Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

"When the shelling got too bad my mom would hide us in the bathroom and say it's just raining really hard and this is the safest spot in the house." Rola Khayyat grew up during the Lebanese Civil War but when talking about her experience she doesn't focus on the horrors, she focuses on the richness of her life and how her mother protected her children and gave them a sense of security and home. Li...

"The people that I dealt with were quite fascinating to me because I came from a completely different perspective and I began following them and I said they support me there's no reason for me not to support them." Peter Kasovitz is the co-founder of K&M Camera which has been in business for 42 years. It's an institution among photographers from all around the world and Peter's generosity and...

"There is sort of a desert in Richmond Virginia, there was no photo gallery, there are a couple of blue-chip galleries…but my feeling is I could talk circles around them…where photography is concerned, but I'm still trying to learn the business, that they are very good at." Gordon Stettinius is an artist and the founder of Candela Books + Gallery. He started Candela to help publish and promote wel...

"I really wanted to kind of tackle women being empowered by physical fitness, and being empowered by sports, and what let me into that was discovering roller derby." Andréanna Seymore's interest in photographing women in sports as a source of empowerment can be traced back to her own experience of giving up sports in school because there was no support or expectation of success for women in sports...

"It's just amazing how like when you kind of put energy out, like a certain type of energy that you want to be around and that you want to be a part of, how the world kind of brings that right back to you…" Andre D. Wagner accidentally started his photo career while playing basketball for Buena Visa University as a social work major. He took a photo class thinking it would be an easy grade, but li...

"I don't think I was really ready to break out as a photographer, but I was ready to break out as like my own spirit." Joseph Michael Lopez is a documentary photographer. His interest in photography started while he was a cinematographer. Joseph is mostly self-taught and his work often involves concerns for social justice which is a character trait he attributes to the life story of his mother who...

"We talk to other community organizations all the time, they are like, oh how do you get such great community engagement, we do events all the time and the community doesn't come. Well, are you doing events for the community or with the community?" - Eve Biddle "I'm really proud of what we've done, we've worked so hard, it's fabulous, it continues to grow, why don't I just dive deeper." - Jeff Bar...

"When you're 3 or 5 years old and you're understanding that your grandma fits bras, you don't think about it in a sexual way…I just equated bras with, oh people go see grandma Selma feeling uncomfortable and they leave feeling better." Nomi Ellenson is a body positive and sex positive boudoir photographer. As a freelance fashion photographer, Nomi felt limited by what she was assigned to shoot in...

"That's the thing I get most excited about with photography is what you can hide from the viewer and how you can frame your work to make it something that is very specific or might not be seen just passing by." Katie Kline's photography was influenced by her father's job at Disneyland and their frequent trips to the land of artifice. Now Katie sees a little Disney wherever she travels and you can...

"That's when I came to learn more about Graciela Iturbide, Tina Modotti, Lola Alvarez Bravo…that kicked in this interest or appetite in what else is going on in other places…" Verónica Sanchis Bencomo founded Foto-Féminas as a way to promote the work being done by female photographers working in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was while growing up in Venezuela and witnessing political turmoil...

"If the bottom line isn't scaring you, you haven't thought of everything, and because of that we don't go after enough funding…" Jackie Battenfield is an artist and an entrepreneur, and that is a big part of the message she shares with her audience when she teaches professional practice at Columbia University and when she lectures at conferences. Her book, The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living...

"You know I had a meltdown and went to hang out in the desert for a couple weeks…came back…I talked to my brother and he's like, you say good things but you don't do anything good. You have all these ideas…your at 10,000 feet, nothing is on the ground for you…" Emile Askey was born in California to a Macedonian/Australian mother and an African American father. At a very young age his mother convin...

"I was a criminal, I lived that criminal lifestyle, and I really didn't give a crap about anybody's feelings…but something changed in me and photography…brought me closer to people." Donato DiCamillo has one of the more unique stories of how he got into photography. Afflicted with behavioral and anger issues, Donato was kicked out of high school and became fully immersed in a life of crime. In 200...

