In this episode I’m joined by Emiliano Zúñiga Hernández, a Costa Rican photographer whose photobook Paraíso, published by Trespasser in 2023, grew out of one of the hardest chapters of his life. We talk about the healing community he helped to build in the hills of Costa Rica, how it fell apart, and how photography gave him his purpose back when depression had taken it away. Emiliano opens up about feeling like a fraud, the question at the Chico Review that changed how he saw his own work, an...
Oct 29
2 hr 13 min
I'm joined again by Zahra Ciardi, a registered psychologist and the founder of Ascendant Bali, for a second conversation about the psychology behind photography and creativity. We talk about what happens when a photographer's identity becomes fused with their work, and why that turns making, editing, sharing and feedback into a constant threat. We also talk about how to hold a sense of self that is clear but flexible. Zahra explains the difference between creating from the wound and creating ...
Oct 22
1 hr 8 min
This is a Q&A with questions sent in by photographers from my community. I answer whether your audience needs to understand your photography, if a project shot in a few days can have real depth, how to deal with perfectionism, the small steps behind my own work that nobody saw, and what to do when your work feels stagnant. If your photography feels stuck or you can’t say what it’s about, some of these answers might help. Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Sup...
Oct 15
51 min
THIS IS PART 2 OF A 2 PART CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW GENITEMPO. In Part 2 of my conversation with photographer and publisher Matthew Genitempo, we go deep into his photobooks Mother of Dogs and Dogbreath, and into Trespasser, the small press he runs with Bryan Schutmaat and Cody Haltom. We talk about making Mother of Dogs on lockdown walks, why its pages are held together with packing tape, and the 3 smashed pennies on the cover. Then we turn to Dogbreath: photographing teenagers in the heat,...
Oct 8
1 hr 11 min
THIS IS PART 1 OF A 2 PART CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW GENITEMPO. I sat down with photographer Matthew Genitempo, the graphic designer turned photographer and publisher behind the photobooks Jasper, Mother of Dogs and Dogbreath. In part one we go deep into Jasper, the photobook he made largely in the forests of the Ozarks as his MFA thesis at the University of Hartford: the critique that told him to stay in one place, the Frank Stanford poems that shaped how he saw the landscape, the men who ...
Oct 1
1 hr 4 min
I sat down with Andrea Modica, the ‘Italian Story’ photographer (as well many other books) who has made every photograph since 1980 with an 8x10 view camera and prints all her work herself. Andrea studied with Richard Benson at Yale, teaches photography at Drexel University, and has just published ‘Italian Story’ with L'Artiere, 40 personal years of large format photographs made in and about Italy. We talked about what makes a good photograph and why complexity matters more than beauty,...
Sep 24
1 hr
In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you’ll learn why I believe meditation is the most direct route to a photographic voice that is unmistakably yours, and exactly what it does to your attention, your creativity and the way you see. I make the full case for meditation as a photography practice. I share my own history with depression, anxiety, loneliness and cancer, the years of therapies and frameworks that never stuck, and how Sam Harris's Waking Up finally gave me a tool I could use anyw...
Sep 17
18 min
In this week’s podcast episode you'll learn why the photographs you're most proud of are probably the ones hiding you, and what a documentary photographer who has stood at 600 deaths says it actually costs to make work that changes something. I sat down with Richard Sharum, the American documentary photographer behind Campesino Cuba, Spina Americana and the forthcoming American Homicide, all published by GOST Books, to talk about photography as an act of empathy, why he believes the photo ind...
Sep 10
1 hr 51 min
In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you'll learn the 4 questions curators, juries, and publishers silently ask about every photography project, and how to answer them in 100 words so your work actually gets seen. I take apart the idea that photography speaks for itself, starting with the Vivian Maier story everyone gets backwards, and share what Shana Lopes, photography curator at SFMOMA, told me she actually needs to hear from an artist: why she has to defend every acquisition in front o...
Sep 3
12 min
Learn exactly what an SFMOMA photography curator looks for, what she passes over, and how to get your work seen without an MFA, a gallery, or a 6-paragraph artist statement. I sat down with Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to find out how photography actually enters a museum collection. Shana has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography, holds a PhD in the history of photography, and has s...
Aug 27
58 min
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