PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha talks with Christopher McCall, the Founding Director of Pier 24 Photography. They discuss the history of Pier 24, how he transformed the raw space to create a unique gallery experience, and the final exhibition, Turning the Page, which runs until the end of 2024. Additionally, they touch on his upcoming book, Photo Book Photo List, which will be published by Pier 24. This episode is packed with valuable life lessons, experiences, and wisdom from both Chris and Sasha, offering insights for artists at every stage of their careers. https://pier24.org | https://www.instagram.com/thechrismccall Christopher McCall is the Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, one of the largest exhibition spaces devoted to the medium. In 2002 McCall received an MFA in photography from California College of the Arts, studying under Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan. After teaching for seven years, he joined Pier 24 Photography in 2009 as the founding director, assisting in the conceptualization of the organization’s mission and oper- ating principles. Since opening the doors of Pier 24 in 2010, McCall has overseen the presentation of thirteen exhibitions and spearheaded the creation of the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, a collaboration with California College of the Arts. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, substitute host, Michael Chovan-Dalton continues his Chico Review recordings, this time with photographer, Ben Brody. Ben joined Michael to talk about his two books, Attention Servicemember and 300m both published by Mass Books which was started by Ben and Peter van Agtmael. Ben and Michael 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 talks about how Attention Servicemember and 300m are part of his self-reckonining with his role in creating propaganda. They 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. 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.

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer and founder of Charcoal Books and Chico Review, Jesse Lenz, discuss his monographs, The Locusts and The Seraphim, published by Charcoal Press. Jesse talks about borrowing from the language of cinema as way to approach making and editing photography. Sasha and Jesse also talk about the Chico Review, how it came to be and the experience of spending 8 days with colleagues and attendees in a remote location in Montana. https://www.jesselenz.com - https://charcoalpress.com/shop/the-seraphim - https://www.chicoreview.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. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, substitute host, Michael Chovan-Dalton and photographer, Raymond Meeks discuss his latest book, The Inhabitants published by MACK with an extended poem by George Weld. Ray and Michael 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. http://www.raymondmeeks.com https://www.mackbooks.us/products/the-inhabitants-english-edition-br-raymond-meeks-george-weld 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. Raymond Meeks is a 2020 recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2022. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Kelli Connell discuss her brand new book, Pictures for Charis, published by Aperture. Kelli talks about her fascination with and subsequent extensive research on Charis Wilson and the eleven year relationship she had with legendary photographer Edward Weston, and how what she learned guided her own exploration of portrait-making and landscape work while collaborating with her wife of fourteen years, Betsy Odom. Sasha and Kelli also discuss Kelli's renowned series, Double Life, which also explores the relationship between photographer and model as well as gender and identity. https://www.kelliconnell.com https://aperture.org/books/kelli-connell-pictures-for-charis/ http://www.decodebooks.com/connell.html Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell is an editor at SKYLARK Editions and a professor at Columbia College Chicago. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Baldwin Lee discuss the first-ever publication of his work, eponymously titled, Baldwin Lee, published by Hunters Point Press. Baldwin and Sasha talk about his childhood years in Chinatown in New York City and then later studying with some of the most famous photographers of the times: Minor White and Walker Evans. They also have a provocative conversation about leaving photography behind once you believe you have completed your best work. https://www.baldwinlee.com https://www.hunterspointpress.com/product/baldwin-lee Baldwin Lee was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1951. In 1972 he received a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied photography with Minor White, and in 1975 received an MFA from Yale University, where he studied with Walker Evans.. In 1982, he became an art professor at the University of Tennessee, where he founded the university's photography program. He then decided to take a tour of the deep south, covering 2,000 miles over the course of ten days. During this trip, Lee widely photographed the people, landscapes, and cities of the south. After developing his photos, he realized that he had a particular passion for the African-American communities he had interacted with. He took numerous tours of the southern United States from 1983 to 1989, producing roughly 10,000 photographs. The majority of this work focused on the lives of low-income black Americans. When Lee arrived in a new town, he would visit the police station and let them know