PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer Catherine Opie discuss Cathy's new comprehensive, survey monograph just published by Phaidon, the pivotal role a family friend played in Cathy's artistic trajectory, the impact her iconic picture Pervert had on her life and the reactions from those who first saw the work at the 1995 Whitney Biennial, including Sasha's own reaction. https://www.phaidon.com/store/photography/catherine-opie-9781838662189/ https://www.regenprojects.com/artists/catherine-opie Opie received a B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and an M.F.A. from CalArts in 1988. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada (2020); Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Princeton University School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ (2018); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway (2017); Nova Southeastern University Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL (2017); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2015); Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA (2012); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2011); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2006); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2002); and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (2000). Opie has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship, Photography (2019), Aperture Foundation Award (2018), Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal (2016), Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009). United States Artists Fellowship (2006), San Francisco Art Institute President’s Award for Excellence (2006), Larry Aldrich Award (2004), and the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts (2003). She has been a professor of fine art at the University of California, Los Angeles, since 2001 and serves on the board of directors of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner, Donavon Smallwood discuss his prize winning work inspired by the history of Seneca Village, A 19th Century Black community destroyed to make way for what is now known as Central Park. Sasha and Donavon also talk about the importance of mentors and the influences of art and literature. http://donavonsmallwood.com https://aperture.org/editorial/2021-aperture-portfolio-prize-winner-donavon-smallwood/ Donavon Smallwood is a self-trained photographer who grew up in a household that emphasized literature and deep engagement with the tradition of art. For him, photography—like all art and creation—is a communion with the divine; and he uses the medium as a means of exploring humankind, imagination, essence, and nature. Smallwood holds a BA from Hunter College, New York. His first monograph, Languor, is forthcoming in June 2021. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, publisher and editor Jason Fulford discuss his latest book, Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph, published by Aperture. Jason and Sasha discuss the inspiration for the book and read some of their favorite excerpts. https://www.jasonfulford.com https://aperture.org/books/coming-soon/photo-no-nos-meditations-on-what-not-to-photograph/ Jason Fulford is a photographer and cofounder of the non-profit publisher J&L Books. Fulford’s photographs have been featured in Harper’s, New York Times Magazine, Blind Spot, and Aperture magazine. He has published many books of his work, including Raising Frogs for $$$ (2006), The Mushroom Collector (2010), Hotel Oracle (2013), and Picture Summer on Kodak Film (2020), as well as coedited The Photographer’s Playbook (with Gregory Halpern, Aperture, 2014). He is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

Sasha takes a short break from the show this week but we will be back to our regular schedule in July. In the meantime, maybe you can catch up with an episode you missed or loved so much you would like to listen to it again. https://photowork.pinecast.co Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer-curator, Paul Graham discuss the exhibition, "But Still, It Turns: Recent Photography from the World" which Paul curated for the International Center of Photography. Paul explains why he wanted to create a showcase for the type of lyrical or post- documentary photography that he feels passionately about. They discuss the way the show came together and the 9 artists included.  https://www.paulgrahamarchive.com Paul Graham has played an essential role in dissolving the barriers between the worlds of documentary and fine art photography. Starting in the early 1980s, Graham’s use of color in the role traditionally occupied by black-and-white documentary was a radical challenge to the unwritten rules of engaged photography. Troubled Land (on the Northern Ireland conflict) and Beyond Caring (addressing unemployment in the time of Margaret Thatcher) shifted the debate on how such issues could be visually articulated. With an extraordinarily long and active career of four decades, Graham has published eighteen monographs and three survey books. He moved to New York in 2002, and has worked in the United States since then. Most notably, a shimmer of possibility was published as a set of twelve books and presented as a solo exhibition at MoMA, New York. He is represented by Pace Gallery in the United States, and galleries in London and Berlin. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and Sarah Meister, the new Executive Director of the Aperture Foundation, discuss Sarah’s tenure as a curator of photography at MoMA, including her extensive research on Dorothea Lange for her major exhibition, Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures. Sasha and Sarah also discuss Sarah’s new position at Aperture and how she might bring her particular skill set to the organization.  https://aperture.org/editorial/a-message-from-aperture-foundations-new-executive-director-sarah-meister/ http://www.sarahmeister.net Sarah Meister is now the Executive Director of Aperture Foundation and was previously a Curator in the Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, a position she has held since 2009. She has spent over twenty years of an exceptional career at MoMA, organizing a range of critically acclaimed exhibitions, publications, and public programs and securing a wide array of landmark acquisitions for the museum’s collection. She was the lead instructor for the popular online course “Seeing Through Photographs” (offered on Coursera), and is codirector of the August Sander Project, a research initiative hosted by MoMA and Columbia University. The project’s fifth and final gathering will take place in September 2021. