Episode 27 | Susan Meiselas

Recorded in: New York City
Episode Length: 45:12
Air Date: February 28, 2019

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

I got to Susan Meiselas’ Mott street studio a few minutes early and one of her assistants let me in to set up my gear. As I was waiting for her to arrive, I was leafing through a worn out first edition of Carnival Strippers, thinking to myself nervously, in that bout of anxiety before an interview - what are we going to even talk about that she’s gonna find interesting? The door clicked open she flew into the basement studio apologizing for a Magnum Foundation meeting running a few minutes late. She asked one of her assistants to prepare two cameras for some portraits of an old acquaintance she was going to do that evening an at the theatre, and rummaged through a couple manilla files looking for a note that she didn’t want to forget, and excused herself to shoot of a quick email. As soon as we sat down at the table and put the headphones on, though, her attention, in a split second, became so focused and engaged, as if none of the other million things she was working on or thinking about mattered. And that focus grabbed and threw me into this zone - my insecurities and preoccupations of what we were going to talk about dissipated in favour of an attention and curiosity in her.

Susan Meiselas has spent her life going into situations and making such varied acquaintances with who she has photographed over time, from young teenage girls outside her home on Mott Street to women doing striptease at New England country fairs. She’s documented human rights issues in Nicaragua to the goings on of exclusive S and M club in New York called Panora’s box. Meeting people and making quick acquaintances is one thing, but then making good pictures in those situations is another. It requires a kind of focus - getting into a zone - that I saw so palpably when we got together. 

Meiselas was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948, studied at Harvard earning her MA in visual eduction, taught in the New York public school system and has worked as one of our most esteemed documentary photographers for close to 50 years. In 1976, she joined Magnum Photos and became a full member in 1980.

Julia, Dee, Lisa and Roe in front of in front of St-Patrick’s Church, 1976. © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Muchachos await the counterattack by National Guard, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 1981. © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Lena on the Bally Box, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973. From Carnival Strippers © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Links:
www.susanmeiselas.com
www.magnumphotos.com

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Episode 26 | Mary Frey

Recorded in: Longmeadow, MA
Episode Length: 45:12
Air Date: January 25, 2019

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

In the past two years, Mary Frey put out two new books - Reading Raymond Carver and Real Life Dramas. The first is made up of black and white work and the other, all color. Both bodies of work are in and around 35 years old and these were Frey’s first major publications of them. It wasn’t exactly as if she was unknown until now though. In fact, almost the inverse. She’s been a cult hero in photography circles for years and a beloved teacher at Hartford’s graduate program, where she taught until 2015.

Frey earned her MFA at Yale and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her work had been show at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and at MoMA to name a few. It was actually in the catalogue for a seminal show at MoMA called The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort where I first discovered her work. I remember her pictures had everything that I was interested in photography in them - they were banal, yet mysterious moments out of the everyday, they were graphically compelling, such great color and they had a strange open ended quality to them, especially in their unusual pairings with curious texts that accompanied them.

We got together at her studio in Longmeadow, MA to have this conversation.

- Jordan Weitzman

All Photos by Mary Frey.

Links:
https://www.maryfrey.com
https://www.peperoni-books.de/real_life_dramas.html

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Episode 25 | Rory Mulligan

Recorded in: Yonkers, New York
Episode Length: 41:16
Air Date: December 22, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Not gunna lie, i had a pretty big art crush on Rory Mulligan long before i met him to talk about his work for this show. I remember first discovering his work on the J&L Books website in the special edition section. They had published a small book of his work in an edition of 10 called Freddie. You couldn’t find it anywhere, but there were enough pictures on the site to get a feel for what he was up to. But I remember thinking to myself - what exactly was he up to? 

There was a strange, dark, melancholic but humorous tone to his photos. There was a quality in them that i felt reflected a certain tradition of documentary style art photography, but his voice was lyrical was uncanny in all of them. As I’ve gone to speak with photographers for this show, Rory’s name has often come up as someone who’s work has had a big influence on them - especially some of the younger ones. 

Rory got his MFA at Yale, has had solo shows in the US and Japan, and his work has been featured in Blind Spot, Newspaper and MATTE Magazines to name a few. Rory is a master printer too - the go to for Latoya Ruby Frazier, Tod Papageorge, Justine Kurland and Mark Steinmetz - if those four names don’t give you any sense of a level of quality demanded in their work, I really don’t know who does. All traditional black and white hand printing, so delicate and subtle and nuanced - a fine art unto itself.