that he was planning to take photos with expensive photography equipment, so they could warn him about the poorer, redlined parts of town. Lee would then make a point of visiting these neighborhoods, since they had the highest concentration of black residents. In his work, Lee strived to represent his subjects as individuals with vibrant personalities, rather than reducing them to stereotypes or emphasizing their poverty. Lee retired from teaching in 2014, and is currently professor emeritus at University of Tennessee. He authored the monograph Baldwin Lee (2022), which was edited by Baeney Kulok and published by Hunter Point Press. Lee has received recognition for his contributions to American photography. Imani Perry wrote that "Lee has a sensitive eye for both poverty and dignity", describing him as "a witness to those at the bottom of U.S. stratification, and their refusal to swallow that status". In a 2015 article in Time Magazine, photographer Mark Steinmetz wrote that Lee "produced a body of work that is among the most remarkable in American photography of the past half century". Lee received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1984, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1984 and 1987. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, guest Carla Williams talks about her 2023 publication, Tender, a book of 80 self portraits made between 1984-1991, and additional guest Carolyn Drake talks about her 2023 publication, Men Untitled, a book of 54 portraits, mostly of men, both published by TBW Books. Sasha, Carla, and Carolyn discuss how the books approach portraiture through personal exploration while also referencing, recontextualizing and questioning their many influences from the canon of famous works. https://www.carlajwilliams.net https://tbwbooks.com/collections/single-titles/products/tender https://carolyndrake.com https://tbwbooks.com/collections/single-titles/products/men-untitled This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com Carla J. Williams Carla J. Williams Carla Williams was born in Los Angeles in 1965 in the front seat of a ‘65 Buick station wagon. She became interested in photography in college receiving her BA in photography from Princeton University and her MA and MFA from the University of New Mexico. During her years in school her self-portraiture was made using mostly Polaroid 4 x 5 and instant 35mm film formats. The immediacy of results allowed her to interact with the images at the time of the sitting rather than wait for the darkroom process, lending both an energy and technical looseness to the photographic finish. These images reflect Williams’ creative urgency, her desire to render the likeness in the moment. It would become a signature style in her work. Her professor Emmet Gowin called her graduating thesis show the best thesis show in his thirty-six years of teaching. After graduating, Carla declared her retirement feeling disillusioned with the prospect of becoming an artist. She spent the next decades working independently as a photography historian, writer, and editor. She has occasionally participated in publications and exhibitions, but never pursued a creative career. William's first monograph, Tender (TBW, 2023) is a selection of her self-portraiture made between the years of 1984 and 1999 and kept mostly to herself for more than thirty years. Carolyn Drake Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them. Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries. Drake was born in California and studied Media/Culture and History in the early 1990s at Brown University. Following her graduation from Brown, in 1994, Drake moved to New York and worked as a interactive designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography. Between 2007 and 2013, Drake traveled frequently to Central Asia from her base in Istanbul to work on two long term projects. Two Rivers (self-published ,2013) explores the connections between ecology, culture and political power along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and earned a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. Wild Pigeon (self-published, 2014) is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Uyghurs in western China. This work was presented in a six month solo exhibition at SFMOMA in 2018 and earned the Anamorphosis Book prize. Following this, in Internat (self-published, 2017), Drake worked with young women in an ex Soviet orphanage to create photographs and paintings that point beyond the walls of the institution and its gender expectations. This work was awarded the 2018 HCP fellowship curated by Charlotte Cotton and later exhibited in several festivals in Europe. This project was followed by Knit Club (TBW Books, 2020), which emerged from her collaboration with an enigmatic group of women in Mississippi. Knit Club was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Book of the Year and Lucie Photo Book Awards and exhibited at McEvoy Foundation in San Francisco and at Yancey Richardson Gallery and ICP in New York. Drake now lives in California and is currently developing self-reflective projects close to home. Her latest work, Isolation Therapy, was exhibited at SFMOMA’s show Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis in 2021 and at Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2022. Her work has also been supported by Peter S Reed Foundation, Lightwork, the Do Good Fund, the Lange Taylor prize, Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, and a Fulbright fellowship. She is a member of Magnum Photos and represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery.

