomo edited and designed a two-volume nine-hundred-page limited-edition box set, The Library of Julio Santo Domingo, which also included a special-edition iPad and private app celebrating this collection. In fall 2012, Cuomo co-authored with Norma Stevens the book New York at Night, a collection of photographs published by PowerHouse Books. In 2011, Cuomo’s studio designed the enormously successful Diane Arbus retrospective which was organized by the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and traveled internationally.

Photographer and poet, Nat Ward returns to the show to talk about three of his latest projects. Nat created his first monograph in 2020 titled Big Throat, published by Kris Graves Projects. His web collaboration with Ben Alper, A New Nothing, was published as a three volume series each one curated by three different artists, John Pilson, Dan Paz, and S*ean D. Henry-Smith, published by Sleeper Studio. And Nat's photography and poetry are included in a recently published book, Return to the Field, edited by Gabriel Kruis and Martha Tuttle and published by Wendy's Subway.

https://nat-ward.com --- https://www.krisgravesprojects.com/book/bigthroat --- https://sleeper.studio/ANN --- https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/59044 ---

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com ---

Nat Ward is a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2013 and was a resident in the Sharpe Wallentas Studio Program from 2015-16. He has exhibited internationally since 2008 with work in exhibitions presented by The Jewish Museum, Rail Curatorial Projects, and The Tel Aviv International Photography Festival. Ward’s practice takes form in books and large-scale, multi-image installations that explore the fictive potential of visual narrative sprawl. He is also the co-creator of the photographic online project space “A New Nothing.

Eric Kunsman and I talk about his work, Fake News Archive Project: A Historical Archive of the Donald J. Trump Presidency. Eric is looking for people interested in the next election, and any archive enthusiasts, to search through his screen captured collection of news headlines from the past almost four years and to highlight, through your own social media, the stories that were impactful to you but, because of the overwhelming news cycle, may now be lost to history.

Here is his description of the work: This is my approach at recording history in the tumultuous times we live in and a historical approach to looking at the Presidency of Donald J. Trump and his claim of “Fake News.” These images are to serve in a historical context and not as a political statement. This project started the day after Election Day and will continue until (TBD.)

I started by imaging only CNN due to the President’s verbiage and quickly realized I needed other major news sources as a comparative measure. The use of multiple news sources serves as a barometer and allows the viewers to view this in its historical context.

You can learn more about this work at: https://www.fakenewsarchiveproject.com Share the Fake News: UnGlued Re-Broacast News Event here: https://fb.me/e/1DTe7wR2b

Eric's Website: https://www.erickunsman.com Eric's Email: eric@erickunsman.com

Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric’s most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being.

Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as a Lecturer for the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences.

In addition to lectures, he provides workshops on topics including his artistic practice, digital printing, and digital workflow processes. He also provides industry seminars for the highly regarded Printing Applications Lab at RIT. His photographs and books are exhibited internationally and are in several collections. He currently owns Booksmart Studio, which is a fine art digital printing studio, specializing in numerous techniques and services for photographers and book artists on a collaborative basis.

Eric’s work has been exhibited in over 35 solo exhibitions at such venues as Nicolaysen Art Museum, Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and numerous university galleries. His work has also been a part of over 150 group exhibitions over the past 4 four years including exhibitions at the Center for Photography, A. Smith Gallery, SPIVA, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Spartanburg Museum of Art, Atlanta Photography Group, CEPA Gallery, Site:Brooklyn, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and many more.

Eric was named one of 10 B&W photographers to watch of 2018 by BWGallerist, B&W Best Photographers of the Year 2019 by Dodho Magazine, and won the Association of Photography (UK) Gold Award for Open Series in 2019, Finalist, Top 200 Critical Mass 2019, Top 15 Photographers for the Rust Belt Biennial. His Project Felicific Calculus was also awarded a Warhol Foundations Grant through CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Eric’s work has also been published in magazines such as; LensWork, Dodho, B&W Photography, All About Photo, Dek Unu along with online articles by Analog Forever Magazine, Catalyst: Interview, Texas Photo Society, and others. He is currently represented by HOTE Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Malamegi in San Daniele del Friuli (Udine), Italy.

Thank you everyone for listening to the show and I hope we have a healthier New Year. -Michael

(My apologies if this episode showed up twice. I had a corrupted audio file.)

Photographer Rick Schatzberg and I talk about his book, The Boys published by powerHouse Books. It's a book about mortality, vulnerability, and resilience. It reminisces about the lives of 14 men now in their 60's who all grew up as friends on Long Island, including Rick, and the project started when two of the men died within a year of each other.   https://rickschatzberg.com   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   Rick Schatzberg s a photographer living and making work in Brooklyn, New York and Norfolk, Connecticut. He received his MFA in Photography from the University of Hartford in 2018. Rick holds a degree from Columbia University in Anthropology (1978), played French horn with Cecil Taylor’s jazz ensemble in 1970s, and was a business executive and entrepreneur in the New York metropolitan area for many years. In 2015 he completed a one-year certificate program at the International Center of Photography. In the same year, his first monograph, Twenty Two North (self-published), was awarded first prize at Australia’s Ballarat Foto International Biennale. His second monograph, The Boys, was published in 2020 by powerHouse Books.

Photographer, RIT Professor, and owner of Booksmart Studio, Eric Kunsman talks about his ongoing multi-faceted and social activist project, Felicific Calculus, Technology as a Social Marker of Race, Class, & Economics in Rochester, NY. Eric discusses how the work started and was influenced by his experiences growing up in declining steel town and later, as an adult, his family faced a dire financial crisis. Eric and Michael also talk about their connection at Mercer County Community College.

https://www.erickunsman.com Bonus Content: https://youtu.be/9dZ_vpIY1gg More Vidoes about Eric’s work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWeP6Y6BGspCNvTEOh4AN4w

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Charcoal Book Club is the monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.   Begin Building your dream photobook library today at Charcoalbookclub.com 

Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric’s most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being. Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography, all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Here are some of the recordings I made in 2025 for my second year at the Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com

02:00 - Joe Reynolds https://joereynoldsphotographs.com

09:55 - Darby Routtenberg

https://www.instagram.com/jointheclubsandwich/ |||| https://www.darbyrouttenberg.com

16:20 - William Stock https://www.instagram.com/stock_/

27:30 - Shin Ono

https://www.shinono.com |||| https://www.instagram.com/shin_ono/

34:40 - Sean Stout

https://www.seanfstout.com |||| https://www.instagram.com/seanfstout/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

**Lecturer and Photographer, Tom Leininger and I talk about his shift from the world of photojournalism to the world of art education which has been a mix of full time and part time work, including being one of many voices in a large program at the University of North Texas to becoming the primary voice in a small program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. We also talk about the challenges to finding time to photograph and stay engaged in the art world, especially with a full time job or over-booked adjunct work. **

https://tomleininger.net/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCnx3yB9XXVCeCdHZXE4LSg/featured

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Tom Leininger is a photographer and educator based in Appleton, Wisconsin and teaching in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. ** ** ** He was born in California, raised in upstate New York, and educated in the Midwest.  The bulk of his professional newspaper career was spent grinding it out every day at Indiana newspapers. His current photographic interests lie within contemporary suburban life and the abstract idea of home.   **

Elinor Carucci and I talk about her book Midlife, an autobiographical exploration of life, ageing, mortality, and the challenges women face as they get older to not become invisible. We talk about the hard work and stresses involved with making personal and commercial work, raising children, and teaching. Elinor talks about her mentors, and the ways in which she has changed as an educator and how she learns from her students.   http://www.elinorcarucci.com   Born 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel, Elinor Carucci graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. In a relatively short amount of time, her work has been included in an impressive amount of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, solo shows include Edwynn Houk gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, James Hyman and Gagosian Gallery, London among others and group show include The Museum of Modern Art New York and The Photographers' Gallery, London.   Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others and her work appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Details, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews and many more publications.   She was awarded the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Young Photographer in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has published two monographs to date, Closer, Chronicle Books 2002 and Diary of a dancer, SteidlMack 2005 and MOTHER, Prestel 2013. In fall of 2019 Monacelli Press published her fourth monograph, Midlife.   Carucci teaches at the graduate program of Photography and Related Media at School of Visual Arts and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Today’s episode features a former student of Michael’s, Val Dagrain who is finding his way in the film and tv industry after leaving Trenton, New Jersey, and after years in the music business as a rapper. Val is working in New Orleans as a PA, a data manager, a camera assistant, and now coming full circle from his days with Michael, starting as an on-set photographer, the job he has been working towards. 

https://www.instagram.com/valdagrain/ Check out the YouTube Channel for bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow/videos

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at Charcoalbookclub.com 

Val Dagrain is a 2nd Camera Assistant / Data Manager on film sets in the Gulf Coastal regions. mostly in New Orleans, but also Houston, Austin & Jackson, MS. He is from Trenton, NJ and attended Mercer County Community College for a year before leaving to pursue a career in music. Val pivoted to being a film/tv as a crew member and has begun to work as an on-set photographer.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Photographer, Chrystofer Davis and I talk about the different decisions and influences in his life that lead him to photography and how he had to diverge from the family tradition of going into medicine. We also talk about the mission he is on to represent Newark, New Jersey in a way that shows the city is more than what we get reported by the media and Chrystofer previews a new book that he is working on.

https://www.chrysdavis.co https://www.instagram.com/dolo_foto https://twitter.com/Dolo_Foto/

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Chrystofer Davis is a Newark, NJ native and 11-year fine art photographer, teaching artist, & filmmaker, whose work is influenced by street/portrait photography and contemporary culture.

During the course of Chrystofer's career he has worked, collaborated, and showcased with world-renowned companies and celebrities, in addition to hosting seminars and lectures. These feats include Michelle Obama, New York Magazine, Leica Camera, Puma, Urban Outfitters, Daymond John of Shark Tank, MTV, Vogue Italia, Rutgers University, and B&H, to name a few.

Peerspace quoted him as one of “The 5 Best Fine Art Photographers in Newark”. His works are currently archived in prominent institutions such as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Newark Public Library, The Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Bronx Museum. As a teaching artist, he is currently using his expertise to facilitate workshops to show the importance of keeping film and developing alive; as well as documenting the many faces and architecture of Newark, NJ.

Part 2 of 2 of my conversations with presenters at the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit April 19-20, 2022 at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. In this episode I speak with Dr. Tara Pixley. Tara and I talk about her presentation with Daniella Zalcman on the state of photography in 2022. We discuss the report and its findings, including the under-representation of historically marginalized communities. We also talk about what is changing and what may come next to help address the findings in the report. Lastly, Tara speaks about what it's like to both be an active professional and an educator in visual journalism.

The full report and panel presentation can be found here: https://player.catchlight.io/0oyd/1/state-of-photography-cover

This episode covers the following panel:

STATE OF PHOTOGRAPHY, BEHIND THE NUMBERS: SURVIVAL IN A SHIFTING INDUSTRY

As visuals become an increasingly important part of the global media diet, economic precarity has become commonplace for many photographers in the digital age—a key finding of both the State of Photo 2022 Report and the Visual Storyteller Field Survey, which led to the creation of the Photo Bill of Rights. What is behind this disparity, and how will image makers—including those in underrepresented groups—survive? Tara Pixley—an award-winning visual journalist, professor and co-founder of Authority Collective, an organization resourcing and amplifying women/nonbinary photographers of color—discusses these issues with CatchLight Global Fellow Daniella Zalcman, an multiple grantee documentary photographer and founder of Women Photograph, an organization which confronts the gender imbalance and inequities rampant in the photo industry.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A PHOTOGRAPHER IN 2022? THIS IS THE STATE OF PHOTOGRAPHY REPORT. By Tara Pixley, Martin Smith-Rodden, David Campbell & Adrian Hadland The State of Photography represents the first international study of photographers that specifically looks to understand the experiences of imagemakers from historically marginalized communities in greater depth. You can scroll through the report below or download a PDF in the link. Made possible by funding from CatchLight and the Knight Foundation

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Tara Pixley is a visual journalist, strategic storytelling consultant and professor based in Los Angeles, with an MFA in Photography, a Ph.D. in Communication and two decades of experience as a media producer and editor for editorial, nonprofit and commercial organizations.

Tara's documentary film work has screened internationally and my award-winning writing on media has been published widely in magazines, academic journals and news media trade journals. I am a 2021 IWMF NextGen Fellow, a 2020 awardee of the World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative and was a 2016 Visiting Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism of Harvard University, researching inequities in the photojournalism industry.

Tara is co-Founder and Board Member of Authority Collective, an organization dedicated to building community and opportunity for women/nonbinary photographers of color. https://www.tarapixley.com

Nigel Baldaccino is a multi-media artist and architect based in Malta. Michael and Nigel talk about his interest in architecture and how it influences his work. Nigel also discusses how his experience with anxiety disorder affects how he interacts with the world and makes art. Michael makes a lot of references to Nigels projects in this episode so you may want to check his website while listening. Also, be sure to watch Nigel's video on the Real Photo Show YouTube channel.

https://nigelbaldacchino.com https://maltabiennale.art https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at  https://charcoalbookclub.com

BIO Nigel Baldacchino [b. 1989] is an artist and design architect based in Malta. His artistic practice extends to various media, including photography, music production, video, text, and design of physical objects / spaces.

His impetus towards taking photographs runs loose in theme, and is often fuelled instead by his own sporadic musings about the way one relates to the world around them through their presence in space and their perception of it.

Past collective photographic exhibitions include Sense of Place [BOZAR, 2012], In Transit [NRW Forum in Dusseldorf / Stadskantoor / Leewarden, 2017], Transitions [Peinture Fraîche, 2020], BLINK [Valletta Contemporary 2021] & most recently the first show from the exhibition series ‘those eyes, these eyes, they fade’ [Valletta Contemporary 2022]. The latter is a project he initiated with Benedicte Blondeau & curator Anne Immelé.

Prints of his photographs and work in video were acquired by the The Malta National-Community Art Museum in 2017 as part of their collection. His photography was also published on GUP Magazine’s first edition of ‘FRESH EYES’ (2020).

In 2019 Nigel published Soon Out of Context (Unsolicited Press) featuring instances of his own poetry presented in dialogue with found images lifted from old publications, now in the public domain. In 2021 he published his first solo music release under his experimental ambient project ‘pool night’, with Belgian label Complex Holiday, titled Everything is Still Here.

Baldacchino is currently part of the 2023 Long Term Photobook Program by Penumbra Foundation / Image Threads Collective & was recently appointed curator & lead exhibition designer for the first edition of maltabiennale.art.