We got together at his studio in in an abandoned aerosol spray can factory in Yonkers, New York, the same town which he grew up in. That landscape of his childhood is the same one that he continues to explore in his work today….

Photos by Rory Mulligan

Links:
www.rorymulligan.com

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Episode 24 | Jack Woody

Recorded in: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Episode Length: 48:35
Air Date: November 13, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

I think I first came across Jack Woody’s name after buying a Duane Michals book called Album years ago. I remember thinking that it was so elegant, so beautifully printed and layed out, that I was curious who was behind it. I remember mentioning that book the first time I met Duane, and he told me that there was this hotel in San Francisco who bought the book and cut out and framed the prints they were so gorgeous. 

That gravure process that Jack Woody tracked down and began to use became one of the signatures of his imprints, Twelvetrees Press and Twin Palms Publishers. The name of his first press comes from his grandmother, Helen Twelvetrees, a Hollywood movie star in the 1930’s. 

After graduating high school, he wanted to go see his grandmothers star on Hollywood boulevard, so he hitchhiked to LA. He ended up getting a job at a used bookstore called Pickwick. After a year there, he moved to Antiquarian Books, which was where he met David Hockney and his galerist Nicholas Wilder.  It was that meeting that eventually led him to meeting Duane Michals, whose portfolio, Homage to Cavafy, he showed while working at the Nicolas Wilder gallery.

He’s published over 150 art books by the likes of Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, Herbert List, George Platt Lynes, Diane Keaton, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Hujar, Lise Sarfati, Malerie Marder, Mark Morrisroe, William Eggleston, Francesco Clemente, Duane Michals, Robert Mapplethorpe, Davidson...the list just goes on and on.

When he started publishing art and more specifically photo books in the 198O’s, no one else was doing it, other than a couple other presses. He essentially invented a form that his imprint would become known for.

I was so excited to go and meet him. The rolodex of people that he’s known and worked with is like an encyclopedia of both gay and photo history. And yet, when I went over to the house that he designed and built in the hills of Santa Fe, New Mexico, I met the most humble and charming man - soft spoken, unpretentious, but also willing to talk about his life and work if you expressed interest.

Selection of Book Covers by Twin Palms and Twelvetrees Presses

Links:
https://twinpalms.com

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Episode 23 | Farah Al Qasimi

Recorded in: Williamsburg, NY
Episode Length: 42:21
Air Date: October 9, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Last month, I went to visit Farah Al Qasimi at her home and studio in Williamsburg. After talking with her, I thought about her space and how both her studio and her living area represented different parts of her in a way. Both very smart, both refined, but in different ways - the living space had an elegance and a lightness to it, while the studio had a sense of humour and playfulness. I took it a step further and then thought about how those rooms also reflect the different ways she photographs men and women, which we'll get into in this episode 

Farah’s work explores issues of identity, beauty and surface in the United Arab Emerates. Her work puts into question the way people are represented and speaks to and plays with traditional genres of the medium such as portraiture. She grew up between the United States and Abu Dabi, and finally moved to the US when she enrolled at Yale. She enrolled in the music program at Yale, and only switched into the photography program in her third year after a couple inspiring classes.

Her photos have been exhibited internationally, and last year, she had a solo show in NY last year called More Good New and published the book Body Shop. In addition to her practise as a photographer and a filmmaker, she teaches as well in the photography departments at RISD and NYU.

All photos by Farah Al Qasimi

Links:
http://www.farahalqasimi.com

This episode was brought to you by:

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Episode 22 | Hugh Edwards

Recorded in: Chicago, IL in 1972
Episode Length: 1:08.14
Air Date: August 8, 2018

Interviewed by: Danny Lyon
Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

In 1972, more than a decade after I had taken up photography in earnest, I returned to Hyde Park to visit with Hugh Edwards. By then Edwards had retired from his position as Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and was teaching a night course in the history of photography at the School of the Art Institute. Because Hugh Edwards did not like to be photographed, there aren't many photographs of him. He also didn't want to be filmed or tape-recorded—claiming, in his words, that he did not want to be "etched in concrete." He also hated to write, and did so reluctantly and infrequently. I had come to Chicago intent on making tape recordings of him, in order to try and preserve the astounding ability he had with language. Almost everything he said was laced with irony and wit. His reading and his contrary thinking about almost everything in society made him the most intellectual American I had ever known.

