The Expert Eye

In this episode Aimee gives you the secret five-step process for looking at Ansel Adams prints, providing lots of detail on Adams’ signature (and unique) style, how to narrow down print dates, analyze paper, stamps, and more.

In the second half of my interview with Deborah Bell, we talk about Deborah's experiences as a private dealer, auction house specialist, gallery owner, and educator.

After 13 years as a private dealer, Deborah Bell opened her first public gallery at 511 West 25th Street in Chelsea and remained there for 10 years (2001-2011). In 2011 Bell closed the gallery in order to join Christie’s New York, where she was Head of the Photographs Department for 2-1/2 years. In 2014 she re-established Deborah Bell Photographs , and in April 2015 moved to the gallery’s present...

What if you could send from your brain straight to a camera?  In the 1960s, a man named Ted Serios and a psychiatrist named Dr. Jule Eisenbud set out to prove to the world that it could be done.

In this episode, Steven Shainberg, director of 'Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus' joins me to discuss hero worship, hairy actors, and make-believe.

In this episode, I tell the story of how I got to research a very rare photograph by Diane Arbus that she took while on assignment for a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland.  The photograph features 5 youngsters on the stoop of their rowhouse in Queens, sporting monster masks.  It sold for $50,000 in 2019.   W hy is this photo so important?  I'll fill you in.

A German Photographer named Albert Frisch was responsible for some of the first photographs taken in the Upper Amazon.  Among those images are ones of a rubber tree and a man working with latex.  Why is this important? Aimee gets to the bottom of our very complicated history with this special tree.

In 1939, LIFE photojournalist Hansel Mieth took a photograph that would haunt her for the rest of her life.  That photograph was … of a monkey. In this episode, Aimee talks about the time she handled a print of this image and the surprising history behind it.

At the height of Polar Mania, three Swedish explorers went on the search for the North Pole by hot air balloon. This episode tells the story of what happened when documentary photographs taken by the adventurers were found in the ice, years later.

Aimee visits an intriguing exhibition at The Met and realizes that it is coincidentally connected to a print she catalogued for an upcoming auction by pioneering photographer Florence Henri.

A 1933 image of rooftops by influential British photographer Bill Brandt comes across Aimee’s desk, and she tries to get to the bottom of how Brandt made this print using her mantra: Look, Touch, Think, Look (again).  She nearly misses some important clues.

A photographic discovery by astronomer Sir John Herschel inadvertently influences the mad experimentation of playwright August Strindberg, leading to surprising results.