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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Episode 7｜Tim Davis

Recorded in Tivoli, NY
Episode Length: 1:00:58
Air Date: December 7, 2016

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

Jordan Weitzman sits down with Tim Davis at his studio in a barn behind his house in Tivoli, NY. They discuss his first encounters with photography to the work he is currently doing, a body of work called Sunset Strips. Davis Studied at Bard College under Stephen Shore and Larry Fink before earning his MFA at Yale. He is the author of 5 monographs such as My Life in Politics, Permanent Collection and The New Antiquity. In addition to his photographic practice, Davis is also a poet, a musician, a teacher and a prolific writer on photography whose sharp-witted essays have appeared in Blind Spot and Aperture magazines. He currently teaches at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson.

Photos by Tim Davis

Links
www.davistim.com

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Episode 6 | Gregory Halpern

Recorded in Rochester, NY
Episode Length: 42:20
Air Date: October 27, 2016

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime

In this episode, Gregory Halpern talks to Jordan Weitzman about his development as a photographer and some of the thinking behind his work. His new book, ZZYZX, published by Mack Books this fall, is comprised of a mix of portraits, landscapes and still lives made in California over the past five years, poetically strung together to create a new mysterious world of Halpern's own. Like the best of work, his pictures not only speak of the subject matter itself, but also investigates the possibilities of the medium. His pictures are not only beautiful and seductive, but they also resist being reduced to any one simple reading, yet express Halpern's strong, original vision.

Including his new book ZZYZX, Halpern has published three other books of his own photographs, such as Harvard Works Because We Do (Quantock Lane Press) Omaha Sketchbook (J&L Books) and A (J&L Books). He also co-authored The Photographers's Playbook (Aperture) with Jason Fulford. Halpern is a Guggenheim Fellow and teaches photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Photos by Gregory Halpern

Links
www.gregoryhalpern.com
www.mackbooks.co.uk

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Episode 5 | John Gossage

Recorded in Washington, DC
Episode Length: 47:56
Air Date: September 28, 2016

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime
On Location Sound Engineering by: Lenny Pier Ramos

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with photographer John Gossage at his home in Washington DC.  Gossage has been practicing photography since he was a young teenager, and got his first professional assignment shooting sports for the local Staten Island newspaper at the age of 14. He has worked in many capacities as a photographer and has exhibited widely, first showing with the legendary gallerist Leo Castelli in 1975 and more recently with the prestigious Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. The heart of his practice, though, has lied in bookmaking, which he always considered to be the major leagues of the medium. In 1986 he published The Pond with Aperture which went on to become a cult classic. Since then, he has published over 30 books such as Berlin in the Time of the Wall, There and Gone, Hey Fuckface! and The 32 Inch Ruler.

Photographs by John Gossage from his latest book A Dozen Failures

Links:
https://www.tisbooks.pub/collections/all/products/a-dozen-failures
https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/who-do-you-love
http://www.loosestrifebooks.com/

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Episode 4 | David Alan Harvey

Recorded in Outer Banks, North Carolina
Episode Length: 46.23
Air Date: August 19, 2016  

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman & Michelle Macklem
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime    

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman sits down with Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey at his beachside home in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. David's interest in photography began at age 11 when he bought a used Leica with the money he earned from his paper route, and since then has never stopped taking pictures. He has travelled the world on assignment for National Geographic pursuing long term projects throughout Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and Spain to name a few, while at the same time, making his own personal work. He is the author of four books, namely Divided Soul, Living Proof, Tell it Like it Is and Based on a True Story, which went on to receive critical acclaim. David became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1997 and founded Burn Magazine in 2008. Burn has gone on to publish hundreds of essay's by emerging and established photographers alike, and has been awarding grants to emerging photographers every year to be used to pursue their personal work. He is also a teacher and mentor and his legendary workshops have influenced many emerging photographers.

Photos by David Alan Harvey

Links:
www.davidalanharvey.com
www.magnumphotos.com
www.burnmagazine.org

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Episode 3 | Jason Fulford

Recorded in Scranton, PA  
Episode Length: 42:54
Air Date: July 27, 2016     

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman & Michelle Macklem
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime    

In this episode, Jordan Weitzman meets photographer, author and publisher Jason Fulford at his home and studio in Scranton, PA. Fulford has published five of his own books including Sunbird, Crushed, Raising Frogs for $ and The Mushroom Collector, in addition to over 40 books of other artists work that he has published under the imprint that he co-founded, J&L Books. He has done editorial work for Aperture, Harper's and The New Yorker and his photographs have appeared on the book covers of Don Dellilo, Ernest Heminway and Vladimir Nabokov's books. In 2014, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that has been using it to pursue his next book project called Contains: 3 Books, to be released this fall.

Photographs from Contains: 3 Books by Jason Fulford

Links
www.jasonfulford.com
www.thesooninstitute.com/contains/
www.jandlbooks.org

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Episode 2 | Melissa Catanese & Ed Panar

Recorded in Pittsburgh, PA      
Episode Length: 43:40
Air Date: July 6, 2016     

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman & Michelle Macklem
Edited by: Cristal Duhaime      

In this episode, Pittsburgh based photographers Melissa Catanese & Ed Panar sit down with Jordan Weitzman at Spaces Corners, their bookstore and gallery storefront dedicated to the photo book.

Ed and Melissa operate Spaces Corners together, but they each have their own photo practices as well.  Ed has published several photo books including Golden Palms, Same Difference and Animals that Saw Me. Melissa's most recent book, Dive Dark Dream Slow, received critical acclaim and was exhibited last year at Pier 24 in San Francisco.

Photo by Ed Panar, from the book Animals That Saw Me

Photo by Melissa Catanese, from the series When the Bugs Come Back

Links
www.edpanar.com
www.melissacatanese.com
www.spacescorners.com

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Episode 1 | Duane Michals

Recorded in New York City             
Episode Length: 42:00
Air Date: June 15, 2016     

Produced by: Jordan Weitzman & Michelle Macklem                                                                           Edited by: Cristal Duhaime      

In this episode, photographer Duane Michals talks to Jordan Weitzman about his early days in photography to the work he is doing today. Michals is best known for his Sequences, which he first started to develop in the mid sixties. He has had an eclectic career, from that early work being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to doing commercial work for Vogue and Esquire. He is a self-taught photographer and his work broke away from the established styles of the sixties, from his portraits to his iconoclastic combinations of image and text to his very personal approach to bookmaking. Duane has been with his partner Fred Gorey for over 55 years and they live together in New York City. He is 84 and still working, still feeling inspired, still playful in his philosophical and thoughtful approaches to photography.

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Magic Hour Teaser

Welcome to Magic Hour, an upcoming podcast where host Jordan Weitzman sits down with photographers and people involved in the medium to discuss their careers, insights into photography and personal stories. Coming June 15.