Continuing with my recordings at the 2024 Chico Review, Ben Brody joins me to talk about his two books, Attention Servicemember and 300m both published by Mass Books which was started by Ben and Peter van Agtmael. We 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 and I talk about how Attention Servicemember and 300m are part of his self-reckonining with his role in creating propaganda. We 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.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com -

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.

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Linda Troeller joins me to talk about her book, SEX. DEATH. TRANSCENDENCE., published by TBW. Linda has a storied life in photography from her early self-portraiture, to her book, The Erotic Lives of Women, and now to Sex. Death. Transcendence., Linda has been exploring the female gaze since the early 1970’s. We talk about her ideas on self-portraiture, healing waters, and her amazing time at the Chelsea Hotel, all of which have led to their own publications.

https://sites.google.com/view/lindatroeller/sex-death-transcendence?authuser=0 https://tbwbooks.com/collections/single-titles/products/sex-death-transcendence

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Linda Troeller’s art projects focus on self-portraits, women's and social issues. She made the Chelsea Hotel her base for 20 years, curating an exhibition for the 125thAnniversary, “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of Photographers,” and publishing a monograph, “Chelsea Hotel Atmosphere – An Artist’s Memoir,” 2007 and a new book, “Living in the Chelsea Hotel, Schiffer Publishing, 2015 that won the International Photo Award, 2016. She had a major exhibition at Leica Gallery, Los Angeles, Ilon Art Gallery, Harlem, 2018 and Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC and Museum of.Sex, NYC.

Aperture published her Pictures of the Year award winning images in “Healing Waters,” exhibited at their Burden Gallery, NYC and powerhouse Books published her next book, ‘Spa Journeys,” 2004. Her book, “Erotic Lives of Women,” Scalo, Zurich, 1998 was reviewed as one of the “most gutsy and imaginative books of the decade,” NYTimes. The exhibition opened at Fotohof Gallery, Salzburg traveling to Berlin and Weimar, Germany. Her second book on women, Orgasm, Daylight, 2014 was introduced at the Filter Photography Festival and is in major libraries from Kinsey to Harvard to National Museum of Women in the Arts.’

She received a New Jersey Arts Grant and the Woman of Achievement Award from Douglass College, in 1991 for her TB-AIDS DIARY, a series of photo-collages in Color Polaroid that helped prevent discriminative stamping of HIV in passports. It was exhibited at Fotofest, Houston and over fifty galleries and covered in the Asbury Park Press and Trenton Times to European Photography Magazine. The set of 19 prints was recently acquired by the Norton Museum of Art permanent collection, West Palm Beach, Florida.

She photographed three Fashion Catalogues for the Apolda Museum, Germany and exhibited “Apolda Fashion, 2005” at Centro Colombo Gallery, Medellin in 2006. She returned to Colombia to teach self-portraiture to women in poverty in 2010 for the University of Antioquia. She has an ongoing series of self-portraits, “Self-Reflection.”

She has lectured at School of Visual Arts, NYU, Parsons, Yale, Salzburg Summer Art Academy, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Ryerson University, Toronto and was a professor of photography at Stockton College of New Jersey, Indiana University, and Bournemouth College, England. She has a MFA, School of Art, and MS, Newhouse School, Syracuse University and BS from Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University. She was an assistant at the 1974 Ansel Adams Workshops for Ralph Gibson and in 1987 for Annie Leibovitz and David Hockney. Her photographs are in corporate and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Library of Congress and is in archives such as Special Collections Bird Library, Syracuse University. She graduated from Toms River High School which named her to their Hall of Fame, and resides in New York City and New Jersey. 

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As part of an ongoing series recorded at the 2024 Chico Review, I recorded with photographer Raymond Meeks to discuss his latest book, The Inhabitants published by MACK with an extended poem by George Weld. Ray and I 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 on PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf.

http://www.raymondmeeks.com https://www.mackbooks.us/products/the-inhabitants-english-edition-br-raymond-meeks-george-weld

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

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.