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Jim Goldberg discuss his new book, Coming and Going, published by MACK, which is a very personal story but also a book about storytelling itself. Jim talks about his lifelong interest in social justice and Sasha and Jim connect Jim's work to both Jazz and Punk music. Sasha also announces the first ever participants in the PhotoWork Foundation Fellowship. https://jimgoldberg.com/ https://www.mackbooks.us/collections/frontpage/products/coming-and-going-br-jim-goldberg Jim Goldberg’s innovative and multidisciplinary approach to documentary makes him a landmark photographer and social practitioner of our times. His work often examines the lives of neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations through long-term, in depth collaborations which investigate the nature of American myths about class, power, and happiness. A prolific and influential bookmaker, Goldberg’s recent books include Ruby Every Fall, Nazraeli Press (2014); The Last Son, Super Labo (2016); Raised By Wolves Bootleg (2016), Candy, Yale University Press (2017), Darrell & Patricia, Pier 24 Photography (2018) and Gene (2018). Goldberg has exhibited widely, including shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Yale University Art Gallery. His work is also regularly featured in group exhibitions around the world. Public collections including MoMA, SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Getty, the National Gallery, LACMA, MFA Boston, The High Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Library of Congress, MFA Houston, National Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Goldberg has received three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships in Photography, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, among many other honors and grants. Goldberg is Professor Emeritus at the California College of the Arts. He is represented by Casemore Kirkeby Gallery in San Francisco. Goldberg joined Magnum Photos in 2002. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and Anna Walker Skillman, Co-Owner & Creative Director of Jackson Fine Art, have a behind the scenes talk about representing artists and connecting their work with collectors. They discuss the nuts and bolts of running a successful gallery amidst changing technology and perceptions about photography. Anna and Sasha also have an in-depth conversation about what makes a collector and whether or not photography collectors are an endangered species. https://www.jacksonfineart.com Jackson Fine Art is a world-renowned gallery with a 33-year history of supporting artists and collectors. The gallery cultivates and guides both emerging and established collectors to the best fine art photography of the 20th and 21st century, across both traditional and innovative photo-based mediums. Working closely with collectors, curators, consultants, and designers, JFA provides expertise in a warm, welcoming space in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, GA. The gallery is led by Co-Owner & Creative Director, Anna Walker Skillman, and Co-Owner Andy Heyman, Founder, ASH IP& ASH Atlanta. The duo is celebrating twenty years of partnership in 2023. In the spring of 2023, Jackson Fine Art expanded into a custom-built, 4000 square-foot gallery located directly across the street at 3122 East Shadowlawn Avenue. The new gallery retains the comfortable, home-like ambiance of the much-loved former gallery but now with expanded exhibition, office, inventory, library and meeting spaces to keep pace with the growing clientele and opportunity to exhibit large-scale works. The new space responds to the evolution of contemporary art. In addition to 9-12 exhibitions annually, Jackson Fine Art participates in international art fairs including: Paris Photo; The Photography Show (AIPAD) in New York; Art Miami; and Intersect Aspen. The gallery is a member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) and Ms. Skillman is a former member of the board of directors. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Irina Rozovsky talk about her gradual realization that photography was going to be her life's work. They discuss how Irina's process has changed since becoming a partner and mother, and relocating to the South. They also discuss The Humid, "An educational space committed to the practice of rigorous and ambitious photography", that Irina started with her husband, Photographer Mark Steinmetz. Irina's work is included in, A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia where this episode was recorded. https://www.irinar.com https://high.org/exhibition/a-long-arc/ https://www.thehumid.com Irina Rozovsky (b. 1981, Moscow), makes photographs of people and places, transforming external landscapes into interior states. She lives in Athens, Georgia, USA and runs the photography space The Humid with her husband Mark Steinmetz Irina Rozovsky captures her contemplative, cinematic photographs from dramatic vantage points and with a deep sense of empathy. Her work highlights people and the surroundings that influence them, ranging from scenes of contemporary Israel to more personal moments with family in her native Russia. In Rozovsky's series One to Nothing, images of Israel are varied and consist of desert landscapes or sparkling views of cityscapes, often with obscured glimpses of community members engaged in daily rituals. As the sense of place figures prominently in her repertoire, for This Russia, Rozovsky took haunting images of life today in the place of her birth, while My Mother and Other Things from the Sky depicts intimate scenes of domesticity within the photographer’s own family. Meanwhile, her photographs of Brooklyn, New York for In Plain Air portray a cross-section of life in Prospect Park, near the photographer's current home. Rozovsky’s work has been published and exhibited internationally. Solo and group shows include those staged at Smith College in Northampton, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, the Breda International Photo Festival in the Netherlands, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee, the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, the Noorderlicht Festival in Groningen, the Netherlands and A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Rozovsky participated in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program in August 2012. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com