Well aware of Hugh's reluctance to be documented for posterity, I told him only that I wanted to record something about his parents and his background; I knew that Hugh had lots of vivid stories about his childhood. Born in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1903, Hugh had been stricken with a terrible and painful bone disease in his infancy. He had to be wheeled around in a cart by his parents until the age of six. (He would be lame for the rest of his life; in the Print and Drawing Room at the museum, there was always a pair of wooden crutches leaning against the wall next to his desk.) One of his ancestors had come to America from Ireland and built a hotel deep in the Tennessee woods after marrying a Cherokee Indian. His mother had worked in a post office near the Ohio River where his father, an engineer on a steamboat, first met her. During the Battle of Shiloh, which was fought just below the border of western Tennessee—a battle General Grant later described as being so ferocious that you could walk across the field by stepping from one dead body to the next—Hugh's great-uncle was shot in the head with a minie ball.
Hugh's grandfather and his grandfather's younger brother, accompanied by a slave named Toby Arnold, then walked to the battle site to find him and bring him back to Paducah. As a child, Hugh was able to lay his finger in the dent that the ball had left in his great-uncle's skull.

When Hugh was a grade-school student, there was a lynching in Paducah. Because Hugh's father was a socialist, some of his classmates left a piece of the victim's skull inside Hugh's desk, to torment him; when the boy opened the top and reached inside, he touched it.

The truth was that I had come to Chicago to try to record Hugh's ideas on photography. Hugh had discovered me when, as a boy of nineteen, I had put a photograph of a construction worker in a University of Chicago Arts Festival contest—and, the following year, a photograph of a truck in the desert. I still remember that spring afternoon when Hugh came into Ida Noyes Hall to see the pictures that were hanging there. The rain was coming down in sheets as he swept into the hall, and I watched as the little man in the Kangol hat propelled himself up the short flight of stairs on his two wooden crutches.

He awarded my picture first prize. The other judge was the former documentary (and later abstract) photographer Aaron Siskind, who challenged Hugh's choice and said he "didn't like trucks." Hugh countered with, "What do you like, pregnant women?' Perhaps there was a picture of a pregnant woman in the show.

It was Hugh who passed on to me his enormous admiration for certain photographers, and inspired me with the feeling that there was so much that could still be done. In 1965, he loaned me his Rolleiflex, which I took into Uptown in 1967, and again in 1969, he gave me one-man shows at the Art Institute.

At the time, I think I printed and edited my pictures so that I could bring them to Hugh for him to look at. After he died, I thought, "Now who do I show the pictures to?”

But what were these ideas that had apparently affected me so? Where did they come from? I had never really encountered anyone in the field of photography who spoke the way he did. My idea that winter was to make "one hundred tapes." In fact, I made only three, and I recall being very disappointed with them afterwards. He sounded so stiff, at times academic, not the person I knew at all. Hugh took it all very seriously. I was so disappointed in the result that I did not listen to the recordings again for twenty years.

Hugh Edwards died in 1986. Six years later, when I was editing his letters, I took out the five-inch reel-to-reel tapes and played them on the same Nagra I had used to make them in 1972. I was stunned. There he was —the laconic Southern accent, the shyness, the irony, the brilliance. I felt like picking up the machine to see if he was hiding beneath it. Hugh liked to say, "the best dialogue is a monologue." He was right. 

- Danny Lyon

Links:
https://bleakbeauty.com/picture-essays/hugh-edwards/hugh-edwards-letters/
http://media.artic.edu/edwards/

Episode 21 | Danny Lyon

Recorded in: Bernalillo, New Mexico
Episode Length: 53:38
Air Date: June 20, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Danny Lyon is a living legend in photography. Born in 1942 to a Russian-Jewish mother and German-Jewish father, he grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens and went on to study history and philosophy at the University of Chicago. Beginning in the early 1960’s while in his early twenties, he was drawn to the civil rights movement in the south which he immersed himself in and documented. He became lifelong friends with Julian Bond and congressman John Lewis, whom he lived with in an apartment in Atlanta. He was in jail with Martin Luther King, jr. During that decade, he became a member of the Chicago Outlaw biker gang which he photographed over a period of a few years and he made work in a Texas prison that would eventually become the books, The Bikeriders (1968) and Conversations with the Dead (1971), respectively. 