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Return guest, Michael Joseph, talks about his new book, Lost & Found, published by Kehrer Verlag. You may already know the work from the Travelers series on his Instagram account. This is a beautifully laid out and printed book and we get into many of the details and decisions that went into making this book. First, the decision to publish this series, connecting with an editor, the fundraising, what kinds of text would be used, all the design elements, and finally having it in hand. Michael generously shares each step along the way. We also catch up on how Michael’s next series, The Wild West of the East is coming along.

https://www.michaeljosephphotographics.com https://www.michaeljosephphotographics.com/book-purchase/p/lost-and-found-book https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/michael-joseph-lost-found

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Michael Joseph is a street portrait and documentary photographer.  Raised just outside of New York City, his inspirations are drawn from interactions with strangers on city streets and aims to afford his audience the same experience through his photographs.  His portraits are made on the street, often unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen. Themes throughout his portraiture and projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey, the search for equality and human authenticity.

His first monograph, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust" will be published in Fall, 2023 (Europe) and Spring, 2024 (USA) by Kehrer Verlag.

Michael’s work has been featured on CNN, Vice, The Guardian, Dazed, AnotherMan, Paper Magazine, HUCK, the Advocate, and published in magazines internationally including Elle, Inked, 1814 and SHOTS. He has been exhibited nationally, with solo shows at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York, NY) and the Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY) and the FP3 Gallery (Boston, MA). Group exhibitions include the notable Aperture Gallery (New York, NY), the Getty Images Gallery (London, UK) and the Griffin Museum of Photography (Massachusetts). He has lectured at the International Center of Photography (New York, NY), the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), in portraiture classes at the New England School of Photography (Boston, MA) and taught at the Light Factory (Charlotte, NC). 

His portraits are held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, Indiana), the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (Rochester, NH), the Jack Sheer Collection, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY)and private collections. He is a 2023 and 2016 Photolucida Top 50 Photographer, 2020 Photolucida Finalist, and LensCulture Portrait Award Finalist. He is a recipient of the fellowship in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation. 

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David De Lira (he/they) is a queer, BIPOC, lens-based artist and educator born and raised in northern Mexico. He is currently based in Schenectady & Syracuse, New York. I met David at the Biennial Homecoming show at RIT this past winter. David’s work explores their connection and relationship to a white queer community that he married into with their partner. David’s photographs of this community are often made within or accompanied by images of northern landscape that is equally new to David’s life. We talk about how David came to be where he is and how David’s family and friends informs who he is and how that is all revealed in David’s work.

https://www.deliradavid.com

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

David De Lira (he/they) is a queer, BIPOC, lens-based artist born in 1991 Raised in northern Mexico, De Lira currently residing in Schenectady, New York. De Lira holds a BA in Art History & Studio Art from SUNY Albany (2019) and an MFA in Art Photography at Syracuse University (2023). His undergraduate education dramatically influenced his aesthetic, formal skills, and research interests for his present work in art photography.

De Lira’s work concentrates on intimacy, desire, and love, which have been important elements of his own embodiment, along with the subjects of his photographic gaze, who are part of his chosen family--his husband, friends and lovers. 

He consciously uses elements of light, color, gesture, and pose to imbue his photographs with emotional and psychological intensity. De Lira’s work does not attempt to provide definitive answers. Rather, he invites viewers to engage with others in an intimate, meaningful way, requiring them to reflect on their own identities in the process. 

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Photographer, Louis Chavez and I have a conversation about New Intimacies, Louis’ photographic study of gay cruising. It is inspired by Peter Hujar’s work but takes a more experimental approach with more inspiration by writings of José Esteban Muñoz. We also discuss Louis’ work as a curatorial assistant at the George Eastman Museum and, as your teaser, you just might learn a little bit about the Situationist International and Pscyhogeography. Louis was also kind enough to send a video slideshow on the Real Photo Show YouTube channel so you can see the work while listening.

https://chavezlouis.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Louis Chavez is a photographer and curator based in New York. Their solo exhibition, New Intimacies, was exhibited at the University of Rochester’s Hartnett Gallery in 2021 and at PeepSpace in Tarrytown, NY in 2023. Chavez was a participant in SOILED: The Downtown Dirty Book Fair, curated by Matthew Leifheit in 2022, and was a graduate presenter at the Society for Photographic Education’s national conference in 2023. In addition to their visual arts practice, Chavez is a curatorial assistant in photography at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. They were a guest curator at Visual Studies Workshop in 2020 and a studio assistant to photographer Joshua Rashaad McFadden in 2021. Chavez holds an M.F.A. in Photography and Related Media from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a B.S. (summa cum laude) from SUNY Brockport.

