Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

Nat Ward lives in Queens, NY. His work is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Parrish Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His previous book of photographs and poetry, Big Throat, was published by +KGP in 2020. Ward founded the collaborative photographic project space A New Nothing with Ben Alper in 2014 and has had features on his photographic work published in Aperture, Interview, Collector Daily, Photobook Journal, Photography & Culture, C4, The British Journal of Photography, Unseen, Vogue, Vogue Italia, Vice, and Juxtapoz. He has exhibited photographic and text-based installations at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York Live Arts, Hampshire College, and The Jewish Museum. Ward has been awarded residencies and fellowships from Yaddo, The Cooper Union Professional Development Fund, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. His poetry and critical writing have appeared in publications from Wendy’s Subway, 1080Press, The Brooklyn Review, and Beautiful Days Press. Ward’s poems appear alongside photographs by Sara J. Winson and Aaron Canopy in Shades, published by Push Pull Editions (2024). Ward holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College. https://nat-ward.com https://www.instagram.com/mrnatward/ https://powerhousebooks.com/books/ditch-montauk-new-york-11954/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Photographer and Educator, Siri Kaur, joins me to discuss her new monograph, Sistermoon published by Void. Artist Siri Kaur has been photographing her family for over 30 years, and her youngest sister, Simran, is the central focus of her forthcoming book, Sistermoon. Kaur’s photographs are combined with those from her family archive to create an unconventional album, illustrating the cycles of life and transformation, whilst questioning who observes, who is seen and who belongs. Kaur’s biography informs her work. The book opens with a timeline of photographs from her mother’s traditional family, taken in the 1950s by her grandfather. Kaur herself was born into a cult—one image in the book depicts her parent’s wedding at the Happy Healthy Holy Organization, or 3HO in 1976. After Kaur's family left the cult, her father established a rural living community in Vermont where her siblings remain today. Kaur simultaneously belonged to the family and was also an outsider. Her relationship with her family, in particular her sister, was formed and strengthened by creating photographs together. Photography enabled her to observe, catalogue, and connect. https://void.photo/preorder https://www.instagram.com/sirikaur/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com Siri Kaur is an artist and photographer who examines identities that occupy dualities, diversity, and contradiction. Originally from Maine, Kaur is currently based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and an MA and a BA from Smith College, Massachusetts. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues such as Aperture Foundation, New York; Camera Club of New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; Vermont Center for Photography, amongst others. She was a Professor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2007-2018 and currently teaches at UCLA.

More wonderful attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings. The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. https://chicoreview.com https://www.charcoalworkshops.com 03:00 - Caitlyn Kingery https://www.instagram.com/cat.kingery 13:00 - Oliver Stegmann https://www.instagram.com/oliverstegmann https://www.oliverstegmann.com/ 20:50 - Sasha Williams https://www.instagram.com/sashacastawilliams https://sashacasta.com/ 28:35 - Eric McCollum https://www.instagram.com/eemccollum http://www.eemccollum.com 36:35 - Mischa Lluch https://www.instagram.com/mischalluchphoto https://mischalluchphoto.com/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

More wonderful attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings. The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. https://chicoreview.com https://www.charcoalworkshops.com 04:25 - Sharday Swanepoel https://www.instagram.com/shardayswanepoel 12:25 - Theo Zeal https://www.instagram.com/theo_zeal/ 19:25 - Anna Leigh Clem http://www.annaleighclem.com https://www.instagram.com/aapertura/ 26:04 - Walter Morataya Ramirez https://www.instagram.com/walterrr/ 33:35 - Christopher Jarvis https://www.christopherjarvis.net https://www.instagram.com/christopher_jarvis_/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Alejandro Cartagena | Ground Rules Photographer, publisher, and curator Alejandro Cartagena joined me at the 2025 Chico Review. We talk about the many different ways in which Alejandro practices photography and how much he has embraced being and editor and curator for others. Alejandro also discusses his upcoming retrospective, Ground Rules, at SFMOMA, curated by Shana Lopes along with the accompanying book published by Aperture. The show opens in September and the book is scheduled for November. https://alejandrocartagena.com — https://www.instagram.com/alexcartagenamex/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com Alejandro Cartagena, Mexican (b. 1977, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally in more than 50 group and individual exhibitions in spaces including the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and the CCCB in Barcelona, and his work is in the collections of several museums including the San Francisco MOMA, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, The MFAH in Houston, the Portland Museum of Art, The West Collection, the Coppel collection, the FEMSA Collection, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the George Eastman House and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and among others. Cartagena has received several awards including the international Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Street Photography Award in London Photo Festival, the Lente Latino Award in Chile, the Premio IILA-FotoGrafia Award in Rome and the Salon de la Fotografia of Fototeca de Nuevo Leon in Mexico among others. He has been named an International Discoveries of the FotoFest festival, a FOAM magazine TALENT and an Emerging photographer of PDN magazine. He has also been a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Award and has been nominated for the Santa Fe Photography Prize, the Prix Pictet Prize, the Photoespaña Descubrimientos Award and the FOAM Paul Huff Award. His work has been published internationally in magazines and newspapers such as Newsweek, Nowness, Domus, the Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Monde, Stern, PDN, The New Yorker, and Wallpaper among others.