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"Like shooting in black and white it really is just trying to find a way to see all these tones of gray and to not see things so stark as good and bad or life and death…"   Jesse Lenz and I talk about his first monograph, The Locusts. It is a gorgeous book that explores childhood wonder and discovery, beauty and terror, and memory and imagination, as well as the notions of what is family and home. As you will hear in our conversation, the process of making this work was part of a turning point in Jesse's life about what home means to him.   Jesse Lenz is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. As an illustrator he has created images for the most well-respected publications around the world, including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. He is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club, Charcoal Press, and the Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio.    https://www.jesselenz.com   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   Call for Entries to the fifth annual Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review and Publishing Prize are open until December 20th.

The Chico Review is typically a seven day, photography retreat at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Hosted by Charcoal Book Club to spark relationships between artists and industry professionals in an environment that fosters community and conversation. Due to uncertainty for travel and gatherings in March, the 2021 Chico Review has been restructured into a 2-week online masterclass and portfolio review.   Submit your work now for a chance to be one of 64 artists invited to participate with Sian Davey, Alejandro Cartagena, Tania Franco Klein, Ron Jude, Susan Lipper, Christian Patterson and 20 other respected photobook publishers and contemporary photography institutions. Participating artists receive ten formal reviews by speakers and reviewers over a two week period and take part in artist lectures, panel discussions, and peer reviews. At the end of the event, one grand prize winner will be announced and their project will be published and distributed as a monograph by Charcoal Book Club.    Additionally, this year, all participating attendees will have a selection of their work published and distributed in an opus catalog by Charcoal Book Club.   For more information and to apply, visit chicoreview.com

Photographer, Anastasia Samoylova joins Michael to talk about the 2023 CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit: The Change We Want to See. This year’s summit emphasizes the unique power of photography, visual journalism, and creative practices to drive social impact. Ana will be talking about her book, Floodzone published by Steidl along with photographer, Rafael Vilela. Their panel is titled Picturing New Frontiers: Environmental Storytelling. Ana and Michael talk about how Ana went from photography to Environmental Design, and back to photography and how her experiences growing up in Russian and living in Florida shapes her work and how she thinks about art and activism.

RSVP for CatchLight Summit: https://airtable.com/shrz8sfXJWVrqciWX https://www.catchlight.io/2023-visual-storytelling-summit https://www.anasamoylova.com

Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984, USSR) is a Russian born American artist who moves between observational photography and studio practice. Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. Recent exhibitions include Fundación Mapfre; C/O Berlin; Eastman Museum; Chrysler Museum of Art; The Photographer's Gallery, London; Kunst Haus Wien; HistoryMiami Museum; and Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum, Miami; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; among others. Published monographs include Image Cities (Fundación Mapfre / Hatje Cantz, 2023), Floridas (Steidl, 2022) and FloodZone (Steidl, 2019).

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

CATCHLIGHT VISUAL STORYTELLING SUMMIT 2023: THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE April 29, 2023 - https://www.catchlight.io - Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco

The non-profit media organization CatchLight will hold its 2023 Visual Storytelling Summit on the theme “The Change We Want to See.” Organized with Elizabeth Krist, curator and formerly a longtime photo editor at National Geographic, the event will feature a portfolio review in the morning, followed by presenters and topics spanning artificial intelligence imagery, reporting on environmental issues, reproductive rights, racial justice, and how local journalists are holding power accountable at a time when trust in public institutions is at an all-time low. CatchLight Global and Local Fellows—including Rafael Vilela and Harika Maddala, among others—will discuss their projects along with artists, founders, technologists, and innovative creatives working at the nexus of art, media, journalism, technology, and social impact.

This year’s theme, “The Change We Want to See,” reflects the unique power of photography, visual journalism, and creative practices to drive social impact. “Images are instrumental to how we understand our world,” says Elodie Mailliet Storm, CEO of CatchLight. “Not only do they connect people emotionally to issues, they also promote deeper understanding, build trust, and spark action. I want the Summit to be a place where the global community of visual storytellers, media, and technology leaders can gather, share ideas, and push the field forward through partnership and innovation.” Speakers will include Jonas Bendiksen, Adrian Burrell, Pamela Chen, Hany Farid, Isadora Kosofsky, Lynn Johnson, Sarahbeth Maney, Anastasia Samoylova, Ashima Yadava, Alexey Yurenev.

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I catch up with photographer and professor, Tony Chirinos about his first monograph, The Precipice published by Gnomic Book.   https://www.tonychirinos.com https://gnomicbook.com/collections/books/products/the-precipice   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   From Gnomic Book: The Precipice is the summation of nearly two decades spent working as a biomedical photographer in Miami. Chirinos threads the needle between the sometimes delicate, often brutal world of surgical intervention. The book is separated into three main bodies: surgical photographs of living subjects; vibrant typologies of exquisitely photographed tools; and the journey to the afterlife. The Precipice draws back the curtain to a world which most of us never see, where human fragility and resilience coexist in an uneasy equilibrium.   Featuring essays by Michelle Otero and Eugenie Shinkle, and a poem by Claudia Isidron, The Precipice is simultaneously lyrical and bleak, a celebration of life and an unflinching observation of what follows.

Reuben Radding | Heavenly Arms

Photographer and educator, Reuben Radding, joins me to talk about his book, Heavenly Arms (Red Hook Editions). We cover the entire process of producing this book beginning with selecting and sequencing the photos, working with a publisher, crowdsourcing funds, and finally, how the process will impact Reuben's future work.

http://www.reubenradding.com ||| https://www.redhookeditions.com/books-1/heavenly-arms

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Reuben Radding is a photographer, teacher, writer, and musician based in New York City. His photographs are made from a mix of street wandering and discovered moments from his personal life, which intentionally provoke unanswerable questions in his viewers' minds. Since 2019 he has published 14 limited edition 'zines of his photographs, including the three-volume series Corona Diary. Radding’s first book of his photographs, Heavenly Arms, was published in October 2024 by Red Hook Editions. Radding's work has been exhibited internationally in galleries, and in publications like Hamburger Eyes, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Sun, The New Republic, Downbeat and many others. Radding is on faculty at the International Center of Photography, and since 2017 has been leading his own popular series of street photography workshops from his Brooklyn studio throughout the year. Radding has also been a guest speaker at New York University, The School of Creative and Performing Arts, Marble Hill Camera Club, and others, as well as having been a guest on many podcasts and vlogs. Reuben Radding has also had a long career as a bassist and composer, performing around the world and appearing on over 100 recordings. He graduated from Goddard College with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts in 2019.

Mixed-Media Artist, Shae Detar and Michael talk about her debut monograph, Another World published by Skeleton Key Press. They take a deep dive into Shae’s process from selecting locations, inviting women to be photographed, to hand painting the final images. Shae and Michael also talk about how the book is a celebration of the female nude as well as a personal introspective look at loss and recovery from a repressive religious experience.

https://www.shaedetar.com https://shaedetar.myshopify.com/collections/all

SHAE DETAR is an award winning and widely published American artist who merges painting and photography to surrealistic effect. Her easily recognized work has been exhibited internationally and featured in many publications including Vogue Italia, Vogue NL, Marie Claire, Interview, i-D, VICE, Dazed, Grazia, The New Yorker, ELLE UK, Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Forbes, NYLON, Teen Vogue, Fast Company, and Refinery29. Another World is her first monograph.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. A monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. https://charcoalbookclub.com

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Visual Artist and educator, Lydia Panas and I have a wonderful conversation about her work including her books, Falling from Grace (self published), The Mark of Abel (Kehrer Verlag), and Sleeping Beauty (MW Editions). We talk about her use of allegorical themes as a way of pushing back against them and we talk extensively about how she works with and connects with her models and how all her work has a deep personal connection to her own epxeriences.

http://www.lydiapanas.com ||| https://www.instagram.com/lydiapanas_/ ||| https://www.facebook.com/lydia.panas |||

https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/lydia-panas-the-mark-of-abel-978-3-86828-229-0 |||
https://mweditions.com/books/lydia-panas-sleeping-beauty/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Lydia Panas is a visual artist working with photography and video. A first-generation American, she was raised between Greece and the United States. Panas’ work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. Her work is made in the fields, forests, and studio of her family farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land is the foundation of her work.

Panas’ work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her photographs are represented in public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Michener Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, the Sheldon Museum, Zendai MoMA Shanghai, among others. Her work has appeared in periodicals such as The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, French Photo, Hyperallergic, Photo District News, Popular Photography, San Francisco Chronicle, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Flavorpill, WSJ Blog, GEO Wissen, Die Volkskrant, Haaretz, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rich-Joseph and Michael Chovan-Dalton talk about how he accidentally became a photographer and his two new books, Black Diamonds pub by Fall Line Press and Little Cities pub by Little Oak Press.

See the slideshow of Rich-Joseph's work at: https://youtu.be/OcYXvfkshT8

https://facun.com

Photo Show Live is sponsored by Charcoal Book Club https://charcoalbookclub.com

Rich-Joseph Facun is a photographer of Indigenous Mexican and Filipino descent. His work aims to offer an authentic look into endangered, bygone, and fringe cultures—those transitions in time where places fade but people persist.

The exploration of place, community and cultural identity present themselves as a common denominator in both his life and photographic endeavors.

Before finding “home” in the Appalachian Foothills of southeast Ohio, Facun roamed the globe for 15 years working as a photojournalist. During that time he was sent on assignment to over a dozen countries, and for three of those years he was based in the United Arab Emirates.

His photography has been commissioned by various publications, including NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, AARP, The Associated Press, Reuters, Vox, Adweek, Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The FADER, Frank 151, Topic, The Guardian (UK), The National (UAE), Telerama (France), The Globe and Mail (Canada) and Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), among others.

Additionally, Facun’s work has been recognized by Photolucida’s Critical Mass, CNN, Juxtapoz, British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, Feature Shoot, It’s Nice That, The Image Deconstructed, The Photo Brigade, Looking At Appalachia, and Pictures of the Year International.

In 2021 his first monograph Black Diamonds was released by Fall Line Press. The work is a visual exploration of the former coal mining boom towns of SE Ohio, Appalachia. Subsequently, it was highlighted by Charcoal Book Club as their “Book-Of-The-Month.” Black Diamonds is also part of the permanent collection at the Frederick and Kazuko Harris Fine Arts Library and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s Research Library.

Presently, Facun is in the process of producing his next monograph Little Cities, slated to be released in Autumn 2022 by Little Oak Press. The work examines how both Indigenous peoples and descendants of settler colonialists inhabited and utilized the land around them.

Photo Show Live is a production of Real Photo Show. ©2022 Real Photo Show

Part 1 of 2 of my conversations with presenters at the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit April 19-20, 2022 at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. In part 1 I speak with Mabel Jiménez and Josué Rivas about their then upcoming presentation on who gets to tell the story and how the story is made. We preview the talk and also speak about their own work and experiences in the documentary storytelling world.

The summit was recorded and will be posted at https://www.catchlight.io/2022-visual-storytelling-summit

This episode covers the following panel:

Photojournalism’s Ethical Question: Who Gets to Tell a Community’s Story? With Mabel Jiménez x Felix Uribe x Yesica Prado x Josué Rivas

CatchLight Local Fellows Yesica Prado and Felix Uribe alongside CatchLight Local California Visual Desk Editor Mabel Jiménez and CatchLight Global Fellow Josué Rivas dive into the nuances of how to work ethically and collaboratively in communities, particularly those that are disproportionately impacted by crisis. Jiménez will also discuss her work as an SFAC Artist in Residence at SF’s COVID Command Center, which provided unique access to the city’s disaster service workers, COVID-19 response/prevention efforts and mutual aid during the crisis—enabling her to document a crisis, up close. The conversation will be moderated by CatchLight Global Fellow, Josué Rivas—Founder of INDÍGENA, Standing Strong Project, and Co-Founder of Indigenous Photograph.

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Mabel Jiménez (pronouns she/her) is an independent photographer and reporter based in San Francisco. Being raised in Tijuana, 15 minutes from the Mexico/U.S. border, themes of biculturalism and immigration have influenced her photographic and journalistic work. She has documented San Francisco’s Latino community since 2008 and is the former Photo Editor for El Tecolote bilingual newspaper, where she continues as a regular contributor. During her seven-year tenure in the position, she created, produced and curated a yearly group photography exhibition showcasing the newspaper’s best photojournalism. https://www.mabeljimenez.com

Josué Rivas HE (Mexica/Otomi) is a creative director, visual storyteller, and educator working at the intersection of art, journalism, and social justice. His work aims to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples, build awareness about issues affecting Native communities across Turtle Island, and be a visual messenger for those in the shadows of our society. He is a 2017 Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow, founder of the Standing Strong Project, co-founder of Natives Photograph and winner of the 2018 FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo. https://www.josuerivasfoto.com

Photographer Alanna Airitam and I have a fabulous conversation about how she left the corporate world, taught herself photography, and how it may have saved her life. We talk about Alanna's breakout work, The Golden Age, and the process by which anger, frustration, and responding to injustice inspires her to make beautiful and important imagery.   The Golden Age is showing at the Center for Creative Photography starting April 2022. Link below.   https://www.alannaairitam.com https://www.instagram.com/alannaairitam/ https://ccp.arizona.edu/events/3696-alanna-airitam-golden-age   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   Questioning generalized stereotypes and the lack of fair representation of Black people in art spaces has led photographer Alanna Airitam to research critical historical omissions and how those contrived narratives represent and influence succeeding generations. Her portraits, self-portraits, and vanitas still life photography in series such as The Golden Age, Crossroads, White Privilege, Colonized Foods, Ghosts, and individual works such as Take a Look Inside and How to Make a Country ask the viewer to question the stories of history and heritage we were taught to believe.   Alanna was named on the 2021 Silver List as one of 47 exciting contemporary photographers to follow. She is a 2020 San Diego Art Prize winner and recipient of the 2020 Michael Reichmann Project Grant Award. Her photographs have been exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Art Miami with Catherine Edelman, San Diego Art Institute, Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, and Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has been acquired for the Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s collection and three prints from The Golden Age were recently added to the Center for Creative Photography’s permanent collection. Airitam has been elected Board Member and led workshops and mentorships for Oakwood Arts and a Board Member for Medium Photo she was the Juror of the 2021 Black Photographers Scholarship Program for Medium Photo, and a Curator/Juror for the MFA Photography Reviews. Born in Queens, New York, Airitam now resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Linda Troeller joins me to talk about her book, SEX. DEATH. TRANSCENDENCE., published by TBW. Linda has a storied life in photography from her early self-portraiture, to her book, The Erotic Lives of Women, and now to Sex. Death. Transcendence., Linda has been exploring the female gaze since the early 1970’s. We talk about her ideas on self-portraiture, healing waters, and her amazing time at the Chelsea Hotel, all of which have led to their own publications.

https://sites.google.com/view/lindatroeller/sex-death-transcendence?authuser=0 https://tbwbooks.com/collections/single-titles/products/sex-death-transcendence

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Linda Troeller’s art projects focus on self-portraits, women's and social issues. She made the Chelsea Hotel her base for 20 years, curating an exhibition for the 125thAnniversary, “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of Photographers,” and publishing a monograph, “Chelsea Hotel Atmosphere – An Artist’s Memoir,” 2007 and a new book, “Living in the Chelsea Hotel, Schiffer Publishing, 2015 that won the International Photo Award, 2016. She had a major exhibition at Leica Gallery, Los Angeles, Ilon Art Gallery, Harlem, 2018 and Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC and Museum of.Sex, NYC.

