PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer and educator, Andrew Moore take a deep dive into the history of Andrew's ever evolving processes and practices. Andrew talks about his varied influences from both the modern and post-modern art world movements. Sasha and Andrew also discuss how his photography kept moving him closer and closer to home culminating in work made in the Hudson Valley where he resides. LINKS HERE https://www.andrewlmoore.com https://www.yanceyrichardson.com/artists/andrew-moore American photographer Andrew Moore (born 1957) is widely acclaimed for his photographic series, usually taken over many years, which record the effect of time on the natural and built landscape. These series include work made in Cuba, Russia, Bosnia, Times Square, Detroit, The Great Plains, and most recently, the American South. Moore’s photographs are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Library of Congress amongst many other institutions. He has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2014, and has as well been award grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the J M Kaplan Fund. His most recent book, Blue Alabama, with a preface by Imani Perry and story by Madison Smartt Bell was released in the fall of 2019. His previous work on the lands and people along the 100th Meridian in the US, called Dirt Meridian, has a preface by Kent Haruf and was exhibited at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. An earlier book, the bestselling Detroit Disassembled, included an essay by the late Poet Laureate Philip Levine, and an exhibition of the same title opened at the Akron Museum of Art before also traveling to the Queens Museum of Art, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Moore’s other books include: Inside Havana (2002), Governors Island (2004) and Russia, Beyond Utopia (2005) and Cuba (2012). Additionally, his photographs have appeared in Art in America, Artnews, The Bitter Southerner, Harpers, National Geographic, New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, TIME, Vogue and Wired. Moore produced and photographed "How to Draw a Bunny," a pop art mystery feature film on the artist Ray Johnson. The movie premiered at the 2002 Sundance Festival, where it won a Special Jury prize. Mr. Moore was a lecturer on photography in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University from 2001 to 2010. Presently he teaches a graduate seminar in the MFA Photography Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, we rewind to episode 6 where Sasha and photographer, Todd Hido, have a wide-ranging conversation about Todd's roles as an artist and an educator. Todd shares his ideas about how students should follow the John Cage rule and “ Find a place you trust and try trusting it for a while”, and how, as a student himself, he had to push back against a critique to make his work less subjective! Todd and Sasha find common ground through cinematic influences and the desire for hope as a motivator to keep working. There is much to love and learn from in this episode as Hido is extremely generous with his hard won wisdom. http://www.toddhido.com Todd Hido is a San Francisco Bay Area-based artist whose work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times Magazine, Eyemazing, Wired, Elephant, FOAM, and Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Getty, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as in many other public and private collections. Most notably, Pier 24 Photography holds the archive of all his published works. He has over a dozen published books; his most recent monograph titled Excerpts from Silver Meadows was released in 2013, along with an innovative B-Sides Box Set designed to function as a companion piece to his award-winning monograph. Aperture has published his mid-career survey entitled Intimate Distance: Twenty-Five Years of Photographs, a Chronological Album in October of 2016. His latest book, Bright Black World, was released by Nazraeli Press in 2019. In addition to Hido being an artist, he is also a collector and over the last 25 years has created one of the most notable photobook collections. His library was featured in Bibliomania: The World’s Most Interesting Private Libraries in 2018 by Random House. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

Writer Rebecca Bengal and photographer Kristine Potter discuss the integration of fiction in a photo book. Rebecca talks about her new book, 'Strange Hours,' while Kristine shares her book, 'Dark Waters.' They explore the collaboration process in creating a book and reflect on hometown histories and visual storytelling through photos.

For part 1 of this 2 part episode, returning guest, photographer Kristine Potter, and first time guest, writer Rebecca Bengal, talk to Sasha about how they each started down their career paths, the similarities in their upbringings and how their early interest in music influenced the way they think about visual art. Sasha and Kristine discuss the history of "murder ballads" used to reference the casual violence against women in Kristine's new book, Dark Waters, published by Aperture which includes a short story by Rebecca. In part 2 of this episode, Sasha and Rebecca will talk about her short story and her new book, Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists, also published by Aperture. http://www.kristinepotter.com https://aperture.org/books/coming-soon/kristine-potter-dark-waters/ https://www.rebeccabengal.net https://aperture.org/books/coming-soon/strange-hours-photography-memory-and-the-lives-of-artists/ Kristine Potter (1977) is an artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, whose work explores masculine archetypes, the American landscape, and cultural tendencies toward mythologizing the past. Her first monograph Manifest was published by TBW Books in 2018. Her second monograph Dark Waters is being published by Aperture in the summer of 2023. Potter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 and was awarded the Grand Prix Image Vevey for 2019-2020. Potter’s work is in numerous public and private collections including that of The High Museum of Art, The Georgia Museum of Art, the Swiss Camera Museum, and Foundation Vevey. Potter is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Middle Tennessee State University. Rebecca Bengal is a writer of fiction, essays, and documentary journalism about art, literature, film, music, and the environment. A regular contributor to Aperture, her writing has been published by the Paris Review, Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, Oxford American, Southwest Review, the Believer, the Guardian, and the Criterion Collection, among many others. She has contributed stories and essays to books by Carolyn Drake, Justine Kurland, Kristine Potter, Paul Graham, Danny Lyon, and Charles Portis. A MacDowell fellow in fiction and a former editor at American Short Fiction, DoubleTake, and Vogue, she holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin. Originally from western North Carolina, Bengal lives in Brooklyn. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer and publisher Matt Eich discuss the intricate play between personal work and universality, the importance of varied artistic inspiration, and the deep understanding and responsibility needed when working with communities as an outsider. Matt also expresses the necessity of having trusted voices help in the editing process. https://www.matteichphoto.com https://www.littleoakpress.com Matt Eich is a photographic essayist working on long-form projects related to memory, family, community, and the American condition. Matt’s work has received numerous grants and recognitions, including PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch, the Joop Swart Masterclass, the F25 Award for Concerned Photography, POYi’s Community Awareness Award, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, a VMFA Fellowship and two Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography. His work has been exhibited in 20 solo shows, in addition to numerous festivals and group exhibitions. Matt’s prints and books are held in the permanent collections of The Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The New York Public Library, Chrysler Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Art, and others. Matt was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work in 2013, and at a Robert Rauschenberg Residency in 2019. Eich holds a BS in photojournalism from Ohio University and an MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School’s International Limited-Residency Program. He is the author of four monographs, Carry Me Ohio (Sturm & Drang, 2016), I Love You, I'm Leaving (Ceiba Editions, 2017), Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town (Sturm & Drang, 2018) and The Seven Cities (Sturm & Drang, 2020). He has one forthcoming monograph scheduled for Fall 2023. Eich self-publishes under the imprint Little Oak Press and resides in Virginia. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In preparation for our first live gathering that we are calling PhotoWork Mixtape, May 24 at 7:00pm ET, featuring Bryan Schutmaat, we rewind the show to our very first episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf where Bryan was the guest! Along with mention of the Mixtape, Sasha & Michael kick things off by discussing our exciting line up of upcoming guests. Sasha speaks with Bryan Schutmaat who, in 2020, received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She and Bryan talk about his process and practice as well as his thoughts about the art world in general and what it means to call yourself an artist. REGISTER FOR PHOTOWORK MIXTAPE: https://photowork.foundation/photowork-mixtape/ https://www.bryanschutmaat.co 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. Read below for more. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this non-episode episode, Sasha, Michael and Taylor talk about the upcoming Mixtape gathering featuring Bryan Schutmaat. Sasha and Michael also talk about our first upcoming multi-guest episode. Register for PhotoWork MIXTAPE at: https://photowork.foundation/photowork-mixtape/

