The Halftone

Alex Matzke devotes her photography to the lives and stories of young women, farmers, Tribal Nations and refugees. Join us for a talk about her early days making Polaroids with her mother, her pictures of women in the military, and her work over the last several years documenting opposition to the Keystone-XL Pipeline.

I visited with Mitch Epstein to talk about his days as a student making pictures in New York City, studying with Garry Winogrand, and setting out across the US in an orange Datsun his father won in a raffle.  We also discussed his time working on films in India and his projects Family Business, American Power, New York Arbor and his latest work Rocks and Clouds.  A book collecting the work is due this summer from Steidl. This episode is brought to you by Haywire Press, presenting signed, deluxe and limited-edition books from the personal archives of Lee Friedlander.

Lois Conner has been traveling the world with her 7x17 view camera for more than 30 years. Listen is as we discuss her early travels in the American West, working for the United Nations and making pictures in China. We also discuss her time with mentors like Philippe Halsman and Richard Benson as well as her recent work with the iPhone. This episode is brought to you by Haywire Press, presenting signed, deluxe and limited-edition books from the personal archives of Lee Friedlander.

On the show this week it’s Andrea Modica.  Andrea fell in love with the 8x10 view camera as a teenager and hasn’t looked back.  It’s been a constant in her personal work for long-term projects and commissioned work alike.    We met up in Philadelphia to discuss her study of photography and the mentors who shaped her along the way, her time teaching at SUNY Oneonta, the drive that led her to meet the subjects of her book Treadwell and her recent work photographing in an Italian horse clinic and at Philadelphia's Mummers Festival.  Andrea Modica is currently on the teaching faculty at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Photographs from her project Best Friends are currently on view at the University of Kentucky Art Museum until April 30th, 2017.  A second edition of As We Wait, a collaboration with Larry Fink, is available from L'Artiere Editions.  For a look at more of her work, visit her website at andreamodica.com.  

My guest this week in photographer Matt Eich. We met up to talk about his work photographing the Southern United States and Appalachia, his time as a graduate student in the Hartford Art School’s International Limited-Residency Program and his life as a dad and family man. Not to mention alligator hunters Rebel and Julius in Shell Island, Louisiana and welding families in Chauncey, Ohio. We also discussed his new book Carry Me, Ohio which collects pictures made in rural Appalachian towns abandoned by industry. Published by Strum and Drang, the book has sold out, but be on the look-out for a limited edition coming in 2017. To have a look at Matt’s work check out his website, www.matteichphoto.com. This episode is sponsored by Haywire Press, presenting signed, deluxe and limited-edition books by photo legend Lee Friedlander. Visit www.haywirepress.com for more.

This week on the Halftone you’ll hear my talk with Thomas Roma! Tune in for big discussions of photography, Wall Street, a car crash, carpentry, building cameras and Roma’s new publishing imprint SPQR Editions! Not to mention his time with Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Walker Evans and playing poker with Helen Levitt and John Szarkowski. To have a look at some of Roma’s photographs be sure visit his website at www.thoamsroma.com. And to check out titles from his new publishing project SPQR Editions visit their website at www.spqreditions.com. If you’re in New York between today and Christmas, check out Roma’s show at Steven Kasher Gallery, Plato’s Dogs. It’s on view until December 23rd. This episode of the Halftone is sponsored by Haywire Press offering signed, deluxe and limited edition books by photo legend Lee Friedlander. Find more at www.haywirepress.com

On the show this week my guest is Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the photography department at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I recently visited with her at the National Gallery to talk about her early love of photography, years spent researching the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and organizing the exhibition, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans. Greenough also worked on two new shows at the National Gallery which are currently on view: Photography Reinvented: The Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker and Intersections: Photographs and Videos from the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. This episode of the Halftone is sponsored by Haywire Press offering signed, deluxe and limited edition books by photo legend Lee Friedlander.

On the show this week my guest is photographer Christian Patterson. I recently visited his Brooklyn studio to talk about his start in photography, his time working with Winston and William Eggleston, his break-out work Redheaded Peckerwood and his latest project and show at Festival Images in Vevey, Switzerland Gong Co! This episode of the Halftone is sponsored by Haywire Press offering signed, deluxe and limited edition books by photo legend Lee Friedlander.

