The photographer Richard Rothman spent more than a decade taking pictures in a small town along the Front Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The resulting monograph, Town of C, was published by Stanley/Barker, and a selection of the photographs appears in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine. The book’s scope is comprehensive, documenting the grandeur and the despoliation of the region’s geography and the lives and spaces of its poorest—and richest—residents. “Through portraits and landscapes,” the critic and curator Lyle Rexer writes in his introduction, “Rothman presents the paradox of expansiveness and confinement, of possibility and crushing limitation.”

In this episode of the podcast, Violet Lucca brings Richard Rothman and Lyle Rexer together for a conversation about Rothman’s new work and the current state of art photography. They discuss how the focus and narrative structure of Town of C changed over time, the role of art photography in a culture oversaturated with images, and the hundreds of minute decisions that go into composing a photograph.

Look at photographs from Town of C and read Rexer’s introduction: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/town-of-c-richard-rothman/

This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com