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Carolyn Drake discuss her celebrated book Knit Club, published by TBW Books, as well as her other bodies of work. Carolyn talks about her complex reasons for leaving and then returning to the United States, after many years, and the importance of being connected to the place you are photographing. https://carolyndrake.com/ 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, and 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 an 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. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Tommy Kha discuss his latest book, Tommy Kha: Half, Full, Quarter published by Aperture. Tommy shares his thoughts about how photography is a language and a way to get to know people. Tommy and Sasha also talk about his life and work in Memphis and the obstacles he had to overcome to figure out his place as an artist there. http://tommykha.com https://aperture.org/prints/reassemblies/ Tommy Kha was born in 1988 in Memphis, Tennessee, and lives and works between Brooklyn, New York and Memphis. The artist received a BFA from the Memphis College of Art in 2011, and an MFA from Yale University in 2013. With a humorous and poignant touch, Kha examines how we construct belonging and otherness through photography, inventing new models for self-portraiture with a critical eye toward the medium’s long history of absences and erasure. Growing up as a Chinese-American boy in Memphis, Kha had often been made to feel he was different. Now as an adult the artist locates a place for himself, both within the American South and the tradition of photography. Critical of the ways in which photography has been used to assert truths and historical narratives that exclude or misrepresent, Kha has found a model of picture-making through which he maintains agency as a subject of photography and questions the construction of the “self.” In his ongoing project I’m Only Here to Leave (2015 – Present) the artist creates cardboard cut-outs and prosthetic masks of his own face and photographs them, complicating and fracturing his representation. Kha has also reproduced his image as a puzzle and layered his photographs atop one another in exhibitions, furthering feelings of dislocation evoked by his work. Kha’s work often returns to his family’s history; Soft Murders (2014 – Present) is a collection of ongoing and related projects partially inspired by his mother’s own snapshot photography from a photoalbum she gifted him. Soft Murders maps the connections between the artist’s family, their history, and his hometown through staged photographs featuring himself (as well as cardboard cut-outs of himself), his mother, and signifiers of the Mississippi Delta Chinese Community. Kha has included his mother’s personal photography – self-portraits of a young woman confidently posed, smiling at the camera – within the project. These stand in contrast to Kha’s intentionally theatrical photographs, which balance precariously between comedy and tragedy, being and performing, and the mundane and the absurd. Representing experiences of Asian Diaspora and images of iconic Americana, the artist asks how photography, a tool which has been used to other people who look like him, might become a means by which he can be truly seen. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, writer and educator, Tim Carpenter discuss his book, To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die, published by The Ice Plant. Tim also talks about the importance of seeing a place over time as a way of seeing how you, yourself, have changed over time and how he let go of the idea of subject matter. https://www.timcarpenterphotography.com https://theiceplant.cc/product/to-photograph-is-to-learn-how-to-die/ Tim Carpenter (Illinois, 1968) is a photographer, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of several photo books, among them A month of Sundays (TIS books); Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road (The Ice Plant); Local objects (The Ice Plant); township (collaboration with Raymond Meeks, Adrianna Ault, and Brad Zellar; TIS/dumbsaint); Bement grain (TIS/dumbsaint); Still feel gone (collaboration with Nathan Pearce; Deadbeat Club Press); Illinois central (Kris Graves Projects); The king of the birds (TIS books); and A house and a tree (TIS books). Local objects was included in the 2018 exhibition “American Surfaces and the Photobook” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and was listed for the Kassel Photobook Award 2018. Carpenter received an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in 2012, and in 2015 co-founded TIS books, an independent photobook publisher. He is a faculty member of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program, serves as a mentor in the Image Threads Mentorship Program, and is a co-proprietor of Distant Zine. Carpenter’s book-length essay “To photograph is to learn how to die” was published by The Ice Plant in Fall of 2022.