Lyon is a Guggenheim fellow twice over (1969 & 1978) and his work is held in countless museum collections around the world including in The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

While he devoted himself to photography throughout the 60’s, he turned to film in the early 70’s. His first film, Social Sciences 127 is about a wild tattoo artist named Bill Sanders, which he shot and then edited at Robert Frank’s apartment. It was at his apartment that Frank introduced Lyon to Danny Seymour, who would give him a cheque for $7,000 to finish his next film, Llanito. As a result of Seymour financing his film, Lyon was able to use his own savings to buy a piece of irrigated land in Bernalillo, New Mexico. He built a house on the land with an undocumented Mexican worker named Eddie, which he and his wife Nancy still live in today. We conducted this interview in the living room of their house.

Woman at a Race in Prairieville, Louisiana, 1964 © Danny Lyon

The Yard. From Conversations with the Dead, 1968. © Danny Lyon

Cowboy at Rogues' picnic, South Chicago, 1968. © Danny Lyon

Links
https://instagram.com/dannylyonphotos/
https://bleakbeauty.com
https://gavinbrown.biz/artists/danny_lyon/works

This episode was brought to you by:

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Episode 20 | John Edmonds

Recorded in: Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 41:43
Air Date: May 15, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

A friend recently told me that John Edmonds pictures of african American men in Do-Rags were the first photo's that had the power to completely change his perception. It reminded me of something which Dorothea Lange said, which was, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” 

One can speak of Edmonds depictions of queer black masculinity in terms of their content and politics, but none of that would be transmittable if the photos themselves were’t so sensual, strikingly beautiful and full of mystery. 

John earned his MFA from Yale in 2016, and since, he has been commissioned by the New Yorker, has had work featured in Aperture and has shown with ltd. Los Angeles. He had a solo show in 2017 called Higher and another which is one right now called Tribe: Act One  at their Lower East Side space which runs till May 31.

When I went to meet John at his studio, there was just one print hanging on the white walls called Marcus with the Sacred Heart - a  . I really loved that, especially just after learning that the late Peter Hujar would do the same at his house. Only one picture of his on the wall at a time. It obliges one to pay singular attention, to look hard, even for a brief moment. 

American Gods, 2017. Photo by John Edmonds

Modernity, 2018. Photo by John Edmonds

Untitled (Head 1), 2018. Photo by John Edmonds

Links
http://cargocollective.com/johnedmonds/JOHN-EDMONDS
http://www.ltdlosangeles.com/johnedmonds.html

This episode was brought to you by:

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Episode 19 | Rosalind Fox Solomon

Recorded in: New York City
Episode Length: 42:36
Air Date: April 19, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

It was an honour to meet with Rosalind Fox Solomon, just a few days shy of her 88th birthday. It’s often noted how she came to photography later than most when she was close to 40, but i couldn’t help think more about how long she’s kept it up for. How long she’s stuck with it. In her 80’s, she has has continued to make photographs, and strong ones at that. 

When we met, she served black coffee and showed me her old darkroom. The way in which she printed was always of great importance, she told me. An exhibition poster hung from a solo show at Moma in 1986, but that’s just tip of the iceberg. The breadth of her work is enormous. It’s held in over 50 museums around the world, has been the subject of 30 solo shows, and appears in 11 monographs, most recently, Got to Go with Mack. She has always photographed both at home and abroad making pictures of people suffering from AIDS during the crisis in New York to Israeli’s and Palestine’s in the West Bank just a few years ago. Vince Aletti said that he’s thought of her as an intrepid explorer, who brings back these pictures that are not necessarily easy to look, but has a lot to do with what makes them so powerful. She’s happy to disturb us.

Blind Girl, South Africa, 1990, @ Rosalind Solomon

Mother, Daughter, Maid, South Africa, 1988 @ Rosalind Solomon

Miami Beach, Florida, 1994 @ Rosalind Solomon

Links:
https://www.rosalindfoxsolomon.com/

This episode was brought to you by:

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Episode 18 | Erin Jane Nelson

Recorded in: New Orleans, LA
Episode Length: 37:10
Air Date: March 12, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

For the past little while, Atlanta based artist Erin Jane Nelson has been travelling to barrier islands, monuments and sites relating to climate change to make photographs. Her pictures, though, serve as her starting points to what become elements in her mixed media work. Its most recent incarnation is in both ceramic and tapestry, which is being shown at the Whitney this month in a group show called Between the Waters. 