Aperture published her Pictures of the Year award winning images in “Healing Waters,” exhibited at their Burden Gallery, NYC and powerhouse Books published her next book, ‘Spa Journeys,” 2004. Her book, “Erotic Lives of Women,” Scalo, Zurich, 1998 was reviewed as one of the “most gutsy and imaginative books of the decade,” NYTimes. The exhibition opened at Fotohof Gallery, Salzburg traveling to Berlin and Weimar, Germany. Her second book on women, Orgasm, Daylight, 2014 was introduced at the Filter Photography Festival and is in major libraries from Kinsey to Harvard to National Museum of Women in the Arts.’

She received a New Jersey Arts Grant and the Woman of Achievement Award from Douglass College, in 1991 for her TB-AIDS DIARY, a series of photo-collages in Color Polaroid that helped prevent discriminative stamping of HIV in passports. It was exhibited at Fotofest, Houston and over fifty galleries and covered in the Asbury Park Press and Trenton Times to European Photography Magazine. The set of 19 prints was recently acquired by the Norton Museum of Art permanent collection, West Palm Beach, Florida.

She photographed three Fashion Catalogues for the Apolda Museum, Germany and exhibited “Apolda Fashion, 2005” at Centro Colombo Gallery, Medellin in 2006. She returned to Colombia to teach self-portraiture to women in poverty in 2010 for the University of Antioquia. She has an ongoing series of self-portraits, “Self-Reflection.”

She has lectured at School of Visual Arts, NYU, Parsons, Yale, Salzburg Summer Art Academy, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Ryerson University, Toronto and was a professor of photography at Stockton College of New Jersey, Indiana University, and Bournemouth College, England. She has a MFA, School of Art, and MS, Newhouse School, Syracuse University and BS from Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University. She was an assistant at the 1974 Ansel Adams Workshops for Ralph Gibson and in 1987 for Annie Leibovitz and David Hockney. Her photographs are in corporate and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Library of Congress and is in archives such as Special Collections Bird Library, Syracuse University. She graduated from Toms River High School which named her to their Hall of Fame, and resides in New York City and New Jersey. 

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

No show today. Traveling with the family.

MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship awardee Wendy Ewald virtually visits with Michael Chovan-Dalton to talk about Wendy’s books, The Devil is Leaving His Cave, recently published by MACK and the expanded reissue of Portraits and Dreams, also published by MACK. We talk about Wendy’s interest in collaboration and how you have to let go of some of your expectations.

Slideshow: https://youtu.be/h3roT2U5aWc?t=1175

https://wendyewald.com https://www.mackbooks.us/products/the-devil-is-leaving-his-cave-br-wendy-ewald?_pos=2&_sid=1e30512e0&_ss=r https://www.mackbooks.us/products/portraits-and-dreams-wendy-ewald?_pos=3&_sid=1e30512e0&_ss=r

Photo Show Live is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club https://www.charcoalbookclub.com

About Wendy Ewald: For over forty years I have collaborated on photography projects with children, families, women, workers and teachers. I’ve worked in the United States, Labrador, Colombia, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Mexico and Tanzania. My projects start as documentary investigations and move on to probe questions of identity and cultural differences.

In my work with children and women I encourage them to use cameras to look at their own lives, their families and their communities, and to make images of their fantasies and dreams. While making my own photographs in the communities, I ask my collaborators to alter my images by drawing or writing on them, challenging the concept of who actually makes the image – who is the photographer, who is the subject, who is the observer and who is the observed. My work questions the conventional definition of individual authorship and casts into doubt an artist’s intentions, power and identity.

I have also created many projects with students from elementary school through college. The projects are designed as interventions as well as artistic projects. Among them are American Alphabets, a series of photo installations made with Arabic, Spanish and English speakers; On Reading, a video installation with learning disabled students, and Who Am I in This Picture, a public art installation with faculty, staff and students at Amherst College.

With each situation, I use different processes and materials to shift my point of view and engage with my subjects. My work may be understood as a kind of conceptual art focused on expanding the role of esthetic discourse in pedagogy and creating a new concept of imagery that challenges the viewer to see beneath the surface of relationships.

Today's guest is Gulnara Samoilova and we talk about her book, Women Street Photographers published by Prestel Publishing. An amazing collection of work that showcases 100 contemporary women street photographers working around the world. We also talk about how the aftermath of photographing 9/11and editing work for the Associated Press after 9/11 caused Gulnara to think about what she wanted or needed to photograph to bring some joy back into photography for her.    Gulnara Samoilova, who hails from the republic of Bashkortostan, Russia, faced blatant sexism in the photo industry before arriving in the United States in 1992, where she worked at the Associated Press before launching her own commercial photo studio. As an Associated Press photojournalist, she received national and international awards for her photographs from 9/11, including first prize in the World Press Photo competition. After the 2016 presidential election triggered flashbacks to her formative years, Samoilova recognized the importance of creating a platform and community to support women. She launched Women Street Photographers to provide opportunities to showcase the work of established and emerging artists through exhibitions, residencies, online features, and now — the book.    Women Street Photographers edited by Gulnara Samoilova © Prestel Verlag, Munich · London · New York, 2020.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667163/women-street-photographers-by-gulnara-samoilova-melissa-breyer/   https://www.womenstreetphotographers.com   https://www.gulnara.com   https://www.instagram.com/womenstreetphotographers/    This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Jake Benzinger (Wych Elm) and Tabitha Barnard join me to officially launch my series on publishers and authors where I explore the relationship that builds between publishers, editors, designers, and photographers and to hopefully provide some insight as to how photobooks are being made. Tabitha’s book, Dead Trees Speak to Me, was Jake’s first photo book that was not his own and Jake and Tabitha will share how they came to know each other and why Jake wanted to publish Tabitha’s work. We will talk about the editing and sequencing of the book as well as some of the more traditional questions about how they both got to where they are.

https://wychelm.press  |||    https://jakebenzinger.com   |||      https://www.tabithabarnard.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Tabitha Barnard was born in Freedom, New Hampshire in 1994. She is a photographer who grew up in rural Maine with three sisters. Growing up in a very Christian female-dominated family has had a huge influence on her work. Barnard works primarily in digital color photography exploring themes of femininity and religion. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art from Maine College of Art in the Spring of 2016 and a Master of Fine Art from Massachusetts College of Art in the Spring of 2021.  She has worked in both commercial studio settings, as a shooting assistant, and as the media technician for the photo department at the Maine College of Art. She currently works in Portland Maine, teaching at the Maine College of Art and the University of Southern Maine. 

Jake Benzinger (he/him) is a photographer, book artist, and writer based in Rockland, Maine; he received his BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. His work has been shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Haute Photographie Rotterdam, Center for Fine Art Photography, Glasgow Gallery of Photography, 82Parris, Panopticon Gallery, RIT City Space Gallery, and more. He has been featured by numerous platforms including GUP Magazine, Lensculture, Float Magazine, Lenscratch, Transference Magazine, and Fraction Magazine. His publications are held in collections at the National Gallery of Art, School of Visual Arts, SMFA at Tufts, and Griffin Museum of Photography, and his monograph, Like Dust Settling in a Dim-Lit Room (Or Starless Forest), was shortlisted for the 2023 Lucie Photobook Prize.

Photographer and Pediatrician, Greg Gulbransen joins me to talk about his book, Say Less, published by Gost Books.  Greg and I talk about how facing tragedy in his personal life and being a children’s doctor all lead to this exploration of gun violence. Greg is a unique guest in that he is both  a full-time working doctor and had great success with fashion photography. He approaches his medical work and his documentary photo work with similar ideals and practice and we talk a good deal about that. Just a small trigger warning, the life-altering event Greg describes from his own tragedy and the story and descriptions of Malik, the paralyzed former gang leader from Greg’s book, are intense and have some graphic detail. 

https://www.gulbransenphoto.com | https://www.instagram.com/greggulbransenpeds/ | https://gostbooks.com/products/say-less

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Over the course of three years, Greg Gulbransen photographed Malik, a set leader of the violent street gang, the Crips. Malik was shot and paralysed in 2018 by the bullet from a rival gang, and as a result his world now centres around his small Bronx apartment in New York, where he is cared for by his family and fellow gang members. Gulbransen, a practicing doctor, had been photographing in the Bronx during his spare time and had got to know some of the local kids. He began to notice a lot of young men in wheelchairs with spinal injuries and was professionally curious. He was told they had all been shot. He wanted to speak to someone in a wheelchair and was introduced to Malik through a fellow Crip. 

Greg started out shooting fashion but transitioned over to documenting the lives of unique individuals with interesting stories. Greg loves meeting new people and tries to preserve their legacy with photography. Greg also enjoys the solace of cold weather wildlife.    His images have been published in the New York Times, Daily Mail, ELLE, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Northwell Health, The Weather Channel, Spirit and Flesh, Grazia and Pandora to name a few.  Some of Greg’s documentary work has been featured on the A & E Network’s History Channel.

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Here are some of the recordings I made at the 2024 Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. I had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with over 20 attendees. These conversations come from our first interactions for me and the guests with each other and I did not see the work before the recordings. That meant the description of the work had to be fine tuned just as it does for a portfolio review. So what you will here is similar to a portfolio presentation. I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. One last note, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will be selected by our jury and invited to spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. One full scholarship and five partial scholarships will be awarded. Student discounts and need-based scholarships will be available to those selected who qualify.

Apply Now: https://www.chicoreview.com/2025

Kent Andreasen 01:13 https://www.kentandreasen.com |||
https://www.instagram.com/kentandreasen/

Andrew D. McClees 10:22 https://andrewmcclees.com |||
https://www.instagram.com/andrewdmcclees/

Zillah Bowes 15:32 https://linktr.ee/zillahbowes ||| https://www.instagram.com/zillahbowes/

Jack McLain 27:01 https://thepenandthelens.smugmug.com

"When the green comes in, the grass comes back first, and then the smaller shrubs. It's always this sort of hopeful space…I always feel that nature reminds us that after trauma there's regeneration."

Deborah Jack is a multimedia artist. Her current work deals with trans-cultural existence, memory, the effects of colonialism and mythology through re-memory. Deborah was born in the Netherlands and grew up in the Netherlands/Saint Martin. She went to grad school at SUNY Buffalo, NY and currently resides in Jersey City where she coordinates the photography program at New Jersey City University. We talk about how growing up on a small island with colonial heritage and landscapes altered by the patterns of water and severe weather influence her work and we talk a little about teaching in the time of corona and the limits of how much we can prepare for it.

You can see the work that we discuss at Deborah's website: https://www.deborahjack.com

I visited Mark Alice Durant at his home in Maryland to talk about his book, Summer of the White Fox, and After, published by Saint Lucy Books. We talk about how Mark came to photography and why he started his own publishing imprint. Summer of the White Fox, and After is a memoir and a monograph, with a touch of history and philosophy weaved into the essay. It is a recounting of grief and loss that enveloped Mark and his family through distinct events and all during the pandemic. It is also a story about experiencing love and care in ways that were, perhaps, unforseeable before all of the tragedies struck Mark’s family.

https://www.saintlucybooks.com/shop/p/summer-of-the-white-fox-and-after | https://www.instagram.com/saint_lucy_books/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Mark Alice Durant is a photographer whose photographs, installations, and performances have been presented internationally including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Artist’s Space in New York. In 1991, he co-founded the performance duo ‘men of the world’ that for 10 years performed on the streets of Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities. He has written extensively on the nexus of photography, performance and cultural phenomena with essays appearing in such journals as Art in America, Art on Paper, ArtUS, Art Journal, Afterimage, Dear Dave, Exposure, New Art Examiner, and PLUK. Durant is the editor of the online journal Saint Lucy which is devoted to writing about photography, contemporary art and the lovely people of Baltimore. He has contributed to numerous catalogs, monographs and anthologies including The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire, The Gothic, Jimmie Durham and Marco Breuer: Early Recordings. He is author of McDermott and McGough: A History of Photography, Robert Heinecken: A Material History and co-author of Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing and Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costume and Masquerade. In 2005, Durant co-curated and co-authored Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal. Durant was co-curator of Some Assembly Required: Collage Culture in Post-War America in 2002 and in 2008, he curated Notes on Monumentality at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He has served on the faculties of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA, the University of New Mexico, Syracuse University, and the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Center for Creative Photography, the Illinois Arts Council, and the MacDowell Colony. Professor Durant received his B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art and M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute.

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In this episode of Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton, Michael and photographer, Vanessa Winship, have a wonderful conversation about two bodies of work she made in the United States, She Dances on Jackson, published by MACK, and her most recent book, SNOW, published by Deadbeat Club. Vanessa talks about how both of these books began, the former as a proposal and the latter as an assignment. Vanessa also describes her experience of traveling around the United States and witnessing both beauty and turmoil.

https://www.vanessawinship.com https://deadbeatclubpress.com/products/vanessa-winship-snow

Real Photo Show is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, an amazing way to add to your photo book collection. https://charcoalbookclub.com

Since 2005 Vanessa Winship is a member of Agence VU. After leaving Britain in 1998 she worked in long term projects in the Balkans and countries surrounding the Black Sea along with her husband, photographer George Georgiou. She is the author and subject of six photographic monographs, Schwarzes Meer (Mareverlag GmbH 2007), Sweet Nothings (Foto8/Images En Manœuvres 2008), she dances on Jackson (MACK/HCB 2013), Vanessa Winship (Fundación MAPFRE 2014), And Time Folds (MACK/Barbican 2018) Sète#19 (Le Bec en L’air / Images Singulières 2019) and a box set, Seeing the Light of Day (B-Sides Box Sets 2020)

She is the recipient of a number of awards, including two World Press Photo prizes, 1998 and 2008, Sony photographer of the year, 2008, and the Henri Cartier Bresson foundation prize, 2011.