More wonderful attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings. The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. https://chicoreview.com -- 03:10 - Ryder Collins https://rydercollins.com https://www.instagram.com/streetphotographyisdead/ 11:35 - Carey MacArthur https://www.careymacarthurstudio.com https://www.instagram.com/careymacarthur 19:30 - Richard Dachtera https://www.richdachtera.com https://www.instagram.com/richdachtera 26:50 - David Bowman https://www.bowmanstudio.com https://www.instagram.com/bowman.studio/ 37:24 - Andrew Owen https://andrewowen.tv https://www.instagram.com/andrewowen/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Daniel Arnold, a street photographer with a knack for capturing life’s raw moments, shares how photography transformed his career and personal connections after leaving a writing job at Nickelodeon. He delves into his journey from Milwaukee to New York, the emotional depth of street photography, and the balance between artistic integrity and commercial demands. Arnold also reflects on the importance of human interaction in his work and the complexities of vulnerability in art, showcasing the unique storytelling power behind every shot.

Here are some of the recordings I made in 2025 for my second year at the Chico Review with the wonderful attendees who come to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings. The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Sixty-four applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry. https://chicoreview.com 02:00 - Joe Reynolds https://joereynoldsphotographs.com 09:55 - Darby Routtenberg https://www.instagram.com/jointheclubsandwich/ |||| https://www.darbyrouttenberg.com 16:20 - William Stock https://www.instagram.com/stock_/ 27:30 - Shin Ono https://www.shinono.com |||| https://www.instagram.com/shin_ono/ 34:40 - Sean Stout https://www.seanfstout.com |||| https://www.instagram.com/seanfstout/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Brad Zellar | Till the Wheels Fall Off Author, editor, and photo collaborator Brad Zellar joined me at the 2025 Chico Review to talk about his life as a writer, including his work with Alec Soth and Little Brown Mushroom, and his novel, Till the Wheels Fall Off (Coffee House Press). We discussed Brad’s love of photography and how Chico and Montana have become a second home for him. Brad also shared how his early struggles with addiction and an unintentional photography grant helped him to refocus on his writing and clarify his relationship to photography. (Cover photo: Eric Ruby) https://www.instagram.com/bradzellar/ |||  https://coffeehousepress.org/products/till-the-wheels-fall-off This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com |||  https://www.chicoreview.com Brad Zellar has worked as a writer and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, as well as for regional and national magazines. A former senior editor at City Pages, The Rake, and Utne Reader, Zellar is also the author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, House of Coates, and Driftless. He has frequently collaborated with the photographer Alec Soth, and together they produced seven editions of The LBM Dispatch, chronicling American community life in the twenty-first century. Zellar’s work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Paris Review, Vice, Guernica, Aperture, and Russian Esquire. He spent fifteen years working in bookstores and was a co-owner of Rag & Bone Books in Minneapolis. He currently lives in Saint Paul.

Bryan Schutmaat, an accomplished photographer and co-founder of Trespasser, joins Agnieszka Sosnowska, a teacher and photographer from Iceland, for an enriching conversation. They delve into Agnieszka's journey from Poland to Iceland and her dual identity as an educator and artist. The pair discusses the nuances of publishing her monograph, FÖR, the importance of community in photography, and their experiences with editing color work. They also reflect on how personal stories shape their visual narratives and the significance of tangible books in a digital age.