Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

"I think they see themselves as a second family, a found family, a supportive family and they're young in a way where they are exploring the world and seeing things for the first time, it's very exciting, it's intoxicating…" Michael Joseph was in town for his solo exhibition "Lost and Found" at Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery. Michael has some amazing stories about how the "Travelers" work took sha...

Sasha Waters-Freyer is a documentary filmmaker and Chair of the Department of Photography and Film at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her film, Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable, has been getting a lot of press and great reviews and it just aired on PBS American Masters. Sasha and I catch up on the success of the film, her awards, and what it took to get it made and the decisions th...

"…I'm able to share a story in a small part of American on a large scale and that's not me, per say, that's the story of this culture that's been so overlooked and I feel really thankful that…I've been accepted and I've been able to photograph it…" Rory Doyle, Nicole Craine (Everyday Rural America, Ep.74) and I talk about his award winning Delta Hill Riders photo essay. Rory was in town for portfo...

"I feed off of other people, that's really how I teach, I love teaching this way. I like to improvise, I like to go by what is needed." Anja Hitzenberger and I talk about photography, food, Mozart balls, and her new online venture, StrudelmediaLive, where she sometimes teaches from a mountaintop. Anja Hitzenberger is a photographer and video artist whose work focuses on the body and its relationsh...

Aaron Turner started @photogsofcolor on Twitter to promote Photographers of Color and we talk about that back on episode 50, but now this social media idea is becoming an actual Center for Photographers of Color at the University of Arkansas. We talk about all of the amazing changes and successes for Aaron in this half-frame episode of Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton. https://www.aaront...

"We spent a lot of time visiting architectural sites when I was a kid…I really grew up with a kind of 6th sense about buildings, about architecture, and about how architectural space creates a kind of narrative and I've been able to take that and translate that into my photographic practice." Andrew L. Moore took some time after teaching his graduate class at the School of Visual Arts to talk abou...

Yoav Friedlander and Niko J. Kallianiotis call in to talk about their open call exhibition, Rust Belt Biennial. We talk about the logistics of putting together this ambitious exhibition and the leaps of faith you have to make when doing something like this for the first time. We also talk about their desire to change the narrative or the perceptions people have of the rust belt because of the poli...

In this half frame episode I catch up with Lissa Rivera and BJ Lillis (ep.51) to talk about their successes with the Beautiful Boy exhibition and how there is more work to come, but there was so much more to talk about as well. Lissa has just organized the first U.S. museum exhibition of Leonor Fini, the Argentinine-Italian surrealist artist, at the Museum of Sex and BJ is busy learning Dutch to h...

"Ended up going on a six month road trip from Toronto to Los Angeles…all through the south…living in a van…lived in that total for a year, but six months on the road for a photo trip" Katie Sadie started out as a fashion photographer but quickly realized she wanted more out of the work she was making. She sold off her studio equipment to pay for a 6 month road trip through the American South endin...

In this half-frame episode I catch up with Dana Stirling from Float Magazine. Dana and her partner in life and business, Yoav Friedlander, were guests back on episode 49. Dana and I talk about the upcoming issue of Float entitled "Killing Time" and we talk about the rewards of promoting others and building a community while keeping in mind the need to carve out space to make your own work. We also...

"I remember sitting in that art history class and loving it, but flipping through the textbook and not seeing myself in it. And so I was like, 'do black people not make art?' and I know they make art because I grew up in New York." Kayla Coleman is a Collector Relations Liaison for the Carrie Able Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. She is an art historian, educator, and writer based in New York City and spe...

Charles Traub is my first guest for the new half-frame episodes where I catch up with previous guests on what they have been up to. Charles and I talk about his new book, Taradiddle. We also get into the collaborative effort required to publish a book. The book can be purchased here: https://www.damianieditore.com/en-US/product/675 or https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Traub-Taradiddle-David-Campany/d...