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Matthew Pillsbury discuss how important the individual image is regardless of how it might fit into a body of work and how this allows Matthew to stay open to unanticipated possibilities and suggestions while making the work. Sasha and Matthew also talk about how an artist’s identity can be understood or perceived in their work even when it’s not overtly referenced.  https://matthewpillsbury.com Drawing on inspiration from Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell, Pillsbury's photographs invite viewers to reflect upon how they choose to fill their spaces and time. Demonstrating a talent for making the familiar seem strange, Pillsbury draws attention to the fundamental ingredients of existence, transforming overlooked aspects of reality into both subject and object.   Matthew Pillsbury graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1995 and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2004. In 2007, he was awarded the Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie award in France, and is also a recipient of the 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship. In 2013, Pillsbury published his monograph City Stages with Aperture. His work is represented in more than twenty-five permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Musée du Louvre, Paris; and many others. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and Gregory Harris, Associate Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, discuss the collaborative and intricate processes of crafting a museum exhibition and the steps involved when museums acquire new work for their collection.  Sasha also asks Greg if art dealers, like herself, are a nuisance, with their endless attempts to sell curators work. https://high.org/person/gregory-harris/ Gregory Harris is the High Museum of Art’s Associate Curator of Photography. He is a specialist in documentary photography best known for his work with emerging artists. Harris was previously the Associate Curator at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, where he curated exhibitions including Sonja Thomsen: Glowing Wavelengths in Between (2015), The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus (2014), and Studio Malick: Portraits from Mali (2012). He also organized and authored catalogues for the exhibitions We Shall: Photographs by Paul D’Amato (2013), Matt Siber: Idol Structures (2015), and Liminal Infrastructure (2015).  Harris also held curatorial positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he organized the exhibitions In the Vernacular (2010) and Of National Interest (2008). His essay “Photographs Still and Unfolding” was published in Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography (McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, 2016). Harris also wrote the introduction for Black Is the Day, Black Is the Night (2016), by Los Angeles–based photographer Amy Elkins, which was shortlisted for the Aperture First Photobook Prize. Harris is a founding editor of the photobook press Skylark Editions and serves on the Board of Directors for LATITUDE, a community digital lab in Chicago. He earned a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago and an MA in art history from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer and teacher, Janet Delaney discuss how living and working as a photographer has changed since the 1980’s when books and shows were only for the very few photographers and finding women mentors was much more difficult. Sasha and Janet also spend a good amount of time talking about Janet’s South of Market and SOMA Now work, so do yourself a favor and take a look at those two projects before listening to this episode. http://www.janetdelaney.com Janet Delaney uses research, interviews and photography to record the untold stories of cities in transition. Her first project bore witness to the 1980s gentrification of a working-class neighborhood in San Francisco and was published as South of Market (MACK, 2013). In Public Matters (MACK, 2018), Delaney documented daily life as it unfolded alongside protests and parades in Reagan-era San Francisco. She is currently completing SoMA Now, a record of San Francisco’s rapid transformation into an international center of technology and all of the consequences these new riches have wrought. Both honest and poetic, her approach straddles the line between documentary and fine art. Delaney is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. She has received numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts grants. Her photographs are in collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Pilara Foundation, the Oakland Museum of California and the Smithsonian Museum, among others. She has shown her photographs nationally and internationally and is represented by Euqinom Gallery in San Francisco, California. Delaney received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981. She has taught widely and held a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley for 15 years. Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha talks with Ashlyn Davis Burns, co-founder of the new agency and creative studio, Assembly. They discuss how events and opportunities lead her from an American Studies degree to her 5 year post as the Executive Director of the Houston Center for Photography. Ashlyn talks about co-founding Assembly with Shane Lavalette (former Director of Light Work) as a platform committed to representing diverse artists in both the fine-art and the commercial world. http://www.ashlyndavis.com Ashlyn Davis Burns is a writer, editor, and curator and the Co-founder of Assembly, a gallery, agency, creative studio, and art advisory focusing on lens-based artists that launched in early 2021. From 2015 - 2020, she worked at Houston Center for Photography as the Executive Director & Curator as well as the chief editor of spot magazine. She earned her BA in Art History from Pratt Institute and her Master's Degree in American Studies at the University of Texas with a focus on American photography and culture.  Find out more at https://photowork.pinecast.co