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

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and Michael travelled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA to speak with Keough Family Curator of Photography​, Gregory Harris and photographer, Rahim Fortune about the amazing show, A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, up through January 14, 2024. Greg talks about how he and Sarah Kennel --curator of Photography at Virginia Museum of Art-- collaborated on the curation of the exhibition, some of the history behind the work, and the practical and curatorial decisions needed in order to narrow down the breadth of work made in the south from 1845 to today. Rahim shares his process of writing the afterword to the exhibition catalog, with Dr. Shakira Smith, published by Aperture, and shares his response to the work in the show along with its historical significance to the history of Black photographers in the American South. https://high.org/exhibition/a-long-arc/ https://aperture.org/books/a-long-arc-photography-and-the-american-south/ https://high.org/person/gregory-harris/ https://www.rahimfortune.com Rahim Fortune uses photography to ask fundamental questions about American identity. Focusing on the narratives of individual families and communities, he explores shifting geographies of migration and resettlement, and the way that these histories are written on the landscapes of Texas and the American South. Rahim has published two books of his photographs. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide and is included in many permanent collections, including those of the High Museum in Atlanta GA, The LUMA Arles, Nelson Atkins Museum and The Boston Museum of Fine Art. “Fortune’s calm and striking photographs provide a compelling glimpse into the daily rhythms of the community, revealing its deep humanity and dignity, at a time when his own personal pain resonated with the experience of the nation. But his images also capture the pain, tensions and relentless everyday reality that have influenced the lives of these people. His portraits are so grippingly engaging because he finds the necessary balance between thoughtful compassion and hard truth.” - Collector Daily Gregory J. Harris is the High Museum of Art’s Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography. He is a specialist in contemporary photography with a particular interest in documentary practice. Since joining the Museum in 2016, Harris has curated over a dozen exhibitions including Mark Steinmetz: Terminus (2018), Paul Graham: The Whiteness of the Whale (2017), and Amy Elkins: Black is the Day, Black is the Night (2017). For the Museum’s 2018 collection reinstallation, he surveyed a broad sweep of the history of photography through prints from the High’s holdings in Look Again: 45 Years of Collecting Photography. His collaborative projects have included Way Out There: The Art of Southern Backroads (2019), a joint exhibition with the High’s folk and self-taught art department. Harris was previously the Assistant 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 has contributed essays to monographs by Amy Elkins, Matthew Brandt, Jill Frank, and Mark Steinmetz. 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. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha is joined by photographer John Gossage to discuss John’s long and storied life in photography. John talks at length about his encounters, both positive and negative, with some of photography's towering historical figures from Lisette Model to Edward Steichen. John discusses the origins of his renowned work, The Pond, and how getting the book published was a real challenge. http://stephendaitergallery.com/artists/john-gossage/ John Gossage (1946- ) born in Staten Island, New York is an artist who has, more than most contemporary photographers, become noted for his intellectually engaging, subversive and well-crafted artist books and other publications. In them the artist utilizes under-recognized elements of the urban environment: unused and abandoned patches of land; refuse and detritus; barbed wire; graffiti and the like, to explore themes as disparate as surveillance, memory and the relationship between architecture and power. “ Gossage is always about the luxuriance of what goes unnoticed, what goes unseen until his pictures call your attention to it,” wrote Gus Blaisdell in The Romance Industry, ( Nazraeli Press, 2001). Gossage photographs that which has just occurred, from markings on a wall to a table after a meal, to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us look at what we have misplaced or abandoned he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history. Throughout the 1980s Berlin became Gossage’s overriding focus. Berlin, with its Wall, and unwanted histories – both forgotten and remembered – became the place where Gossage first explored the ideas that have come to symbolize his very personalized style of photographic storytelling. BERLIN IN THE TIME OF THE WALL was published by Loosestrife Editions in 2004.In 2010, Aperture re-issued and updated The Pond, a groundbreaking visual meditation on Thoreau’s stay at Walden Pond. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Lois Conner talk about the importance of being prepared for and understanding the history of a place before setting out to photograph while at the same time letting go of what you think you know. Lois talks about some of her most important teachers and mentors, from Helen Levitt to Richard Benson, and how they helped shape her process and practice. And, of course, they discuss Lois's dedication to large format from 8x10 to 7x17! https://www.loisconner.net Lois Conner has been based in New York City since 1971, working for the United Nations through 1984. She was awarded a Bachelor in Fine Arts (photography) from the Pratt Institute and a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Art. Conner has received numerous grants, exhibits widely, and features in many publications. She was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Award for Artists (2020) and the Rosenkranz Foundation Fellowship for Photography (2019). She is currently part of the inaugural exhibition at the renovated Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the traveling exhibition Civilization, The Way We Live Now at the National Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. She has also had many solo shows in Asia and United States. Her work has been featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. Her recent books include: Lotus, Trees and the Jiangnan Landscape, Hangzhou, 2019; A Long View, Shanghai Center of Photography, 2018; Lotus Leaves, Wairarapa Academy, New Zealand, 2018. Survey books from 2019 include Civilization, The Way We Live Now by William Ewing and Keeper of the Hearth, Picturing Roland Barthes's Unseen Photograph by Odette England, both are catalogues for traveling exhibitions. Conner has been teaching photography for over thirty-five years, including over a decade at the Yale University School of Art. Other venues include Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Cooper Union, Bard College, Stanford University, the New School and the School of Visual Arts. She taught at The China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China, and is currently a visiting artist at Fordham University. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

In this short non-episode episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha, Taylor, and Michael announce the PhotoWork Fellowship! The PhotoWork Fellowship serves early career photographers in developing a body of work and refining their visual voice and their creative process through the guided mentorship of a select group of established photographers working within the post-documentary tradition. Selected Fellows will receive: Monthly one-on-one mentoring with a dedicated Mentor. $1,000 USD stipend to aid in the production of their work. $2,000 USD value of in-kind photographic services with picturehouse + the small darkroom. One-hour, individual, post-production mentoring session with experts from picturehouse + the small darkroom. Online exhibition on PhotoWork Foundation website of work produced during Fellowship. Dedicated PhotoWork Podcast episode with Sasha Wolf in conversation with Fellows & Mentors. Applications Open: September 15, 2023 *Ten short-list applicants will receive a portfolio review with an industry expert chosen by the PhotoWork Foundation. Short-list applicants’ application fees will be waived for the following Fellowship application period. Deadlines, details, and application are at: https://photowork.foundation/fellowship This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com