Aside from her own artistic practice, Nelson is a curatorial assistant at the High Museum in Atlanta in both the Photography and Folk art departments. She recently curated an exhibition called A Fire That No Water Could Put Out, a survey of civil rights photography from the museum's collection.  She’s also the co-founder of an artist-run gallery called Species that she and her husband, artist Jason Benson, ran out of their studio in Atlanta.

All images by Erin Jane Nelson

Links:
www.erinjanenelson.com
www.psychopompopolis.net
www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/BetweenTheWaters
www.high.org/exhibition/a-fire-that-no-water-could-put-out-civil-rights-photography/

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Episode 17 | Gus Powell

Recorded in Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 52:48
Air Date: February 5, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with Gus Powell at his studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Powell is the author of two monographs, The Company of Strangers (J&L Books) and The Lonely Ones (J&L Books), and is currently at work on his third, Family Car Trouble. His work has been exhibited internationally at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of the City of New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and FOAM in Amsterdam. His photographs have been published in Aperture, Harpers and Vogue to name a few, and he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. 

Images by Gus Powell

Links:
www.guspowell.com
 

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of Night Procession by Stephen Gill

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Episode 16 | Siobhán Bohnacker

Recorded in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 53.22
Air Date: January 8, 2018

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

In this episode, we go behind the scenes with Siobhán Bohnacker to talk about her work as a senior photo editor at the New Yorker. At the magazine, she commissions original photography, art directs The New Yorker's award-winning short fiction section - and curates On Photography for newyorker.com. 

Prior to joining The New Yorker, she worked as a photo editor at The New York Times Magazine and from 2009-2012, worked with NGO’s and non-profits (Human Rights Watch, The United Nations Foundation, Free Arts), as well as advertising clients (Nike, Vitamin Water among others), on the production of high-profile portfolios and campaigns. She has served as on-set producer on over 200 photo shoots, most notably, at The White House, for “Going The Distance”, David Remnick’s profile of President Barack Obama (2014), and “Portraits Of Power”, an ASME-winning portfolio of 56 heads of state, photographed at the United Nations and published in The New Yorker in 2009. International on-set production work includes projects in Africa, Palestine, Israel, the Thai-Burma border and Europe.

Siobhán consulted for The International Center of Photography on independent artist books for their 2013 Triennial entitled “A Different Kind of Order”, for the Museum of Modern Art on contemporary photography for the catalogue to their 2017 exhibition, "Items: Is Fashion Modern?", and has co-produced exhibitions at Colette, Matthew Marks Gallery, Lincoln Center and The New-York Historical Society. A Fellow of The Royal Society of The Arts, Siobhán has been a guest lecturer at the photography programs at Yale, The Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts, and has served on the jury for numerous international photo contests. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Photo by Pari Dukovic for the New Yorker

Chris Ofili. Photo by Malick Sidibé

President Barack Obama. Photo by Pari Dukovic for the New Yorker

Photo by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

Links:
www.newyorker.com
www.siobhanbohnacker.com

This episode was brought to you by:

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Episode 15 | Elle Pérez

Recorded in Flushing, New York
Episode Length: 48:31
Air Date: October 23, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with Elle Pérez at their home in Flushing, Queens. Elle had recently wrapped up the semester at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  They begin by talking about Elle's experience there, both as a participant in 2015 and as a dean in 2017.

Elle's work deals with issues surrounding identity which has manifested itself through projects such as photographing underground wrestlers in the Bronx. Elle earned their MFA at Yale School of Art where they graduated in 2015. Their work has been featured in Aperture magazine and NEWSPAPER , and has been exhibited at Regen Projects in LA and the Danzinger gallery in New York. They have lectured at Harvard, UCLA and Yale and have recently participated in a forum on contemporary photography at MOMA. They are currently teaching at Harvard and RISD.

Binder, 2015 by Elle Pérez

Doubledicks, 2017 by Elle Pérez

Ian with Dick and Phone, 2017 by Elle Pérez 

Links:
http://cargocollective.com/elleperez

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Episode 14 | Ian Lewandowski

Recorded in Montréal, Québec, Canada
Episode Length: 36:43
Air Date: September 21, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with photographer Ian Lewandowski. His work, mostly comprised of pictures of men, speak to themes of desire, representation and gender identity in visual culture.  His portraits, mostly made with an 8x10 view camera are raw and refined, tender and mysterious. They seem to resist being reduced to any one simple reading. yet express his strong, original vision. 