She has exhibited at numerous festivals and institutions, nationally and internationally including the Barbican Art gallery in 2018, Sete, 2019, Cumbria, 2021

Her first mid-career-survey show was held at Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain, 2014.

With George Georgiou she teaches a number of photography workshops, and separately as guest speaker, reviewer, curator, editor and mentor.

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Photographer and curator, Anne Immelé and Michael have a fascinating coversation about curating shows that take into account both sight and sound. We also talk about Anne’s new book, Les Jardins De Riesthal or Riesthal Gardens, a series of poetic portraits of family and landscape within a community garden that Anne tended to with her family for a period of 15 years.

http://www.anneimmele.fr https://charcoalbookclub.com/collections/recent-books/products/les-jardins-de-riesthal Bonus Content: https://youtu.be/hppeViU9kaM

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club https://charcoalbookclub.com Charcoal Book Club is the monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.

Anne Immelé, Ph.D, has worked as an exhibition curator, building on theoretical, committed research, since her Master’s degree in Visual Arts at the Université Laval in Quebec, Canada (1997). She analyses the spatial installation of photography and the medium of the exhibition itself. Her curatorial research stems from a Doctorate of Arts thesis, entitled "Constellations Photographiques" submitted in 2007 at the University of Strasbourg and published by Médiapop Éditions in 2015. Anne Immelé lives and works in Mulhouse. Her photographs question our relationship to the territory in its multiple dimensions: geographical, human, social but also memorial and poetic. She is the author of several books, including WIR with the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy published by Filigrane, ou Oublie Oublie, published by Médiapop in 2021. Her photographic work is regularly exhibited. Professor at HEAR, Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin, she co-founded in 2013 the BPM – Biennale de la photographie de Mulhouse, of which she is the artistic director and curator of certain exhibitions.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Photographer, founder of Charcoal Book Club and Press, and the Chico Review, Jesse Lenz, is my guest today. We talk about his upcoming book, The Seraphim,  the second book in a series of seven that Jesse calls The Seven Seals septology. We break down what that means and how Jesse sees this life long septology as connected to and inspired by his family, his home, and his life. Jesse and I also talk a lot about the way he has setup his life to make photos, to promote the work of others through the Charcoal Book Club and Press, and to help mentor and provide growth for new generations of artists through the Chico Review.

https://www.jesselenz.com https://charcoalpress.com/shop/the-seraphim

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com   Jesse Lenz (1988, Montana) is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of The Locusts (Charcoal Press, 2020), and he is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club and the Chico Review. As an illustrator he has created images for publications including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio.

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Episode Notes

Just a quick update about shows coming in September at the JKC Gallery.

https://youtu.be/ee3QoKxI7Nw -------- This episode with Collette Fournier can only be released as a video because Collette presented her life's work with a slideshow presentation so head on over to the Photo Show Live YouTube channel to watch Collette talk about her life in photography.

Collette V. Fournier has an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College and a BSfrom RIT in Communications and Photographic Illustration. Born in Harlem,she grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, NY. She is the retired staff photographer from Rockland Community College and adjuncts in the Photography Department.

Fournier worked as a staff photographer for The Rockland Journal-News, The Bergen Record, about...time magazine, and freelanced for The New York Post. Earlier in her career she worked in the television industry.   Fournier curated several exhibitions including a multi-sited exhibition “There is a World Through Our Eyes: Perceptions and Visions of the African American Photographer” exhibited at RCC, ACOR, Arts Alliance of Haverstraw (AAH!), Rockland Center for the Arts (ROCA) and Blue Hill in 1993 in Rockland County. Fournier has had fifteen one-woman exhibitions and participated in over forty group shows. She vigorously exhibits her photography and was the recipient of the prestigious Rockland Arts Council County Executive Award.   Fournier is an active member of Kamoinge Inc., an African American photography collective since 2001, “Timeless” was published to celebrate the Collective’s 50th year (kamoinge.com). As a Soros fellow (OSI), she documented Post Hurricane Katrina. Her award-winning documentation of “A Ripple of Thunder: Black Motorcyclists in America” was recently exhibited in Photoville Fences 9th Edition. She has written a book on her 40-year journey through photography.   Fournier’s photography work is collected in Photography Collections Preservation Project (PCCP), Social Documentary Network, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Smithsonian Institute, WDC, Finkelstein Memorial Library, Women International Archive, CA. and in private collections.

Continuing with my recordings at the 2024 Chico Review, Ben Brody joins me to talk about his two books, Attention Servicemember and 300m both published by Mass Books which was started by Ben and Peter van Agtmael. We talk about Ben’s experience as an Army photographer during the American war in Iraq and why he chose to be a civilian freelance photographer during the war in Afghanistan. Ben and I talk about how Attention Servicemember and 300m are part of his self-reckonining with his role in creating propaganda. We also talk about his work with The GroundTruth Project, an organization dedicated to local journalism in under covered communities. Note: Attention Servicemember was first published by Red Hook Editions.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com -

https://www.photobrody.com - https://www.massbooks.co -

Ben Brody is an independent photographer, educator, and picture editor working on long-form projects related to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their aftermath. He is the Director of Photography for The GroundTruth Project and Report for America, and a co-founder of Mass Books.

His first book, Attention Servicemember, was shortlisted for the 2019 Aperture - Paris Photo First Book Award and is now in its second edition.

Ben holds an MFA from Hartford Art School's International Low-Residency Photography program. He resides in western Massachusetts.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Photographer and former student, Dan Bassini and Michael talk about how Dan has been cutting his own path in photography through sheer will and the use of an old plastic camera. Dan talks about his series, No Invite, a fashion/portrait zine made annually during Fashion Week in New York. Dan also shares the stories behind his current books, Cruel Summer, I Still Feel It, and we talk about an upcoming book and show. Michael and Dan also reminisce a little about his time at Mercer and some funny stories from Michael’s very early teaching days there.

https://www.danbassini.com/ https://therangefinderdiaries.com https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Dan Bassini is a photographer in the New York City area specializing in digital and analog photography. He has released ten books within the "No Invite" series, as well as three non-portraiture books: Highway Hypnosis, Cruel Summer, and I STILL FEEL IT. His work has been displayed in many solo and group shows in the New York City area.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Tim Carpenter and I met up at the 2024 Chico Review to talk about his latest book Little, published by The Ice Plant.  We talk about how Little is the last in a trilogy of Tim’s books, Local Objects and Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road, both also published by The Ice Plant. Even though Tim was on PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf in 2023 to talk about To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die, and we do not take a deep dive into that work, we do end up having an amazing philisophical discussion about photography, his work, and his style of writing in that book.

https://www.timcarpenterphotography.com |  https://www.instagram.com/timcarpenter |  https://theiceplant.cc/product/little/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Tim Carpenter is a photographer, writer, and educator who works in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of several photobooks, among them “Little” (The Ice Plant); “A month of Sundays” (TIS books); “Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road” (The Ice Plant); “Local objects” (The Ice Plant); “township” (TIS/dumbsaint); “Bement grain” (TIS/dumbsaint); “Still feel gone” (Deadbeat Club Press); “The king of the birds” (TIS books); and “A house and a tree” (TIS books). Tim received an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in 2012. He is a faculty member of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program and serves as a mentor in the Image Threads Mentorship Program. Tim’s book-length essay “To photograph is to learn how to die” was published by The Ice Plant in Fall 2022.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

"There's a small neighborhood that's called Wilbur Section…It's known for crime, gang activity, drug usage, murders, unsolved homicide, and this is where I am from and this is what formed and shaped me…I want to give something back to my community. I want people to acknowledge themselves and know that they are beautiful."

Habiyb Ali Shu'Aib is a Trenton, NJ based photographer who has been photographing life in Trenton since he was 9. His work is a mix of portraits of neighborhoods and portraits of people. The Covid shutdown and the Black Lives Matters marches and protests have impacted the Trenton landscape and Habiyb is processing his role as a black photographer whose work speaks both universally and journalistically about his home city. Habiyb has shown at Artworks, Roebling Wire Works, and the JKC Gallery in Trenton, and he has taught photography to young adults at Mercer County College and Artworks. Recently he was featured on a panel of photographers at the BH Photo Event Space for a discussion about Photojournalism in 2020.

https://beloved1photo.com/ https://www.instagram.com/beloved1___/

Writer, Curator, and Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, Allie Haeusslein, joined me at the 2024 Chico Review and we discussed how writing about and curating photography became her passion and we talk specifically about the show, Stacy Mehrfar: The Moon Belongs to Everyone at Filter Photo, to highlight Allie's approach to curating and working with artists. We also talk about how Chris McCall invited her to be the Co-Director at Pier 24, and Allie reflects on her time at the famed institution, working with Chris McCall, and on the last show, Turning the Page, before Pier 24 closes its doors in 2025. And because we were at Chico, Allie shares some advice about following up with a good portfolio review experience.

https://www.alliehaeusslein.com | https://pier24.org | Mehrfar's show - https://www.alliehaeusslein.com/exhibitions/project-one-ephnc-8h3gb

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Allie Haeusslein is the Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, the largest space dedicated to photography in North America. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Aperture, British Journal of Photography, ART21 Magazine, and Foam Magazine.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Photographer and educator, Lara Shipley talks about her book, Desire Lines, published by Overlapse. Desire Lines combines imagery and text, both contemporary and historical, as a vehicle to have a thoughtful and contemplative discussion about immigration. It looks at  our current humanitarian crisis at the southern border and views it through the larger context of human migration and shifting borders. Lara and I also talk about her current collaboration with Antone Dolezal called The Naked Truth, a story about a Victorian Spa founded by a snake oil saleseman and which eerily resembles the disinformation media world that was particularly effective during Covid.

https://www.larashipley.com https://www.overlapse.com/catalog/desire-lines/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

Lara Shipley is an American photographer. She exhibits in galleries across the United States, and her work has appeared in notable exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, GuatePhoto international photography festival in Guatemala, the Benaki Museum in Greece and a recent solo exhibition at the international photography festival Cortona on the Move, in Italy. Her work is in collection institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), and the Nelson Atkins Museum for Art (Kansas City). Lara’s photographs have appeared in publications such as Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Atlantic Monthly, Vice, and NPR. She received a MFA in photography from Arizona State University and a Bachelors of Photojournalism from the University of Missouri. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Michigan State University.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Elodie Mailliet Storm is the CEO of CatchLight. Catchlight is a nonprofit media organization that discovers and develops visual storytellers through the practices of art, journalism, and social justice. Elodie and I talk about CatchLight's new California Visual News Desk which is an evolutionary next step in their goal of collaborating with local media outlets and areas that are in need of good visual storytelling partnerships. We also talk about the history of CatchLight and some of the stories currently being shown and how you can see them.   https://www.catchlight.io   ------  This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com -------   CatchLight is pleased to announce the creation of a statewide visual news desk in California, with the support of five philanthropic organizations: the Enlight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, in partnership with PhotoWings, for a combined investment of over $2 million. The initiative directly addresses the decline of visual journalism across the United States, advances visual representation in local media, and serves critical community information needs.    CatchLight, a nonprofit media organization borrowing from the practices of art, journalism, and social justice, believes in the power of visual storytelling to foster a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of the world. It serves as a transformational force, urgently bringing resources and organizations together to support leaders in a thriving visual ecosystem. Its goal is to discover, develop, and amplify visual storytellers at all levels.    Yesica Prado and Felix Uribe- Care in the Time of Covid https://www.catchlight.io/news/care-in-the-time-of-covid   Samantha Cabrera Friend - Garfield Park https://www.catchlight.io/news/2021/9/28/btgcduvggbjsxemtcucj6l2r0q12dp https://www.propublica.org/article/disinvested-how-government-and-private-industry-let-the-main-street-of-a-black-neighborhood-crumble

Abelardo Morell joins me to talk about his storied career and incredible passion for photography and art history. We talk about Flowers for Lisa, published by Abrams Books and Tent-Camera, published by Nazraeli Press, including the inspiration and the inventiveness of these works and the work that came before and after. Abe's work has long been fundamental to my teaching practice and his love of the process and the possibilities of photography as an art form still drive him today long after retiring from 30 years of teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

https://www.abelardomorell.net

In the Company of Monet and Constable - Nov 23, 2024 – Feb 17, 2025 https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/abelardo-morell-in-the-company-of-monet-and-consta

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962.  Morell received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his MFA from The Yale University School of Art. He has received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1997 and from Lesley University in 2014. He was professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston from 1983 to 2010.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room(1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell(2005), published by Phaidon Press. The Universe Next Door(2013), published by The Art Institute of Chicago.  Tent-Camera (2018), published by Nazraeli Press. Flowers for Lisa (2018), published by Abrams Books.

His latest show, Abelardo Morell: In the Company of Monet and Constable, will be at the The Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA, on view November 23, 2024 - February 17, 202

Artist Shen Wei joins me to talk about his book, A Season Particular (TBW Books). We talk about Shen's mixing of body and flora as representative of his own cultural identity and exploration of desire and intimacy. Shen and I discuss the process of editing and making this book with Paul Schiek as well as what Shen had learned when he worked with Lesley A. Martin on his first monograph, Chinese Sentiment (Charles Lane Press). We also talk about Shen's suggested assignment in The Photographer's Playbook (Aperture) which involves self-portraiture in a hotel room.

https://shenwei.studio https://tbwbooks.com/products/a-season-particular

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com @charcoalbookclub

Shen Wei is a Chinese-American artist based in New York City. He is known for his intimate self-portraiture and contemplative images of people and nature, highlighting the understated beauty of his surroundings. He also works in painting, sculpture, and video.

Shen Wei’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of the City of New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China, La Triennale di Milano in Italy, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Aperture, ARTnews, Paris Review, ArtReview, Financial Times, and The Burlington Magazine.

Shen Wei’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, the CAFA Art Museum, and the Ringling Museum of Art, among others.

He holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Jennifer Cabral is an artist and Library Collection Photographer. Jennifer took part in a group show at the JKC Gallery, curated by me and Ryann Casey, titled The Road Home. Jennifer shared work that included the project, Mine_IRA which explored the trauma of the destruction of homeland caused by industrial mining as well as the trauma from experiencing sexual abuse. This work has continued in a trilogy of projects that we discuss on the show. This is the first episode to include a new bonus segment called, Two Photos that Changed Me, in which the guest will talk about two photos they made that affected them greatly in different ways. This bonus content is linked below at the Real Photo Show YouTube channel.