"I literally went from, I wasn't able to say the words out loud…my mom is gay, to basically writing it in the Times and screaming it to the whole world." Gabriela Herman does something that is rare among photographers, she makes a living with her photography. Gabriela talks to Michael about some of her career milestones, including getting some photojournalism work through Craigslist. Her new book...

"…and to me that is the irony in all of this…In the act of wanting to be alone, and disappearing, he actually became famous." Amani Willett's new book, The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, pieces together the history and the mythology left behind of a mysterious hermit who moves away from society to the deep woods of New Hampshire in the late 1700's. Amani became interested in Plummer after realiz...

"I remember saying, 'That, that's it, I almost died for that…it's a nothing photograph.' That's how I would have been remembered, he died to make a really nothing photograph. " John Trotter is a former photojournalist and conflict photographer who had photographed in dangerous hot spots like Mogadishu, but it would be on a simple assignment in Sacramento California where John would face his own li...

"Photography is magic…it has incredible and really unparalleled power to represent and define people, communities, and individuals...kids see that and they want to do that and they want to be part of that." Former conflict photographer Michael Kamber founded the Bronx Documentary Center. The BDC is dedicated to providing free photographic education to Bronx middle and high schoolers, as well as ed...

"It was about getting the opportunity as a woman to experience the beauty of my partner and also question beauty and how beauty is constructed and the language of beauty itself." Lissa Rivera and BJ Lillis talk about their collaboration on "Beautiful Boy." Lissa describes this work as a "…confession between friends." and that description reveals itself again and again as Lissa and BJ describe thei...

"People know that there are black artists out there but it's just about why isn't that work included in the overall narrative…Let's know the history of photography and let's figure out how we can insert ourselves into that narrative." Aaron Turner started Photographers of Color so that when you are asked the question, "How many photographers of color do you know?" you would have no excuse for havi...

"The feeling that you are opening a door for someone , what you always dreamt that someone would do for you…it's a very humbling experience." Float Magazine is the brainchild of Dana Stirling and Yoav Friedlander. It is an online publication that allows lesser known photographers to showcase their work with photographers who have had more success in getting recognized. In our conversation about ho...

"I realize I have a kind of self-consciousness about my history, about having grown up in Apartheid South Africa and mostly my work is outside of race…" Gary Schneider is the Director of the Graduate Program at Mason Gross School of the Arts. The Harvard Art Museum has recently acquired a historic collection of printer proofs from the Schneider/Erdman Photography Lab that Gary and his lifelong par...

"I think about that neighborhood that's been wiped away as a crime scene…" Stephen Hilger is the Photography Chair at Pratt Institute. His book Back of Town is a record of a transitional moment in a neighborhood of New Orleans devastated by Katrina. For 5 years from 2008 to 2012 Stephen recorded the struggle between preserving and demolishing the area officially known as "Lower Mid City" but commo...

"Well I'm just going to work at this lab for the rest of my life, I'll be a lifer…because my life is over at the ripe old age of twenty four…and then I got a call from the Chair up at RISD…" Michelle Leftheris is a multimedia artist and has been a faculty member and the Coordinator of Curriculum at the School of Visual Arts MFA Photo/Video/Media program for about 11 years, but that is about to cha...

"Oh you know, Robert Frank did this or you know Soth did this, it doesn't really matter who did it, it's what you are going to put into it. Are you passionate about it, and is this part of your life experience?" Niko J. Kallianiotis makes photographs of places he has lived in the United States both as someone who has lived here for half of his life and as someone who grew up in Greece. His work is...

"And I always kind of thought about myself in my role in the work as this otherness…it was me but it was a version of me.…" Jen Davis explores body image, identity, and relationships through the lens or her camera and the lens of her own journey transforming her body and her perception of who she is. Her work explores the tension between how you see yourself and how others see you. Jen's work is f...