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Photographer and New York Times Photo Editor, Mikko Takkunen, joins me today to talk about his upcoming book, Hong Kong, published by Kehrer Verlag with an essay by Geoff Dyer. Hong Kong is Mikko’s farwell to the place where he worked for over 5 years the New York Times desk’s Asia photo editor. It is also where he started his family and witnessed some of the greates social upheavals in the country’s recent history. We talk about how this book is not a social or political statement but an observation and an embrace of a place he loves and is forever connected through experience. 

https://www.mikkotakkunen.com https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/mikko-takkunen-hong-kong   This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Mikko Takkunen is a photo editor at The New York Times’s For- eign desk where he’s spent more than five years between 2016– 2021 in Hong Kong as the desk’s Asia photo editor. He began tak- ing these photographs in early 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued until the summer of 2021 when he left Hong Kong.

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Photographer, founder of Charcoal Book Club and Press, and the Chico Review, Jesse Lenz, is my guest today. We talk about his upcoming book, The Seraphim,  the second book in a series of seven that Jesse calls The Seven Seals septology. We break down what that means and how Jesse sees this life long septology as connected to and inspired by his family, his home, and his life. Jesse and I also talk a lot about the way he has setup his life to make photos, to promote the work of others through the Charcoal Book Club and Press, and to help mentor and provide growth for new generations of artists through the Chico Review.

https://www.jesselenz.com https://charcoalpress.com/shop/the-seraphim

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.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.

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Erin Hoyt is the Director of Operations at Filter Photo, owns and operates a successful wedding photography studio, and is a cotemporary photography collector, and a photographer. Erin learned photography and business outside of academia through internships, work experience, and just being highly self-motivated. We talk about all of these things and about Erin settling in after her recent move to Atlanta. 

https://www.filterphoto.org https://erinhoytphotography.com https://www.instagram.com/erinhoytphotography/ https://www.instagram.com/emariehoyt/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Erin Hoyt is the Director of Operations at Filter Photo, a non-profit photography gallery and festival based in Chicago. At Filter, Erin manages an ongoing series of artist lectures, professional development workshops, and portfolio reviews. Since joining the organization in 2010, she has overseen over 90 exhibitions and 13 annual festivals. In that time, she has worked with a range of artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Tarrah Krajnak, Zora J Murff, Todd Hido, Poulomi Basu, and Rodrigo Valenzuela. Erin splits her time between Atlanta and Chicago.   

Links mentioned in this episode: https://www.mfaphotographyreviews.com https://www.chicoreview.com

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Photographer and former student, Dan Bassini and Michael talk about how Dan has been cutting his own path in photography through sheer will and the use of an old plastic camera. Dan talks about his series, No Invite, a fashion/portrait zine made annually during Fashion Week in New York. Dan also shares the stories behind his current books, Cruel Summer, I Still Feel It, and we talk about an upcoming book and show. Michael and Dan also reminisce a little about his time at Mercer and some funny stories from Michael’s very early teaching days there.

https://www.danbassini.com/ https://therangefinderdiaries.com https://www.youtube.com/@realphotoshow

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections. Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Dan Bassini is a photographer in the New York City area specializing in digital and analog photography. He has released ten books within the "No Invite" series, as well as three non-portraiture books: Highway Hypnosis, Cruel Summer, and I STILL FEEL IT. His work has been displayed in many solo and group shows in the New York City area.

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Photographer and educator, Lara Shipley talks about her book, Desire Lines, published by Overlapse. Desire Lines combines imagery and text, both contemporary and historical, as a vehicle to have a thoughtful and contemplative discussion about immigration. It looks at  our current humanitarian crisis at the southern border and views it through the larger context of human migration and shifting borders. Lara and I also talk about her current collaboration with Antone Dolezal called The Naked Truth, a story about a Victorian Spa founded by a snake oil saleseman and which eerily resembles the disinformation media world that was particularly effective during Covid.

https://www.larashipley.com https://www.overlapse.com/catalog/desire-lines/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com.

Lara Shipley is an American photographer. She exhibits in galleries across the United States, and her work has appeared in notable exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, GuatePhoto international photography festival in Guatemala, the Benaki Museum in Greece and a recent solo exhibition at the international photography festival Cortona on the Move, in Italy. Her work is in collection institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), and the Nelson Atkins Museum for Art (Kansas City). Lara’s photographs have appeared in publications such as Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Atlantic Monthly, Vice, and NPR. She received a MFA in photography from Arizona State University and a Bachelors of Photojournalism from the University of Missouri. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Michigan State University.

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