Mild trigger warning: While sexual abuse is mentioned in this episode, we do not go into any details of the abuse.

Mentioned in the show: Júlia Pontés http://www.juliapontes.com/

Bonus Content https://youtu.be/8KlWKzflCKo

This episode sponsored by Charcoal Book Club and Charcoal Editions. Charcoal favors open-ended editions and wants the essential beauty of the gelatin silver print to be accessible to collectors at all levels. Charcoal works with acclaimed printer Sergio Purtell to ensure customers of the highest possible quality photographic prints, while the purchase price reflects an equitable division of compensation between gallery, printer, and artist.

Visit Charcoal Editions at: https://www.charcoaleditions.com and use code REALPHOTOSHOW at checkout for a 10% discount until the end of the year.

Jennifer Cabral holds a BFA from two Brazilian institutions: School of Fine Arts Escola Guignard with a concentration in Photography, and a BFA in Social Communications from PUC-Minas with a concentration in Advertising. She relocated to the U.S. and attended classes at the continuing education Program at The School of Visual Arts in New York.

Cabral is curently a Library Collection Photographer documenting cultural heritage collections and manuscripts. In may 2022, she received a Master of Information degree from Rutgers University School of Communication with a concentration in Archives and Preservation. Her studies focused on potentialities brought into collections when photography and archives intertwine.

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Photographer, director, designer, and composer, Umberto Nicoletti talks about his first monograph, Asylum, published by Rizzoli New York. Umberto uses his skills as a fashion and celebrity portrait photographer to share the experiences of members of LGBTQI+ refugee community and to portray them, not as victims, but as role models who have survived acts of violence and discrimination from the countries they left and the countries from which they requested asylum.

https://www.asylum-thepr oject.com - https://www.umbertonicoletti.com - https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9788891835925 - https://youtu.be/PrpkwqC4ZmI (book trailer)

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

Born in Padua, Italy, Nicoletti graduated in the early 2000 at “I.S.I.A.” (Higher Institute for Artistic Industries, University of Urbino), and at the Fachhochschule in Augsburg (Germany). He attended the “Università dell’Immagine” (University of Image), the first course on the five senses in Milan created by Fabrizio Ferri. He began his professional career as assistant photographer and in 2005 he opened his own studio, Das Studio, which deals with photography, video, art installations, graphic design & creative direction. Umberto Nicoletti’s first photography fine-art book titled "Asylum" was released on May 16, 2023, published by Rizzoli New York.

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Erin Hoyt is the Director of Operations at Filter Photo, owns and operates a successful wedding photography studio, and is a cotemporary photography collector, and a photographer. Erin learned photography and business outside of academia through internships, work experience, and just being highly self-motivated. We talk about all of these things and about Erin settling in after her recent move to Atlanta. 

https://www.filterphoto.org https://erinhoytphotography.com https://www.instagram.com/erinhoytphotography/ https://www.instagram.com/emariehoyt/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Erin Hoyt is the Director of Operations at Filter Photo, a non-profit photography gallery and festival based in Chicago. At Filter, Erin manages an ongoing series of artist lectures, professional development workshops, and portfolio reviews. Since joining the organization in 2010, she has overseen over 90 exhibitions and 13 annual festivals. In that time, she has worked with a range of artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Tarrah Krajnak, Zora J Murff, Todd Hido, Poulomi Basu, and Rodrigo Valenzuela. Erin splits her time between Atlanta and Chicago.   

Links mentioned in this episode: https://www.mfaphotographyreviews.com https://www.chicoreview.com

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Shana Lopes, PhD, Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA, joins me to talk about how being a curator perfectly combined her love of photography and art history. We talk about working with both historical and contemporary artists and the questions that need to be answered in order to provide proper context for the work whether done posthumously or with a current artist. We mention some past, current, and upcoming show during our conversation and three of those shows are linked below.

https://www.instagram.com/lopesshana/ | https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/a-living-for-us-all/ | https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/zanele-muholi-eye-me/ | https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/constellations/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com | https://www.chicoreview.com/2025-coming-soon

Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA. Born and raised in San Francisco, she has curated or co-curated exhibitions such as: Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue, Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection, A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA, Sea Change, Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, and the upcoming 2024 SECA Art Award. Over the past fourteen years, she has gained curatorial experience at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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Julianna Foster is an artist and assistant professor and interim Program Director of Photography at the University of the Arts. We have a fantastic conversation about teaching and her latest work, Geographical Lore which looks at the changing environment through sculptural images. Geographical Lore was just included in Four Degrees: Eco-Anxiety and Climate Change Presented by Strange Fire Collective & Humble Arts Foundation. Julianna was also a guest on the JKC Gallery's Third Thursdays talks. There's a link below if you want to hear more about her work.   https://juliannafoster.com/home.html http://www.strangefirecollective.com/four-degrees-exhibition Third Thursdays with guests Cengiz Yar & Julianna Foster   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   Julianna Foster is currently an assistant professor in the Photography program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She received a BFA in Design from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2001) and an MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts (2006).   Foster has been an artist in residence at the Philadelphia Photo Art Center, finalist at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, selected as a Community Supported Artist, a project organized by Grizzly Grizzly Gallery and self-published the book, lone hunter. Her work and two interviews with photographers was featured in the publication Constructed: The Contemporary History of the Constructed Image in Photography since 1990 published by Routledge. Other selected exhibitions include, The Truth in Disguise Geste Paris, France during Paris Photo, group exhibitions at Filter Photo in Chicago and Medium Photo in San Diego (2019/2020), 2020 COCA (Center of Contemporary Artist) finalist and 2020 San Francisco Bay International Photography Awards Silver Award Winner for her project, Geographical Lore.   Other projects/publications include work in magazines Conveyor, Proof, Cleaver, Good Game, and Shots Journal for Black and White Photography. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally, in private collections across the country and Foster has collaborated with various artists on projects that include creating artist multiples, artist books and series of photographs and video.

"I was thinking about that lately…as far as black photographers in general, will it always be a counter-narrative…"

Duquann Sweeney is a photographer and a community organizer in Jersey City, NJ. He is a founder of The Royal Men Foundation which provides mentoring services, health and educational workshops, and works with the county courts to provide alternative sentencing for people accused of minor crimes. I've posted a link to The Royal Men Foundation in the show notes. Duquann and I talk about a series he is working on following a Doula and her client, an expecting mother in Jersey City. He started this work after looking into the disparity in healthcare and lower health outcomes for pregnant women of color and their babies. We also talk about his mother surviving Covid-19 and the work he makes in his neighborhood where he was born and raised.

https://www.duquannsweeney.com/ https://www.instagram.com/duquann_sweeney/ https://www.facebook.com/The-Royal-Men-Foundation-218661284952655

From June 2020, My conversation with Martin Bough on his life and work. Martin Bough 1927-2021

Photographer, co-founder of Media NINJA, and CatchLight Fellow, Rafael Vilela talks to Michael about some of his amazing visual stories from Brazil. Rafael shares the story behind Invisible Gravediggers, the forgotten workers of the pandemic, and he talks about his current work, Forest Ruins, an ongoing project that addresses the role of cities in the climate crisis from the perspective of the Guarani Mbyá Indigenous people in the city of São Paulo. Forest Ruins is what brought Rafael to the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit both as a CatchLight Fellow and recently as a panel speaker along with Anastasia Samoylova at the summit.

https://www.catchlight.io/2023-visual-storytelling-summit https://rafaelvilela.visura.co

Rafael Vilela is an independent Brazilian photographer currently reporting on climate and economic crisis in his country. He was one of the founders of Midia NINJA, an initiative that today has more than 8 million followers. His photographs are part of São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM-SP) permanent collection. In 2014 he was invited by Magnum Photos to be one of the Brazilian photographers in the OffSide Brazil project to report on the World Cup. Rafael was also nominated for World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2013, 2014 and 2015. He has collaborated on international publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, VICE, The Intercept and National Geographic. In 2020 he was selected by National Geographic's Emergency Fund for Journalists covering Covid-19 and his work with Covid Latam won the POYLatam and the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo. In 2022 Vilela was awarded the Catchlight Fellowship and the National Geographic Explorer grant.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

CATCHLIGHT VISUAL STORYTELLING SUMMIT 2023: THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE  April 29, 2023 - https://www.catchlight.io - Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco 

The non-profit media organization CatchLight will hold its 2023 Visual Storytelling Summit on the theme “The Change We Want to See.” Organized with Elizabeth Krist, curator and formerly a longtime photo editor at National Geographic, the event will feature a portfolio review in the morning, followed by presenters and topics spanning artificial intelligence imagery, reporting on environmental issues, reproductive rights, racial justice, and how local journalists are holding power accountable at a time when trust in public institutions is at an all-time low. CatchLight Global and Local Fellows—including Rafael Vilela and Harika Maddala, among others—will discuss their projects along with artists, founders, technologists, and innovative creatives working at the nexus of art, media, journalism, technology, and social impact.    This year’s theme, “The Change We Want to See,” reflects the unique power of photography, visual journalism, and creative practices to drive social impact. “Images are instrumental to how we understand our world,” says Elodie Mailliet Storm, CEO of CatchLight. “Not only do they connect people emotionally to issues, they also promote deeper understanding, build trust, and spark action. I want the Summit to be a place where the global community of visual storytellers, media, and technology leaders can gather, share ideas, and push the field forward through partnership and innovation.” 

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Here are some of the recordings I made at the 2024 Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. I had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with over 20 attendees. These conversations come from our first interactions for me and the guests with each other and I did not see the work before the recordings. That meant the description of the work had to be fine tuned just as it does for a portfolio review. So what you will here is similar to a portfolio presentation. I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. One last note, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com ||| @chicoreview @charcoalbookclub

Angie Terrell - 1:15 https://www.angieterrell.com ||| @angieterrell

Cam McLeod - 10:55 https://cammcleodphotography.com ||| @cammcleod

Bryan Birks - 23:10 https://www.bryanbirks.com ||| @bryanbirks

Barry Munger - 29:45

Dan Carew - 40:35 https://www.cheungchauwave.com/portal-features/dan-carew ||| @dan.carew

As part of an ongoing series recorded at the 2024 Chico Review, I recorded with photographer Raymond Meeks to discuss his latest book, The Inhabitants published by MACK with an extended poem by George Weld. Ray and I talk about how this work, which traces the passages of refugee crossings inside Spain and France, profoundly affected Ray's approach to making work and how he views his role as a photographer. This episode picks up where Sasha and Ray left off back in episode 51 on PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf.

http://www.raymondmeeks.com https://www.mackbooks.us/products/the-inhabitants-english-edition-br-raymond-meeks-george-weld

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Raymond Meeks (Ohio, 1963) has been recognized for his books and pictures centered on memory and place, the way in which a landscape can shape an individual and, in the abstract, how a place possesses you in its absence.  His books have been described as a field or vertical plane for examining interior co-existences, as life moves in circles and moments and events—often years apart—unravel and overlap, informing new meanings.

Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York).  His work is represented in numerous private and public collections.  He is the sixth laureate of Immersion, a French-American photography commission sponsored by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.  Exhibitions from this commission are scheduled for New York (ICP September, 2023) and Paris (Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson  September, 2024).  The Inhabitants, a book made in collaboration with writer George Weld, was published in August 2023 by MACK.

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Riley Goodman and Michael Chovan-Dalton talk about Riley’s first monograph, From Yonder Wooded Hill published by Fall Line Press.

YouTube link for artist presentation: https://youtu.be/iZTxlEnHlzU?t=1140

_From Yonder Wooded Hill _investigates what we choose to remember versus what chooses to remember us. Based in the Patapsco River Valley of Maryland and expanding to his ancestral West Virginia and North Carolina, Riley Goodman brings to life the customs and legends on which he was raised to weave a tale as old as the hills. Riley Goodman, raised in the Patapsco River Valley of Maryland, inquires folklore, American history, and humankind’s relation to the environments they inhabit in an effort to understand what endures, and how this manifests through the passage of time. Goodman juxtaposes the visual interpretation of researched, often folk-based, storytelling with archival imagery and material from his personal collections of artifact and ephemera. When combined, the work depicts a narrative that rather than noting a specific period, creates an ever-occurring understanding of history. By establishing this crafted world, Goodman invites the viewer to question tenets of authenticity, leaving the idea of ‘historical truth’ in an undisclosed middle ground.

https://www.rileycgoodman.com https://www.falllinepress.com/from-yonder-wooded-hill

Photo Show Live is sponsored by Charcoal Book Club https://charcoalbookclub.com

David De Lira (he/they) is a queer, BIPOC, lens-based artist and educator born and raised in northern Mexico. He is currently based in Schenectady & Syracuse, New York. I met David at the Biennial Homecoming show at RIT this past winter. David’s work explores their connection and relationship to a white queer community that he married into with their partner. David’s photographs of this community are often made within or accompanied by images of northern landscape that is equally new to David’s life. We talk about how David came to be where he is and how David’s family and friends informs who he is and how that is all revealed in David’s work.

https://www.deliradavid.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

David De Lira (he/they) is a queer, BIPOC, lens-based artist born in 1991 Raised in northern Mexico, De Lira currently residing in Schenectady, New York. De Lira holds a BA in Art History & Studio Art from SUNY Albany (2019) and an MFA in Art Photography at Syracuse University (2023). His undergraduate education dramatically influenced his aesthetic, formal skills, and research interests for his present work in art photography.

De Lira’s work concentrates on intimacy, desire, and love, which have been important elements of his own embodiment, along with the subjects of his photographic gaze, who are part of his chosen family--his husband, friends and lovers. 

He consciously uses elements of light, color, gesture, and pose to imbue his photographs with emotional and psychological intensity. De Lira’s work does not attempt to provide definitive answers. Rather, he invites viewers to engage with others in an intimate, meaningful way, requiring them to reflect on their own identities in the process. 

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Photographer Emma Hardy and Michael talk about her first monograph, Permissions, published by Gost. Emma talks about recognizing how inauthentic family photos seemed to her even at a very early age. This desire for authenticity when photographing her children and her life has been a driving force in her personal work as well as a guiding principle in her commercial work. 

