Open Curtain

Carolyn Drake (Vallejo, CA), grew up in Maryland and studied Media/Culture and History at Brown University. Following her graduation in 1994, Drake moved to New York where she worked as an interactive designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography. She worked on projects in Turkey, Ukraine, and Central Asia for many years before moving back to the US in 2013. Drake’s work seeks to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them.  Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She has published four books: Two Rivers (2013), Wild Pigeon (2014), Internat (2017), and most recently Knit Club (2020), which was shortlisted for the Paris Photo / Aperture Book of the Year and Lucie Photo Book Awards. Her latest work, Isolation Therapy, is currently on view in SFMOMA’s show Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim fellowship, the Anamorphosis book prize, the Peter S Reed Foundation, Lightwork, the Lange Taylor Prize, and a Fulbright fellowship and is in the collections of SFMOMA, Kadist, the Open Society Institute, and the Library of Congress. She is also a member of Magnum Photos.

Mimi Plumb (Berkeley, CA) has served on the faculties of the San Francisco Art Institute, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.Since the 1970s, Plumb has explored subjects ranging from her suburban roots to the United Farm Workers movement in the fields as they organized for union elections. Her first book, Landfall, published by TBW Books in 2018, is a collection of her images from the 1980s, a dreamlike vision of American dystopia encapsulating the anxieties of a world spinning out of balance. Landfall was shortlisted for the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award 2019, and the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2019. Her second book, The White Sky, was published by Stanley/Barker  in September, 2020.Plumb received her MFA in photography from SFAI in 1986. Her photographs are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pier 24, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. She is a 2017 recipient of the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, and has received grants and fellowships from the California Humanities, the California Arts Council, the James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography, and the Marin Arts Council.

Kim Høltermand is a Danish photographer, based in Copenhagen.  Kim’s client list includes Apple, Adidas, and Instagram Design.  His work has been featured in publications such as Wallpaper*, Dwell and T: The NYTimes Style Magazine.Kim is also the founder and curator of the highly popular Nowhere Diary where he promotes the work of other photographers and tells their inspiring stories.

Janet Delaney (Berkeley, CA) is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. She has received numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts grants.  In this episode, we will discuss the key life moments that have shaped her as a person, a mother, and an artist.  Photo by Ekevara Kitpowsong 

Bryan (Austin, TX) and I talk about influences, photobooks, cinema, and much more. http://www.bryanschutmaat.com/Related Articles: https://invisiblephotographer.asia/2012/09/17/watabe-yukichi-a-criminal-investigation/https://trespasser.pub/

Christopher McCall is the Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, one of the largest exhibition spaces devoted to photography. In 2002, McCall received his MFA in Photography from California College of the Arts, studying under Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan. After teaching for 7 years, he joined Pier 24 Photography in 2009 as the inaugural Director, assisting in the conceptualization of the organization’s mission and operating principles. Since opening the doors of Pier 24 in 2010, McCall has overseen the presentation of ten exhibitions and spearheaded the creation of the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, a program in collaboration with California College of the Arts. In 2015 he implemented the Larry Sultan Photography Award in partnership with the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Kim Holtermand is a Danish photographer based in Copenhagen and is the creator of "Nowhere Diary." 

Carolyn Drake’s work began in the documentary tradition and has expanded from there. Drake often collaborates with her subjects and is interested in the ways photography works on the imagination.  Her work has been recognized and supported by the likes of the Guggenheim Foundation, SFMOMA, Aperture, Pulitzer Center, and the Peter S Reed Foundation to name a few, and she is a member of Magnum Photos.  Drake recently published a photobook with TBW Books titled “Knit Club,” which focuses on a small community of women in Water Valley, Mississippi.  In this episode, Drake discusses the challenge of making a living in photography, her reasons for choosing photography as her key medium, and the events that shaped her journey as an artist.  

Born and raised in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, Mimi Plumb has recently released some of the most captivating and important photobooks.

Christopher McCall is the Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, one of the largest exhibition spaces devoted to photography. In 2002, McCall received his MFA in Photography from California College of the Arts, studying under Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan. After teaching for 7 years, he joined Pier 24 Photography in 2009 as the inaugural Director, assisting in the conceptualization of the organization’s mission and operating principles. Since opening the doors of Pier 24 in 2010, McCall has overseen the presentation of ten exhibitions and spearheaded the creation of the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, a program in collaboration with California College of the Arts. In 2015 he implemented the Larry Sultan Photography Award in partnership with the Headlands Center for the Arts.