Originally from Northwest Indiana, Lewandowski moved to New York where he pursued his BA at Pratt. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is an MFA Candidate at SUNY Purchase.. Aside from his photographic practice, he also co-curates Slow Youth with his husband, artist Anthony Cudahy, which publishes zines and artist books. 

Links
www.ianlewandowski.com
www.slowyouth.info

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Episode 13 | Teju Cole

Recorded in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 38:33
Air Date: July 7, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

Teju Cole, the celebrated author known first and foremost for his writing through his novels such as Open City and Every Day is for the Thief, has dedicated much of his creative output to photography as well.

He’s been making his own photographs for over 15 years, and writing on the subject photography since 2012. His brilliant essays have appeared in the New Yorker and Aperture, and as photo critic for the New York Times magazine, he writes the monthly column On Photography. Since 2014, he's used the that space to explore issues and ideas central to the discourse around photography today.  

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with Cole at his office in Sunset Park in Brooklyn at an exciting time for him. His first solo show in the US at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York is on till August 11 and he just launched his latest book, Blind Spot, a collection of photographs from his travels paired with a short piece of text that he wrote for each one.

Beirut, May 2016. Image and text by Teju Cole

At the National Museum of Beirut, as in any museum of archaeology, there are shards, sculptures, and plinths eroded by the centuries. Mar- ble is hard, but not invulnerable. But at this museum are also ancient mosaics with very recent damage: mosaics shattered by artillery fire during the civil war.

I am arrested by a Phoenician tribune or altar of the fourth century b.c.e. It has been carved in a purely Hellenistic style. In the lower of its two frieze registers, dancers process across the four sides in high and bas-relief. They move across the centuries to silent music. The grace of the bodies is preserved but all the faces have been knocked off.

In his speech, Nasrallah addresses and does not address Badred- dine’s death in Syria. We fill in the gaps from what is not said.

Who defaced, so meticulously, each dancer in this frieze? It is an- cient damage in this case. But it couldn’t have been the earthquake that hit Sidon in the late fourth century (an earthquake is not a precision weapon). Nor could it have been the use of the site as a limestone quarry, for quarrying requires vaster quantities of stone. More likely it was the Christians. They banned the cult of Eshmun and built in its place a church. They chipped away, with theological precision, each dancer’s face.

The collection is also what is not there. Museum of wounds. 

Tivoli, April 2015. Image and text by Teju Cole

We liked the house. We liked the terms. They would be away for a few months.

Their mother was still alive in September, living in the house, then Death took her. (Their father had died in 1986.) We moved in in January. Funny place. Knickknacks everywhere. Things askew. On the mantel- piece were two urns, containing their parents, there when we woke up, there when we went to bed. 

Lagos, December 2014. Image and text by Teju Cole

Pliny describes in the thirty-sixth book of his Natural History one of the remarkable illusionistic mosaics of antiquity: “Pavements are an inven- tion of the Greeks, who also practised the art of painting them, till they were superseded by mosaics. In this last branch of art, the highest ex- cellence has been attained by Sosus, who laid, at Pergamus, the mosaic pavement known as the ‘Asarotos œcos;’ from the fact that he there represented, in small squares of different colours, the remnants of a banquet lying upon the pavement, and other things which are usually swept away with the broom, they having all the appearance of being left there by accident.” 

Links
http://tejucole.com
http://www.stevenkasher.com

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Episode 12 | Mark Steinmetz

Recorded in Athens, GA
Episode Length: 41:00
Air Date: May 4, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

When I went to visit Alec Soth, he told me is that he often thinks about photography like he does about music. Sometimes you’re in the mood for soul, sometimes jazz, but everyone usually goes back most often to what they love the most. For him, our guest Mark Steinmetz is the ultimate singer / songwriter.

Many of the photographers that I’ve gone to speak with for this show have talked to me about the influence of Mark Steinmetz’ work, especially in the ways he photographs people. Look through any one of his books, from Summertime to South Central, and you’ll see why. He is the author of 12 monographs, he’s a Guggenheim fellow and his work is held in almost every major collection including the Met, Moma and The Whitney. Currently, a show of his work called South is up at Yancey Richardson in New York through May 13.