Permissions,  is a tender document of motherhood and childhood, love and yearning, and leaving home. The images in the book are gathered and distilled from Hardy’s personal archive and span a period of 20-years. -Gost Books

http://www.emmahardy.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Emma Hardy was born in London and studied Drama and French at Bristol University. She moved to Paris for four years working in the art world before returning to London to pursue a career in acting, but found herself better suited to life behind the camera. By this time, she was married, living in rural Suffolk, and raising her family of three young children. She has photographed for British Vogue, The Telegraph Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Fader, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone amongst others. Her first solo exhibition "Exceptional Youth" was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2006 and 39 of her portaits are included in the gallery's collection. Hardy Continues her work as a portrait and documentary photographer for a wide range of publicaitons, returning to new phases of her family images whenever she can. -Gost Books

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Heather Palecek is an artist who uses historical photographic processes in experimental ways to explore our relationship with nature. She is also a high school photo teacher. We talk about her last show at the JKC Gallery and I ask her about teaching at the high school level and the importance of mentors.

https://heatherpalecek.squarespace.com   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

From Heather's Bio:

I took a darkroom photography class in high school and my life changed forever.

I can’t remember a time in which I didn’t have a camera in hand. Nowadays my cameras are a little unconventional though, as I’m obsessed with pinhole photography.

I create artwork collaboratively with Mother Nature.

My concepts revolve around relationships; those between humans and nature, humans amongst themselves, and our relationship with ourselves. My favorite mediums and processes are light and chemistry based - pinhole photography, cyanotypes, alternative processes, mixed media. Currently, I’m exploring ways in which I can create artwork with Mother Nature and not just about her.

When not creating the artwork you see on this webpage you’ll probably find me:

Hiking (as much and as often as I can), going to concerts, spending time with friends, laying in my hammock (I always have one in my car in case the occasion arises), checking out art exhibits, reading non-fiction adventure books, antique shopping, hanging out with my cat, spending every free weekend at my off-the-grid cabin in the Adirondacks, Oh! and I have two jobs: 1. teaching analog and digital photography to high schoolers 2. Taking family portraits of adventurous people at local parks in NJ.

Photographer, Louis Chavez and I have a conversation about New Intimacies, Louis’ photographic study of gay cruising. It is inspired by Peter Hujar’s work but takes a more experimental approach with more inspiration by writings of José Esteban Muñoz. We also discuss Louis’ work as a curatorial assistant at the George Eastman Museum and, as your teaser, you just might learn a little bit about the Situationist International and Pscyhogeography. Louis was also kind enough to send a video slideshow on the Real Photo Show YouTube channel so you can see the work while listening.

https://chavezlouis.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Louis Chavez is a photographer and curator based in New York. Their solo exhibition, New Intimacies, was exhibited at the University of Rochester’s Hartnett Gallery in 2021 and at PeepSpace in Tarrytown, NY in 2023. Chavez was a participant in SOILED: The Downtown Dirty Book Fair, curated by Matthew Leifheit in 2022, and was a graduate presenter at the Society for Photographic Education’s national conference in 2023. In addition to their visual arts practice, Chavez is a curatorial assistant in photography at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. They were a guest curator at Visual Studies Workshop in 2020 and a studio assistant to photographer Joshua Rashaad McFadden in 2021. Chavez holds an M.F.A. in Photography and Related Media from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a B.S. (summa cum laude) from SUNY Brockport.

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"In a way the book is almost a valentine to a group of pictures and also a group of people…a community of people who have been engaged in redefining photography."

Stephen Frailey and I talk about his new book, Looking at Photography published by Damiani Books, an homage to John Szarkowski's Looking at Photographs. While it uses Szarkowski's format, it is very much Stephen's own ideas about photography distilled from many years of lectures, critiques, and conversations he has had with his students. We also reminisce about our early days at the School of Visual Arts where we met, me as a student and Stephen as a newly hired Professor.

https://stephenfrailey.com

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.

www.charcoalbookclub.com

Stephen studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and received his BA from Bennington College. He has had solo exhibitions at 303 Gallery and the Julie Saul Gallery and group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; International Center for Photography, New York; and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.

His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Arts Magazine, ARTnews, Artforum, the Village Voice, and the New Yorker, portfolios have appeared in Artforum and the Paris Review. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston; the International Center for Photography, New York; and the Princeton University Art Museum.

He has received two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant. He has been a visiting artist at the Donald Judd Foundation and twice been nominated for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. His critical writing on photography have appeared in Artforum, Print, and Art on Paper. He was the Chair of the Graduate photography program at Bard College from 1998 to 2004, and has been the Chair of the Photography Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York since 1998. He is also the co-chair of the MPS Fashion Photography Program at the School of Visual Arts. In 2003, he founded the Auction for Photographic Education in Afghanistan to create a photography department at Kabul University. He is the co-founder of the Art+Commerce Festival in New York.

In 2007 he founded the photography magazine Dear Dave, and is its Editor in Chief.

"In classes it was always, oh the road represents ultimate freedom, exuberance, the American dream…I just kept thinking, wait a minute, this doesn't line up for me."

For nearly a century, the American road trip has been closely associated with the American dream. The open road is where millions of Americans freely set out to explore the country’s beauty, epic landscapes, and diversity of cultures. For a country that claims to be a free and democratic land without roadblocks, the road trip has been and continues to be a fraught endeavor for Black people.

With this project, Willett exposes the cracks of this ideal version of American society, pointing out that historically the road represents a collective site of trauma for the Black community.

Amani Willett is a Brooklyn and Boston-based photographer whose practice is driven by conceptual ideas surrounding family, history, memory, and the social environment. Working primarily with the book form, his two monographs have been published to widespread critical acclaim. Both books, Disquiet (Damiani, 2013) and The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer (Overlapse, 2017), were selected by Photo-Eye as “best books” of the year and have been highlighted in over 50 publications including Photograph Magazine, PDN, Hyperallergic, Lensculture, New York Magazine and 1000 Words and recommended by Todd Hido, Elisabeth Biondi (former Visuals Editor of The New Yorker), Vince Aletti and Joerg Colberg (Conscientious), among others.

Amani’s photographs are also featured in the books Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2017 edition, Laurence King Publishing), Street Photography Now (Thames and Hudson), New York: In Color (Abrams), and have been published widely in places including American Photography, Newsweek, Harper’s, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review of Books. His work resides in the collections of the Tate Modern, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Oxford University, and Harvard University, among others.

Amani completed an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2012 and a BA from Wesleyan University in 1997.

In addition to his artistic practice, Amani is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.

https://www.amaniwillett.com/

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.

www.charcoalbookclub.com

Photographer, writer, and educator, Tom Griggs, and I met at AIPAD to talk about his book, A Creature Obeys a Creature That Wants, published by Mesaestándar. A Creature Obeys a Creature That Wants is an exploration of generational depression experienced through Tom’s paternal side of his family. It weaves together text and images from Tom with text and images from his father to tell a spiritually infused story of his family. We also talk about his newest book, El Inquilino, Mexico City, published by Kris Graves Projects which was revealed at AIPAD the very day we were there.

https://www.tomgriggs.net/books - https://www.krisgravesprojects.com/book/mexico-city-by-tom-griggs - https://www.instagram.com/griggstom/ - https://www.mesaestandar.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Tom Griggs is a photographer, writer, and educator born in the United States and currently living between Medellín, Colombia and Mexico City. He has spent much of the last thirteen years teaching at the Universidad de Antioquia and at Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes in Medellín, and at the ICP online. His last photobook, A Creature Obeys a Creature That Wants, was named one of the best photobooks of 2023 by Mark Power and Alec Soth.

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Michael visits with photographer and educator, Stephen Hilger at his studio in Brooklyn to talk about his upcoming book, In the Alley, published by Purple Martin Press. Stephen was a guest on the show all the way back on episode 47 so we don’t spend a lot of time on his history but we do talk alot about the alleyways in Beverly Hills and the creative decisions that went into making this leporello book.

Order Here: https://www.artbook.com/9780979776854.html http://www.stephenhilger.com Don’t forget to check out our bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club where members receive signed copies of each monograph, guest curator notes, special edition prints, members-only pricing to our store, and first dibs on exclusive editions. @charcoalbookclub

Stephen Hilger is a photographer whose work traces historical memory in the American urban and social landscape. His monograph, Back of Town (SPQR Editions, 2016), chronicles the disappearance of a neighborhood in New Orleans. BLVD, (ROMAN NVMERALS, 2017) presents visual motifs at the intersection of public and private spaces throughout Los Angeles. Hilger’s forthcoming book, In the Alley, (Purple Martin Press, 2023) is currently in production.

Hilger has exhibited at venues including Acta International, Rome; Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions; Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles; Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles; the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans; and Transmitter, Brooklyn. His photographs are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Hilger's photographs have appeared in periodicals including New York Magazine and the New York Times. He has written about photography and contemporary art including for Aperture’s PhotoBook Review and BOMB. Hilger received his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Columbia University and was a fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program. He teaches at Pratt Institute where he is an Associate Professor in the Photography Department.

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Brendan Bannon is a photographer and teacher based between New York and Nairobi, Kenya. We talk about the work his students are showing at the JKC Gallery as part of The Mark and the Memory show curated by Ryann Casey. The work comes from a workshop taught by Brendan and Julian Chinana called Odyssey that is offered to combat veterans to help them process their experiences through the use of the camera. We talk about how Brendan suffered from depression while taking care of his mother who was suffering from MS and how photography helped him to stop time when he needed it to and also allowed him to re-engage with the world. We also talk about Brendan's many other projects working with refugee children, children with AIDS, and the many NGO's that he has worked with over the years.   https://www.mostimportantpicture.org https://www.ginnyrosestewart.com https://jkcgallery.online   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com     Brendan Bannon is a photographer and teacher based between New York and Nairobi, Kenya.   Bannon's work has appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, The Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian, Monocle Magazine, KWANI?,  and other international publications. His projects have been exhibited internationally at UN headquarters in New York, at Chautauqua Institution's VACI galleries, The Burchfield Penney Museum and the Quick Center for the Arts.    His educational projects include Daily Dispatches an innovative daily journalism and public art project made collaboratively with colleges in the USA. Dispatches featured a story a day from Nairobi beamed across the world, printed and shared in public space on American college campuses.    Another  project, Do You See What I See? is an arts education initiative conducted through UNHCR for children in refugee camps, giving them voice and an opportunity to share stories through their own photography and writing.    Brendan Bannon's interest in photography was sparked by his mother, an amateur photographer with a darkroom in the bathroom, and his father, who placed him at age 10 in front of drawers of antique photographs and asked him to select the interesting ones for an exhibition on the history of photography.   During his 20's Bannon ran a house painting business and took care of his mother who had multiple sclerosis, an experience he credits with informing his approach to photography. "I don't shy away from difficult stories. The experience of taking care of my mother showed me clearly that behind every moment of perceived suffering there is a profound victory over circumstances. I look at people's lives as being full of meaningful relationships, striving against the odds and achieving small victories."   Bannon also works regularly for International NGOs including Medecins Sans Frontieres, UNHCR, UNICEF and CARE International.

Chris Facey is a documentary and portrait photographer. We talk about his three current projects, #DadDutyProject, which focuses on debunking the myth of absentee fathers in the Black and Brown community, Being Careful: Carrying More Than A Burden, where he hopes to bring awareness and change to the safety concerns of women, and Tale of Two Pandemics: Racism and Covid-19 which has been published in different forms in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Chris and I also talk about how he started photographing while serving in the army at Fort Drum, his decision to attend the School of Visual Arts, and how almost all of his decisions revolve around being a role model for his children.

https://www.cocobuttershutter.com

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

About Chris Facey Chris Facey (b.1990) is a photojournalist and portrait photographer raised in Brooklyn, NY and currently resides in Raleigh, NC. Chris has the ability to create images that are powerful yet tender. Inspired by the works of Gordon Parks and W. Eugene Smith, he documents communities with a softness and allows space for emotional depth, while still covering hard hitting issues such as the racial injustices in civil rights to Women's Safety in New York City. With both vigor and a trained eye, Chris has been making work centering around the Black community throughout his career.

Being a father himself, Chris has been working on his #DadDutyProject, which focuses on debunking the myth of absentee fathers in the Black and Brown community as well as his " Being Careful: Carrying More Than A Burden" project, where he hopes to bring awareness and change to the lack of Women Safety.

A School of Visual Arts BFA graduate and an Army veteran, Chris is on a strong path to success with his photo documentary projects which has landed him opportunities to be featured in publications such as The New Yorker, New York Magazine , The Cut & The New York Times.

He is currently available for assignments

"Really my favorite thing about photography is walking around with my camera…If I could do only one kind of work for the rest of my life, I think that would unquestionably be what I would want to do."   Sasha Rudensky is an artist and an educator. She is currently the Program Director and an Associate Professor of Art at Weslyan University. She studied Studio Art and Russian Literature at Weslyan University and received her MFA from Yale University. When Sasha was young her family left Russia, just as the Soviet Union was breaking apart. We talk about the duality and tension of her insider/outsider approach to photographing in Russia and Ukraine as well as her description of people and place through fact and fiction. We also talk about teaching in-person during the pandemic and we talk about a book that Sasha has been working on that combines multiple projects into one body work. Sasha also reveals the new title of this book which we expand upon at the end of the episode. I should also note that Sasha is represented by my podcast partner, Sasha Wolf.   Sasha Rudensky is a Russian-born artist whose work has been exhibited widely including Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland; Fries Museum in Leewarden, Netherlands; Macro Testaccio Museum in Rome, Italy; ArtScience Museum in Singapore, and Danziger Projects in New York. In 2010 Sasha’s work was included in “reGeneration 2: Photographers of Tomorrow Today”, an international survey of emerging photographers. Her work is held in a number of public collections including Musee de l’Elysee, Yale Art Gallery, and Center of Creative Photography in Tuscon amongst others.   Sasha received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2008 and BA from Wesleyan University in 2001. She was the recipient of the Ward Cheney Memorial Award from Yale University, Mortimer-Hays Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, Leica/Jim Marshall Award, and Jessup Prize from Wesleyan University. In 2013 Sasha was awarded the Aaron Siskind Individual Fellowship grant. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Der Spiegel, Cicero Magazine, American Photo, PDN and others. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University, where she is the head of the photography program.   http://www.sasharudensky.com/index.html https://sashawolf.com/artist/sasha-rudensky/

Karen Marshall is a documentary photographer and Chair of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program at ICP. We talk about her recent book, Between Girls published by Kehrer Verlag. The project started in 1985 when Karen began photographing a group of teenagers in New York City. A decade older than them, her intent was to look at the emotional bonding that happens between girls at age 16 and document the emblematic relationships that often develop at this time in their lives. 10 months into the project Molly Brover, Karen' first and closest connection in this project, was killed while on vacation and the project became more than its original idea. Between Girls is a 30 year long visual story of the lives of the core group of friends that started with Molly Brover.

http://www.karenmarshallphoto.com

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. - www.charcoalbookclub.com

Karen Marshall is a documentary photographer whose work examines the psychological lives of her subjects within the social landscape.