This week on the Halftone my guest is Darius Himes. Over the course of his career Himes has been an editor of the photo-eye booklist, a director of Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and co-founder of photography imprint Radius Books. With Mary Virginia Swanson he is the co-author of Publish Your Photography Book, published in 2011 by Princeton Architectural Press. He’s now International Head of Photographs at the auction powerhouse Christie’s. We visited to discuss his life-long love of photography, his Iowa upbringing, travels in Israel and love of photography! This episode of the Halftone is sponsored by Haywire Press offering signed, deluxe and limited edition books by photo legend Lee Friedlander.

Photographer Adam Bellefeuil is a photographer and family man who makes his living as a video game designer. We met up at his home in Carey, North Carolina to talk about his career in video game design and his start in photography. We also discuss his series of night-time landscape pictures Black Basin and the work he has recently been making near his home as part of the series Cross Road.

Publisher and photographer Paul Schiek joins me on the show this week. Schiek is the founder of the photobook publishing outfit TBW Books and over the past ten years he has released titles with many enduring artists including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Alec Soth, Jim Goldberg and Katy Grannan as well as break-out young photographers like Mike Brodie and Christian Patterson. Listen in as we discuss Paul’s move out West as a teenager, the origins of TBW and his love of work.

Leslie Williamson joins us today on the Halftone! We recently met up in San Francisco to talk about growing up in the Bay Area, photographing brain surgery and her love of midcentury design. Over the past few years Leslie has published two wonderful books which showcase designers’ homes from around the world: Handcrafted Modern and Modern Originals. She's a writer as well and her stories of the places she visits fill her books and as well as her People Watching blog for the style section of the New York Times.

My guest this week is photography curator Sandra Phillips from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Listen in as we talk about her start in New York, hanging around the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a young woman and her move to SFMOMA. We also talk about some of her work with greats like Andre Kertesz, John Szarkowski and Robert Adams as well as her travels as curator and a daguerreotype of a five-pound potato! This episode is sponsored by Ahorn Books.

Doug DuBois joins me for this episode of the Halftone! Listen in as we discuss Doug’s discovery of photography, his working relationships with Jerome Liebling, Larry Sultan and Mitch Epstein as well as his long-term book project All the Days and Nights and his newest book My Last Day at Seventeen.

My guest this week is Alec Soth. We met up to talk about his early days in Minnesota, how Prince bought his childhood home, studies at Sarah Lawrence and the travels behind bodies of work like Sleeping By the Mississippi, Niagara and Songbook.

For more than thirty years Thomas Palmer has been making printing separations for books. His credits include work by Lee Friedlander, Nicholas Nixon, Walker Evans, Robert Adams, Paul Strand, Edward Weston and many others. In spring of 2015 I visited Palmer at his home in Newport, Rhode Island to talk with him about his start in photography, his earliest job in printing and making books with Irving Penn and Lee Friedlander. The Newport Art Museum is currently hosting a show of Palmer's photographs titled "This Newport," on display until September 5, 2016.

As a young man Jon Goodman set out from the United States for Europe to learn photogravure printing. At the time of his journey in the mid-1970s the practice of making flat plate gravures had all but disappeared. After years of travel and trials in Europe and the United States, Goodman began printing work by some of the greats: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange and Paul Strand. I sat down with Goodman in his Northampton, Massachusetts studio to talk about his travels in Europe, working on photogravure with Richard Benson and working with Michael Hoffman at Aperture.

This spring I traveled to New England to visit with a few of the printers behind some of my favorite photobooks. Robert Hennessey makes printing separations for books. His work is behind some of the best photography books of the last several decades, including titles by Paul Strand, Helen Levitt, Robert Bergman, John Szarkowski, Nan Goldin and Sally Mann. I visited with Hennessey at his home in Middletown, Connecticut to talk with him about his early days as a dye-transfer printer, working in photo-offset printing and carrying a boxful of Cartier-Bresson prints from the Museum of Modern Art home with him on the subway!

For the past several years Bryan Schutmaat has been making photographs around small mountain towns in the American West. We recently met up in Philadelphia to talk about his Texas upbringing, ditch-surfing, his early work in photography and his recent book Grays the Mountain Sends.