"They are really poignant images and they really sort of resonated humanity, and because I didn't know the author, I didn't know the intent or anything, in some ways that allowed me to kind of engage with them. Because I didn't feel like I was being manipulated, I was in control their meaning in some ways." -Oliver Wasow "Since the election, the sort of two dominating emotions for me have been rag...

"This was all slow kind of going as well, an email here and there, and it wasn't until 2014 that Harold's health started to fail quite seriously…and Judith dropped me a line and said, 'if you are serious about doing this film, just fyi, let's get on with it.' So I did and that was where I had to kind of take a bit of a leap of faith. " Filmmaker, Andy Dunn stopped by to talk just hours before the...

"I think the first thing that happened, which is the big overarching theme of the book, was the missing Malaysian plane…and all the kind of mythology and conspiracy that followed it, and that led to a much bigger more personal theme, which is about Andrew, Tom's cousin, who also died in a plane crash." - Paul Kwiatkowski "The book is not a reflection on how we process grief, it is actually process...

This episode was recorded with a live audience at the Noyes Arts Garage reception for the 2018 RAW exhibition that I juried. The episode is actually broken into three parts. The first two parts are at the show during the reception and first I speak with Saskia Schmidt, the Director of Education, and Michael Cagno, the Executive Director of the Noyes. In part two I speak with two of the three juror...

"I left home because I was getting too comfortable. Comfortable with the type of work I was creating, comfortable around the people I had known for 29 years… " Lynsey Weatherspoon was in New York for Photoville after being named to the Lit List - 30 Image Makers To Watch by the Authortity Collective. Lynsey and I talk about leaving home and taking risks in order change your life and to pursue what...

"My first trip after Sarah passed was to the Grand Canyon…so I think that trip and that sense of awe…felt like I was connected to something outside of myself." This episode was recorded during Ryann Casey's artist talk about her show, Loss Event, at the JKC Gallery. Ryann and I talk about combining the personal loss of her friend Sarah, with the public loss of national park land as a means to expl...

"The analogy I always use is that we are on this table as a society, but we don't see that we are getting pushed closer and closer to the edge and we're comfortable because we are still on the table, but now we are looking at the edge and we are freaking out." Bunni Elian is an alum of the Bronx Documentary Center and one of the original members of the Bronx Photo League. Her work on the Afropunk...

"I was like, If I spend as much time working on my own stuff as I do working at this desk I could probably make just about anything happen, so goodbye." Nicole Craine's successes in the documentary/photojournalism world can be attributed to her ability to know when it's time to walk away and when it's time to lean in. Nicole has walked away from a couple of steady photo related jobs in New York th...

"I want nuanced reflections and questions…that's why I like literature…if a book didn't do that you would not be interested and you would throw it away…so I think photography should beckon the same kinds of responses…" Sarah Blesener dropped out of school at an early age to pursue alternative forms of education which included a year of flight school. She describes herself as very goal driven with...

"As an artist I began to feel that I was making collectibles for wealthy people…with apex I turned into more of an educator…and the fellowship is the program that I would have liked, that I think I should have gone on." -Steven Rand As part of a series of events related to the exhibition, Light in Wartime, curated by Rola Khayyat (ep.68), I was invited to speak to Steven Rand, the Founder of apexa...

"I looked back on my life and was like, I've done a lot of tearing down, a lot of dismantling of my life to move on to something else and grow, and I thought maybe I don't need to do that…" Reuben Radding's path to photography can be traced through his love of music. He dropped out of High School to play music and to be with a community that got him away from his abusive father, who was also a mus...

"I think even in storytelling and making pictures there's so much noise and it's so busy and here's this conflict and this violence and for me it's just about people, I just want to see them." Sara Hylton uses portraiture to tell the stories of the oppressed, abused, and the underrepresented. Much of her work focuses on discrimination against women and their resilience in the face of systemic clas...

"That was at the very end of Thailand, I was just starting to think I didn't want to play poker anymore and I was starting to be drawn to something maybe a little more creative which I had never done in my whole life…" Aaron Berger taught himself photography by studying the tech specs that are included with photos on Flickr® and looking at photographers such as Garry Winogrand on the internet. His...