Her photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, the London Sunday Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, NPR Picture Show, GUP Magazine, and PDN. Marshall is the recipient of artist fellowships and sponsorships through the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as grants and support from private foundations. Her photographs have been widely exhibited internationally and are part of several collections, including the Feminist Artbase at the Brooklyn Museum.

Karen Marshall is Chair of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York City.

Here are some of the recordings I made at the 2024 Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. I had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with over 20 attendees. These conversations come from our first interactions for me and the guests with each other and I did not see the work before the recordings. That meant the description of the work had to be fine tuned just as it does for a portfolio review. So what you will here is similar to a portfolio presentation. I've also linked to the guest's Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. One last note, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will be selected by our jury and invited to spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. One full scholarship and five partial scholarships will be awarded. Student discounts and need-based scholarships will be available to those selected who qualify.

Apply Now: https://www.chicoreview.com/2025

Alexander Iglesias 02:23 https://alexiglesias.net/ | https://www.instagram.com/alexander_d_i/

Caitlin Bagwell 06:35 https://www.caitlinbagwell.photography | https://www.instagram.com/cebagwell/

Ian Edward White 10:57 https://ianedwardwhite.com/ | https://www.instagram.com/ianedwardwhite/

Melissa Guerrero 20:24 https://www.mommyobserver.com | https://www.instagram.com/theobserver_meli/

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Ara Oshagan joined Michael in the JKC Gallery to talk about his work and his book, displaced, published by Kehrer Verlag. Ara is a descendant of family that was displaced by the Armenian Genocide and he was born in Beirut, Lebanon where his family was displaced again by the Lebanese Civil War. We talk about how his conceptual and documentary work about displacement and diaspora are so closely tied to his lived experience. The link to the flip-book in the notes will be helpful for you to see some of the work we discuss in this episode.

https://online.fliphtml5.com/mgvxt/nwsz/?1665678668308#p=1

https://araoshagan.com/work

Real Photo Show is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club and their new project, Charcoal Editions. A curated, online gallery selling open edition silver gelatin prints at more reasonable prices. Listeners get 10% off their purchases through the end of 2022, just type in realphotoshow in the promo box at checkout at https://www.charcoaleditions.com.

About Ara

I am a photographer and installation artist interested in disrupted and marginalized communities and identity.

I am shaped by a history of multi-­‐generational dislocation and diasporic identity. A descendant of families who were displaced from Western Armenia by the Armenian Genocide, I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. I grew up in the Armenian community with a French/Armenian/Arabic elementary education. Displaced once again by the Lebanese civil war, my family and Iarrived penniless to the US. I came of age in America. I do not belong to any single country nor language nor nationality. I live in-­‐between several languages and cultures, among multiple ways of thinking and ways of life.My identity is transnational and ambiguous: it is a process.

My work as a visual and installation artist springs from these sources: I am interested in the exploration of the ambiguities of my identity and the crossing of physical, cultural and linguistic boundaries. I live and work among disrupted and marginalized communities—communities that have been uprooted, dislocated and relocated and scattered again. Much of my research and work is about the sensibility and structure associated with this way of life. My own familial and personal history is deeply connected to the communities I photograph and engage in my artistic practice.

Artist and educator, Anita Allyn and I talk about the origins of her photography and installation work and we talk about our shared experiences of teaching in Mercer County, New Jersey. Anita is the Coordinator and Professor of Photography and Video at The College of New Jersey.   https://www.anita-allyn.com https://www.instagram.com/anita_allyn/   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com   Anita Allyn, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a Professor of Art at The College of New Jersey where she has taught since 1999. She has a MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and a BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute. She was awarded a student scholarship to study in Aix-en-Provence, France and has studied abroad at Brighton Polytechnic, England.

Anita Allyn’s photography and installation works have been exhibited at such venues as The Tate Modern, London, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia, International Photography Biennial, Columbia, South America as well as local venues at the University of Pennsylvania, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Art Institute of Boston, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her single channel video screenings have included The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pioneer Theater in New York, Director’s Lounge, Berlin Germany, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Elements Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, and the Israeli Center for the Arts.

Alexandra Huddleston is a photographer, writer, and walking artist. Michael and Alexandra talk about her latest book, Traces of Time, walking the Jardins de l’Abbaye de la Cambre in summer, a hand-bound, limited edition artist’s book. Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, and Bamako, Mali, her upbringing has led her to explore landscape and culture from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Between 2009 and 2014, she walked thousands of kilometers on pilgrimage in Spain, France, and Japan, journeys that led to her current walking art practice. She has won a Fulbright Grant, and her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian and the British Library.

https://www.alexandrahuddleston.com Bonus Content: https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at Charcoalbookclub.com

Alexandra Huddleston is a photographer, writer, and walking artist. Her most recent projects describe landscape as a space of dynamic change. It’s a vision gained by walking thousands of miles in the last two decades. Alexandra brings motion through time and space into her work, expressing what it’s like to be within an ever-changing landscape. Through this process, she has radically expanded how landscape is represented photographically.

Alexandra’s research into the impact of walking on perceptions and depictions of landscape is conducted both independently and with the support of art organizations like Cow House Studios, Ireland and Cill Rialaig, Ireland. Between 2009 and 2014, she walked thousands of kilometres on pilgrimage in Spain, France, and Japan – solitary journeys that led to her current walking art practice. Most recently, she explored the Rurban landscape in the Netherlands during a masterclass at the Jan van Eyck Academie (2019) and photographed the project Traces of Time while an artist in resident at the Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain (2021 Belgium).

Alexandra presents her work to the public through her books, exhibitions, and lectures. Her books and prints are collected in archives around the world, including the British Library, Harvard University’s Hutchins Center Library, New York University’s Bobst Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and University of Cape Town’s Oppenheimer Library. As creative director and co-founder of the Kyoudai Press, Alexandra’s major publications include Lost Things (2012), 333 Saints: A Life of Scholarship in Timbuktu (2013), East or West (2014), Vertigo (2016), and Traces of Time (2022).

Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, and Bamako, Mali, her upbringing has led her to explore landscape and culture from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. In 2007, she won a Fulbright Grant to research and photograph traditional Islamic scholarship in Timbuktu, Mali. Alexandra holds a Masters of Letters in Fine Art Practice from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. She studied broadcast and print journalism (MS) at Columbia University, USA and fine art and East Asian studies (BA) at Stanford University, USA.

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Photographer, publisher, designer, and coffee roaster, Clint Woodside joined me at the 2024 Chico Review to talk about Deadbeat Club Press  and his own photography. We talk about how he partners with artists to make work and books, how he thinks about publishing as a family business, and we talk extensively about his own photography. In particular, Clint and I discuss an ongoing series that touches upon his upbringing and family in New York but also remains somewhat undefined which is how Clint prefers to make work.

http://www.clintwoodside.com || https://deadbeatclubpress.com || https://www.instagram.com/clintwoodside/ || https://www.instagram.com/deadbeatclub/ || https://www.facebook.com/DeadbeatClubPress

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Real Photo Show Live recording at Affirmation Arts on October 17th: https://www.danastirling.com/updates/2024/affirmation-arts

Clint Woodside is a photographer born in Buffalo, NY. He has published over ten books including Let Me Die In My Footsteps (2013), Build Us A Path (2014) Undercover Cars (2016) and Vineland (2017). His work has been widely exhibited and published in the United States and overseas, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Sweden, China, Seoul, and Australia. Woodside is also known for his extensive work as a curator and as creator of Deadbeat Club - a publisher and distributor of small books and publications with a diverse roster of photographers. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Established in 2011 by Clint Woodside, Deadbeat Club is an award winning independent publisher & coffee roaster located in Los Angeles, California. Rooted in contemporary photography, our ethos on small run, limited edition publications carries into our small batch single origin, signature blend and limited release coffees.

Each Deadbeat Club project is selected with the expectation of collaboration and a longstanding partnership. Working closely with photographers and artists around the world, making sure their original vision is never compromised, we produce a body of work that we are proud to share with our community.

This episode is the first in a series dedicated to talking about teaching art while still having some personal success as an artist. Everyone in this series will be asked

• Who were your teachers or mentors
• How do you balance teaching and making
• Who do you see getting hired today as teachers
• Where does art rank in importance in your school
• Who are the students that you serve
• What’s your favorite teaching assignment
• Give us a pro-tip for teaching or photographing

Endia Beal is a North Carolina based artist, curator, and author. Beal’s work merges fine arts with social justice. She uses photography and video to reveal the often overlooked and unappreciated experiences unique to people of color. Specifically, Beal’s first monograph, Performance Review, brings together work over a 10-year period that highlights the realities and challenges for women of color in the corporate workplace. She lectures about these experiences, which also addresses bias in corporate hiring practices.

https://endiabeal.com

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - https://charcoalbookclub.com

Beal is featured in several online editorials including The New York Times, NBC, BET, Huffington Post, and National Geographic; she also appeared in TIME Magazine, VICE Magazine, Essence, Marie Claire and Newsweek. Her work has been exhibited in several institutions including the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, NC; The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI, and Aperture Foundation in New York, NY. Beal’s photographs are in private and public collections, such as The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, NY, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago in Chicago, IL, and Portland State University in Portland, OR.

She is a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership and completed residencies at Harvard Art Museums, the Center for Photography at Woodstock and McColl Center for Art + Innovation. Beal received grants from the Magnum Foundation and the Open Society Foundation, among others. Endia holds a dual BFA-AH in art history and studio art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from Yale University; she has also completed the certification from the Executive Education in Fostering Inclusion and Diversity Program at Yale School of Management.

Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera of the Bronx Documentary Center call in to talk about several events coming up at the BDC for this short series pre-election episode. Here are the events you should support or attend if you can.

https://www.bronxdoc.org

6TH ANNUAL PHOTO AUCTION BENEFIT VIRTUAL CELEBRATION THURSDAY OCT 22, 2020 | 7PM

The Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) is proud to present our 6th Annual Photo Auction Benefit.

To give back to the many Bronx photographers who work with us, we're sharing 50% of proceeds with Bronx photographers in need of financial support due to COVID-19. This means that every print sold will directly benefit our program participants and the Bronx photographers who inspire them the most.

This year's 6th Annual Photo Auction will include beautifully printed photographs by artists including Stephanie Foden, Johis Alarcón, Daniella Zalcman, Inbal Abergil, and Mauricio Palos. Each of these photographs depict the vibrant landscapes and narratives of the world, and have been part of projects featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, and more.

Auction prints and photobooks will be available to bid on from 8:00 AM EST October 8th through 8:00 PM EST on October 22nd.

ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY WOMEN'S FILM SERIES

SATURDAY OCT 24, 2020 | 6:30PM

All In: The Fight for Democracy examines the issue of voter suppression in the US. The film interweaves personal experiences with activism and historical insight to expose a problem that has corrupted our country from the beginning. With the expertise of Stacey Abrams, the film offers an insider’s look into the barriers to voting. The film can be screened on Amazon Prime with a subscription.

Please join us on Saturday, October 24th, at 6PM EST for a short virtual Q&A discussion with co-director Lisa Cortes.

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION WEBSITE LAUNCH TRUMP REVOLUTION: THE END OF TRUTH THURSDAY OCT 29, 2020 | 7PM

In America today, the very notion of truth is under assault. Citizens vigorously disagree about matters of scientific evidence; about the very existence of widely reported news events; about basic facts. The Bronx Documentary Center's upcoming exhibition, The End of Truth, documents our country's shift toward conspiratorial thinking by examining the rapidly changing roles of traditional and social media over the past 25 years.

This is the third and final segment of Trump Revolution, a series of exhibitions examining America's societal and political transformation over the past four years, one whose speed, reach and consequences are unmatched in our country's history.

On October 29th, the exhibition will available to view online at www.trumprevolutionbdc.org

Photographer and Red Hook Editions partner, Igor Posner joins Michael for a discussion about his book, Cargó, published by Red Hook Editions. Igor is a self-taught photographer whose work explores the psychological impacts of migration and changing immigrant neighborhoods. Michael and Igor talk about how his projects come together and the way he needs to reinvent and change what he does in order to keep making work.

https://igorposner.net https://www.redhookeditions.com/books-1/carg

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

Born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). After the fall of the Soviet Union, Igor moved to California in the early 90s. He studied molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he first started to take pictures and experiment in the darkroom.

Initial infatuation with picture-taking led Igor to explore the silent and haunting experience of walking after dark on the streets of Los Angeles and Tijuana. Collision of social and typical with personal and psychological, this first series of images “Nonesuch Records” savors the strange solitude of the enigmatic region between California and Mexico; amid the streets, bars, night shelter hotels, and disappearing night figures.

After 14 years, Igor returned to St. Petersburg in 2006, taking up photography full time, which led to a book project entitled“Past Perfect Continuous”, published by Red Hook Editions in 2017.

In 2022, Igor publishes his second monograph, entitled, “Cargó.” The book is a visual exloration of psychological aspects of migration and gradual disappearance of neighborhoods based on  immigrant communities in North America.

At present, Igor is based in New York. In 2021, he joined Red Hook Editions, Brooklyn based independent publishing company, as a managing partner. 

Igor’s work has been shown in North America, Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia.

He joined Prospekt Photographers agency as a full memebr in 2011. 

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

"Forget about stunts, owning my story was the bravest thing I ever did."

Hannah Kozak is a photographer and a Hollywood stuntwoman. When Hannah was 9 her mother left the family for a man who turned out to be abusive towards her mother. Hannah witnessed this abuse and it eventually lead to Hannah's mother being hospitalized with permanent brain damage. Hannah's book, He Threw the Last Punch Too Hard, is a story about Hannah and her mother and her journey of forgiveness and dealing with domestic abuse. Hannah and I have an amazing conversation about her life, this book, and her belief in the power of photography to heal.

http://hannahkozak.com https://www.instagram.com/hannahkozak/ https://twitter.com/hannahkozak

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Hannah Kozak was born to a Polish father and a Guatemalan mother in Los Angeles, California. At the age of ten, she was given a Kodak Brownie camera by her father, Sol, a survivor of eight Nazi forced labor camps and began instinctively capturing images of dogs, flowers, family and friends that felt honest and real. As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, Hannah would sneak onto movie lots and snap photos on the sets of Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch and Family, selling star images to movie magazines and discovering a world that was far from reality.