Images by Mark Steinmetz

Links
www.marksteinmetz.net

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Episode 11 | Bryson Rand

Recorded in Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 45:05
Air Date: April 7, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by by: Cristal Duhaime

Our guest on the show today is photographer Bryson Rand. Bryson’s work engages with his experience as a gay man and speaks to a multitude of issues surrounding gay life today. Desire, shame, pleasure, violence, love, and empowerment are all made visible through his mysterious and inviting gaze. Bryson’s work not only depicts a very personal sense of male beauty, but transcends his subjects as well, creating photographs that on their own life and new meaning. 

Bryson earned his MFA from Yale University, and his work has been exhibited at the prestigious Frankel Gallery in San Francisco and Regen Projects in LA. This month, he’ll be showing an ongoing body of work called Some Small Fever in his debut solo show at La Mama Galleria in New York.

We conducted this interview at Bryson's home in Brooklyn where he lives with his husband Ryan, and their dog Cassidy.

Photos by Bryson Rand from his series Some Small Fever

Links
www.brysonrand.com
http://lamama.org/small_fever/

Episode 10 | Justine Kurland

Recorded in New York City, NY
Episode Length: 37:20
Air Date: March 8, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Sarah Anna McMahon-Sperber
Mixed by: Cristal Duhaime

Our guest in this episode is photographer, writer and teacher Justine Kurland. This past fall, Kurland released her latest photo book, Highway Kind, a virtuosic narrative comprised of 10 years of work that she made while criss-crossing America in a green van that she had retro-fitted to include a bed, a bookcase, cupboards and hardwood floors. The through line in the book are photographs of her son Casper, whom she took on the road with her as a young boy while she meandered through the American Landscape in search of pictures.

We visited her at her beautiful small lower east side apartment in New York where she lives with her son Casper.  Painted red floors, yellow Kodak print boxes and books lining the walls, bathtub in the kitchen, a small painting by her late father, Bruce Kurland, and a little white kitten that she and Casper recently adopted fill the space with a great energy.  We did this interview around dinner time, and she asked if it was ok if she could cook a steak for her son at the same time. We thought that sounded perfect, considering Justine’s work is so much about the balancing act between the demands of being an artist and the responsibilities of taking care of her kid. She describes those feelings so poignantly in a piece that she wrote called Now We Are Six, which appears in the book Highway Kind and was featured recently in the New Yorker.

Photographs by Justine Kurland from Highway Kind

Links
http://aperture.org/shop/highway-kind/

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Episode 9 | Susan Lipper

Recorded in New York City, NY
Episode Length: 38:42
Air Date: February 8, 2017

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Susan Lipper’s iconoclastic work in photography has continuously pushed the boundaries and opened new avenues to the way we look at and experience images. She’s the author of three monographs including Grapevine and Trip and her work is held in the numerous museum collections including of the Metropolitain Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2015, she received a Guggenheim Fellowiship which she’s been using to pursue a long term project set in the Californian Desert. Most recently, a powerful solo show at Higher Pictures in New York featured her work from Grapevine, the first time this work has been exhibited in the US.

In this episode, host Jordan Weitzman sits down with Lipper at her apartment in New York where she's been living for over 40 years to talk about her incredible trajectory as a photographer.

Photo by Susan Lipper from her book trip

Photo by Susan Lipper from her series Domesticated Land

Links
www.susanlipper.com
www.higherpictures.com

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Episode 8｜Alec Soth

Recorded in St-Paul, MN
Episode Length: 43:42
Air Date: December 28, 2016

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Ever since Alec Soth put out his first book, Sleeping by The Mississippi in 2004, he has had a prominent presence in the world of photography.  At the time, he sent copies of the book to the photographers and curators he most admired. One copy landed on the desk of the curator for the Whitney Biennial, who selected his work for the exhibition. That show sparked a meteoric rise for him in the photo and art world and since then, he has not slowed down a bit. He is the author of eight photo books including Broken Manual, Songbook and most recently, a collection of his work called Gathered Leaves. Through Little Brown Mushroom, the homegrown imprint that he founded to explore the relationship between image and text, he is also a publisher.  He teaches as well, both at the graduate level with a post at Hartford University's MFA program and through his own educational initiative, The Winnebago Workshop, a travelling school for teenagers aspiring to be artists.

In this conversation, Soth sits down with host Jordan Weitzman at Soth's studio in St-Paul, Minnesota, and tells him about a revelation that he recently had, which has changed how he's been thinking about his work and his life. 

Photos by Alec Soth

Links
www.alecsoth.com
www.littlebrownmushroom.com
www.magnumphotos.com

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