While working in a camera store at the age of twenty, Hannah’s life changed when she met a successful stuntwoman who became her mentor and helped her start a career in stunts. For over twenty-five years, Hannah’s work provided the opportunity to work with notable directors such as Michael Cimino, David Lynch, Mike Nichols, Tim Burton and Michael Bay. She worked as a stunt double for celebrated stars like Cher, Angelina Jolie, Lara Flynn Boyle and Isabella Rossellini. On every set, Hannah took her camera to work, capturing candid, behind-the-scene pictures that penetrated the illusion of Hollywood magic.

Her wanderlust and career in the film business afforded Hannah the opportunity to travel from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Guatemala and Peru to Egypt, Italy, Israel and India, capturing images of far away lands and exploring the innocence and truth found in the faces of children from around the world.

Hannah has turned the camera on herself, her life and her world. She continues to look for those things that feel honest and real, using her camera as a means of exploring feelings and emotions. After decades of standing in for someone else, she now is in control of her destiny and vision. Hannah is an autobiographical photographer. Her subjects are the people and places that touch her emotionally. She has been photographing people and places for four decades. Photography has the power to heal and to help us through difficult periods, something Hannah Kozak knows first hand from personal experience.

My guest today is photographer JF Bouchard. JF and I talk about his book, The New Cubans (powerHouse Books) and how he became aware of and how he approached photographing a lesser known subculture in Cuba that consists of younger Cubans who are non-conformist and more gender diverse. JF describes his goal towards collaborating in a way in which he is both working for himself but also, in a way, working for the people in his photographs by providing them with social media content during the rist of social media in Cuba. We also talk about how the people he was working with were also migrating away from Cuba during a large migrant crisis.

https://www.jfbouchard.com - https://www.instagram.com/jfbouchard1/ - https://powerhousebooks.com/books/the-new-cubans/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Jean-François Bouchard has worked in lens-based visual art since 2003. He travels the world and seeks out people whose interests and lifestyles are out of the ordinary. He celebrates difference by focusing on marginalized, misunderstood, and often ostracized groups of people. Working at the intersection of documentary work and subjective cinematic conceptual storytelling, he aims to immerse viewers into the lives of his collaborators while sharing his own emotional journeys into these worlds. His practice blends photography, video installations, and occasionally found objects.

His work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals in Canada, the United States, and France. His projects have been shown at Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York, Montreal, and Toronto. His works are featured in a book published by The Magenta Foundation. Artnet selected the In Guns We Trust exhibition as a “Must-see show in NYC,” while ArtForum selected his Exile from Babylon exhibition as an “Editor’s Pick” in early 2023.

Return guest, Michael Joseph, talks about his new book, Lost & Found, published by Kehrer Verlag. You may already know the work from the Travelers series on his Instagram account. This is a beautifully laid out and printed book and we get into many of the details and decisions that went into making this book. First, the decision to publish this series, connecting with an editor, the fundraising, what kinds of text would be used, all the design elements, and finally having it in hand. Michael generously shares each step along the way. We also catch up on how Michael’s next series, The Wild West of the East is coming along.

https://www.michaeljosephphotographics.com https://www.michaeljosephphotographics.com/book-purchase/p/lost-and-found-book https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/michael-joseph-lost-found

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Michael Joseph is a street portrait and documentary photographer.  Raised just outside of New York City, his inspirations are drawn from interactions with strangers on city streets and aims to afford his audience the same experience through his photographs.  His portraits are made on the street, often unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen. Themes throughout his portraiture and projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey, the search for equality and human authenticity.

His first monograph, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust" will be published in Fall, 2023 (Europe) and Spring, 2024 (USA) by Kehrer Verlag.

Michael’s work has been featured on CNN, Vice, The Guardian, Dazed, AnotherMan, Paper Magazine, HUCK, the Advocate, and published in magazines internationally including Elle, Inked, 1814 and SHOTS. He has been exhibited nationally, with solo shows at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York, NY) and the Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY) and the FP3 Gallery (Boston, MA). Group exhibitions include the notable Aperture Gallery (New York, NY), the Getty Images Gallery (London, UK) and the Griffin Museum of Photography (Massachusetts). He has lectured at the International Center of Photography (New York, NY), the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), in portraiture classes at the New England School of Photography (Boston, MA) and taught at the Light Factory (Charlotte, NC). 

His portraits are held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, Indiana), the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (Rochester, NH), the Jack Sheer Collection, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY)and private collections. He is a 2023 and 2016 Photolucida Top 50 Photographer, 2020 Photolucida Finalist, and LensCulture Portrait Award Finalist. He is a recipient of the fellowship in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation. 

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Brad Zellar | Till the Wheels Fall Off

Author, editor, and photo collaborator Brad Zellar joined me at the 2025 Chico Review to talk about his life as a writer, including his work with Alec Soth and Little Brown Mushroom, and his novel, Till the Wheels Fall Off (Coffee House Press). We discussed Brad’s love of photography and how Chico and Montana have become a second home for him. Brad also shared how his early struggles with addiction and an unintentional photography grant helped him to refocus on his writing and clarify his relationship to photography. (Cover photo: Eric Ruby)

https://www.instagram.com/bradzellar/ |||  https://coffeehousepress.org/products/till-the-wheels-fall-off

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com |||  https://www.chicoreview.com

Brad Zellar has worked as a writer and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, as well as for regional and national magazines. A former senior editor at City Pages, The Rake, and Utne Reader, Zellar is also the author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, House of Coates, and Driftless. He has frequently collaborated with the photographer Alec Soth, and together they produced seven editions of The LBM Dispatch, chronicling American community life in the twenty-first century. Zellar’s work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Paris Review, Vice, Guernica, Aperture, and Russian Esquire. He spent fifteen years working in bookstores and was a co-owner of Rag & Bone Books in Minneapolis. He currently lives in Saint Paul.

Patrice Helmar and John O'Toole join me to talk about the Marble Hill Camera Club entering its sixth year. When the pandemic hit Patrice had to figure out how to keep the much beloved photography open mic night going. In collaboration with John M. O'Toole of Oranbeg Press, they landed on shorter virtual evenings with free e-zines for every guest available to everyone. We talk about the past, present, and future of MHCC and the importance of collaboration and generosity when providing platforms for others.   https://www.marblehillcameraclub.com https://oranbegpress.com https://patricehelmar.com https://johnmotoole.com  

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com  

Patrice Aphrodite Helmar is an artist who was born in Juneau, Alaska. She worked in her father's small town camera shop and darkroom growing up, and continues to work in photography. Her work has been shown at the Jewish Museum, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Gaa Gallery, and the National Museum of Iceland as well as other spaces. Helmar is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute and living and working in Juneau, Alaska and New York, NY.   

John M. O’Toole was born in Boston, MA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. A photographer, writer, bookmaker, and founder of Oranbeg Press, his work explores the concept of familial roots through the lens of his Irish heritage.    He received his BFA from Syracuse University in 2011 and received his MFA from the Image text program at Ithaca College in 2018 as the inaugural class of the program.

Pradip Malde joined Michael Chovan-Dalton and Ryann Casey for a live show at the JKC Gallery to talk about his book, From Where Loss Comes, published by Charcoal Books.

From Where Loss Comes is an unblinking look at how sacrifice and belonging are deeply rooted in the human experience. Sixty photographs and close to 9,000 words consider pain and suffering that is private, sacrificial, and yet rattles against values that are thought of as being inalienable — our fundamental human rights. It is a story of the root causes of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C).

Pradip, Ryann, and Michael talk about how you go about creating work that deals with such painful and personal stories and how you present that work in a respectful and caring manner.

Real Photo Show is spoused by the Charcoal Book Club and their new project, Charcoal Editions. A curated, online gallery selling open edition silver gelatin prints at more reasonable prices. Listeners get 10% off their purchases through the end of 2022, just type in "realphotoshow" in the promo box at checkout at https://www.charcoaleditions.com.

Pradip Malde is a photographer and professor at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN. Much of his work considers the experience of loss and how it serves as a catalyst for regeneration. He received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, which resulted in his book, “From Where Loss Comes” (Charcoal, 2022) and is represented in the collections of the Museum of the Art Institute, Chicago; Princeton University Museum; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Yale University Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, among others.

"I wish I had more time for my child, I wish I had more time for my work, I wish I had more time for the Humid…"

Irina Rozovsky and I talk about her work being included in MOMA's New Photography 2020, her new book, In Plain Air, running workshops at The Humid, and just life in general during Covid.

Irina Rozovsky (born in Moscow, raised in the US), makes photographs of people and places, transforming external landscapes into interior states. She has published three monographs (One to Nothing 2011, Island in my Mind 2015, and In Plain Air 2021). Her work is exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Harpers, and Vice. Irina lives and works in Athens, Georgia where she and her husband Mark Steinmetz run the photography project space The Humid. Irina is represented by Claxton Projects.

https://www.irinar.com

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

Episode Notes

"What this project looks to do is go well beyond that with more nuance and more authentic voices from the community that is being reported on." -Finbarr O'Reilly   I have two amazing guests for today's show Finbarr O'Reilly and Bernadette Vivuya. This show coincides with the release of the book and multimedia online collaboration, Congo in Conversation by Finbarr O'Reilly. Finnbarr and, journalist and filmmaker, Bernadette talk about the work, the messages they wanted to convey, and the importance of representative and varied voices when trying to tell complex stories.   Congo in Conversation is a collaborative online chronicle through close cooperation with Congolese journalists and photographers. The project addresses the human, social and ecological challenges that Congo faces today, within the context of this new health crisis. Relaying information via a dedicated website and social networks, “Congo in Conversation” provides an uninterrupted and unprecedented stream of articles, photo reportages and videos, which visitors can consult by theme or by contributor. With “Congo in Conversation”, the Fondation Carmignac provides an outlet for Congolese voices to contribute to the global discourse, communally attest to the on-the-ground situation within this immense country, and raise public awareness. “Congo In Conversation” is presented in a bilingual French-English monograph, co-published by Reliefs Editions and the Carmignac Foundation, with two covers illustrating different aspects of this collaborative reportage   https://congoinconversation.fondationcarmignac.com   Finbarr O’Reilly is an independent photographer and multimedia journalist, and the author of the nonfiction memoir, Shooting Ghosts, A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer, and Their Journey Back from War (Penguin Random House 2017). Finbarr lived for 12 years in West and Central Africa and has spent two decades covering conflicts in Congo, Chad, Sudan, Afghanistan, Libya, and Gaza. He is the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize exhibition photographer (exhibition « Crossroads Ethiopia » around the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Abiy Ahmed Ali) and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. His photography and multimedia work has earned numerous industry honors, including First Place in the Portraits category at the 2019 World Press Photo Awards. He was also winner of the World Press Photo of the Year in 2006.   http://www.finbarr-oreilly.com   Bernadette Vivuya is a journalist and filmmaker based in Goma in Eastern DRC. She reports on issues related to human rights, the environment and the exploitation of raw materials, bearing witness to the resilience of the people in this conflict-affected region.   https://www.instagram.com/bernadettevivuya

Cary and I reminisce a bit about our different experiences in the textbook world and the changes that occurred in the publishing and stock photography world that came about almost simultaneously with the introduction of digital photography in the classroom. We talk about Cary's own photography, his desire to promote work from those underrepresented in the photo world, and we talk about the kind of work we might be seeing in the coming years that is a result of the psychological and emotional toll the pandemic has taken from us.   https://carybenbow.com   This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club https://charcoalbookclub.com   Cary Benbow is a writer, editor, and photographer based in Greenfield, Indiana. After graduating with a BFA in photography from Ball State University, he worked in higher-education publishing for a dozen years before changing careers. He and his wife Jodi run the family business – an independent movie theater, and are the proud parents of five wonderful young adults.   His articles, interviews, and book reviews have been published in a number of online and print magazines, and his photography has been widely exhibited. Cary is a staff writer for F-Stop Magazine, a contributor to YIELD Magazine, and his writing has been featured in LensCulture, Vantage, Fujifeed, Photomachina, and ArtNarratives. He is the publisher and editor of Wobneb Magazine.   To view published written work, visit https://carybenbow.medium.com/   To sign up for his newsletter, visit https://carybenbow.substack.com/

Photographer and educator, Lois Conner and I talk about her amazing life in photography, her many influences, including working at the United Nations, love of art history, and of course, her work, including Lois' most recent show, Flat Earth. It was such a pleasure to have Lois on as my former thesis instructor, friend, and 150th guest on the show. This also marks that last regular episode for a while as I contemplate the future of the show and plan for more event based episodes with the JKC Gallery.

https://www.loisconner.net https://www.instagram.com/loistrueblue/

This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club, a monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. www.charcoalbookclub.com

The New York-based photographer Lois Conner has been travelling the world with 7x17” banquet camera nearly half a century. Through the elongated format of her work she has explored the landscape and the temper of our times; her art is both contemporary and, due to her vision, ‘a long view’ that captures the eternal in the moment, timeless. Conner’s work is that of the artist-artisan: every aspect of her art involves the hand made combined with demanding techniques of platinum printing. In recent years she has employed digital technologies to expand the format of her work, embracing landscapes from the natural to the man-made. Her annual trips to China since 1984 have allowed her to follow the transformation of the People’s Republic and to share her unique understanding of the country’s changing urban and rural mien, as well as the vistas that inspired the country’s unique culture.

Conner has been based in New York City since 1971, where she worked for the United Nations until 1984. During that time she was awarded a Bachelor in Fine Arts (photography) from the Pratt Institute and a Master’s degree from Yale University. Conner has also taught photography since, including over a decade as professor of photography at Yale University.

Had some trouble getting it all together for this week.

Photographer and New York Times Photo Editor, Mikko Takkunen, joins me today to talk about his upcoming book, Hong Kong, published by Kehrer Verlag with an essay by Geoff Dyer. Hong Kong is Mikko’s farwell to the place where he worked for over 5 years the New York Times desk’s Asia photo editor. It is also where he started his family and witnessed some of the greates social upheavals in the country’s recent history. We talk about how this book is not a social or political statement but an observation and an embrace of a place he loves and is forever connected through experience. 

https://www.mikkotakkunen.com https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/mikko-takkunen-hong-kong   This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Mikko Takkunen is a photo editor at The New York Times’s For- eign desk where he’s spent more than five years between 2016– 2021 in Hong Kong as the desk’s Asia photo editor. He began tak- ing these photographs in early 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued until the summer of 2021 when he left Hong Kong.

Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show