All right, let's do this, peanut. If you're staying in the room, no talking. Hello, and welcome to the Photo Work Podcast, the talking, touchy feely version of my book, 40 photographers on process and Practice. Hello, everyone. I'm Sascha Wolf, recording from Woodstock, New York, and joined as usual, by my friend and producer, Mr. Michael Chovendalton. Hello, Michael.
Well, good morning. Yes, we are doing a morning intro. Here we are.
How are you?
I am doing well. Just one class to teach today, but it's my favorite black and white photo. Oh, in the darkroom today.
Oh, I want to be in that class. I really miss being in a dark room. It was such a big part of my life for so long. Like, people probably. I don't realize this, but I've mentioned before that I studied photography in high school and it actually comes up in this episode. And then also took a lot of photography classes at Purchase in college. But I also had a darkroom in my apartment for a very, very long time. Up until I didn't know. Yeah, really, up until probably even a few years into owning a gallery. When I first. You know, those first few years after I opened, I still had my dark room, but eventually I realized I couldn't do everything. But I do miss that sacred space, that magical wow.
You know, that actually reminds me of something. I recently posted a picture on Instagram of a pencil sharpener, and it was Helen Levitt's pencil sharpener. After Helen Levitt passed, I was invited to help clean out her apartment. And one of the last spaces to be cleaned out was her bathroom darkroom, which she was famously known for. And the reason why I was invited is I had helped a few times along the way install a refrigerator and an air conditioner for Helen Levitt. I mean, it's a sort of crazy part of my very long history in photography. But this kind of leads me to our guest today, our wonderful guest today, April Watson. And just this idea of history that April has with photography and the love of the darkroom. And you actually have a really interesting conversation about the importance of that craft of that dark room, which was a moment in this show. And by the way, I love this whole show. I'm jumping in sort of from the back end right now because I was so in love with this conversation and everything you talked about this episode. April turns the table on you a little bit in this episode, and you have this. Yeah, you have this photo art market conversation, which I think everyone should listen to. But of course, before that, April's connection to the history of photography and her early sort of influence and the decisions she makes that lead her to her current position and just the behind the scenes conversation you have about putting together a show and collecting work. And there is so much in this episode for our listeners that I feel like I've made a little convoluted mess of it. But it's really good.
Yeah, it is really good. I feel the same way. So April Watson is the head of photography at the Nelson Atkins Museum in St. Louis and a wonderful, wonderful curator who I have worked with many times. She's acquired work from many of my artists, but we've also worked together in portfolio reviews and just been a presence throughout my career and someone who I have incredible admiration for and I just like so much as a person. And I, you know, periodically we really like to have people on who can demystify for our listeners who are artists, you know, the behind the scenes. And I think, you know, April walks us through putting together her new show that's gonna open.
Oh, yeah, I didn't even mention that. The American Prospects show, based on Joel Sternfeld's work. And Joel Sternfeld is a hero of Min. Reason why I make color photography and all. And so much. There's so much good stuff in this show.
Yeah, it's really, really chockful, and it's great to be provided with so much information and coming from such a smart, warm, funny, and sympathetic person. And so April was just a terrific guest. I think of her as sort of, you know, a building block in our archive of conversations with great curators like, you know, Greg Harris from the High. Sarah Kennel from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Pauline Vermeer talking about book on Japanese women photographers she did with Leslie Martin. But anyway, you know, I think it's really helpful for our artists, listeners to really hear from curators and get to understand when they're willing to share, you know, be really specific about how a museum works, how the process works of collecting and mounting exhibitions. It's just. It's really generous when they. When they come on and share that. So thank you, April. And so why don't we get to it? We've now talked about every aspect of the show.
There's actually more I could say, but I'm not going to.
All right, audience, go ahead. On that note, Michael, if you don't mind, please take it away.
My pleasure. And here's your conversation with April Watson.
April Watson, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It's so great to have you on. Thank you so much. For being here today and taking the time to talk with me.
Oh, it's such a pleasure, Sasha. Thanks so much for having me.
So, April, we'll start, as we always do, with the biography of the guest. So tell us your journey into being an important, influential curator in the museum world.
World.
How'd you get there?
Well, yeah, I. Yeah, thank you. I, you know, I've been here at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas city now for 18 years, which is kind of surprising that it's gone very quickly in some ways. And I feel very fortunate. I started off really in art school. I went to Alfred University in New York State and was studying to be a photographer, graphic designer, but also very interested in art history and traveled abroad my junior year. Got very excited to learn more about art history, and at some point in my undergraduate career, realized that I liked making photographs, but I was maybe better at thinking about them and writing about them than actually making them. So I went to. I had a summer internship at the Eastman museum in Rochester, New York, and I heard a lecture by 19th century art historian who had specialized in photography, Eugenia Perry. Janis, she went by at that time. I think she's since changed her name to Eugenia Perry. And she talked about 19th century photography in a way that just sort of blew my mind. And I thought, oh, my God, I've never heard anybody talk about these pictures that otherwise I would never think about. And, you know, she.
Can I just interject for one second? Sorry, normally don't do this in the bio, but I'm dying to know. Right. Because what was it that she was saying? Was it her passion or was it specific things about the making of the work?
It was the way she. It was her passion for sure. But she also had a lot of these sort of symbolic or literary references. I remember she spoke about sort of 19th century medical photography. And there was one picture of a man who I think was maybe in a kind of mental institution. And he had this look in his eyes and he had this. These sorts of, like, his gown was sort of ripped. And she talked about him like Lazarus rising from the tomb. You know, it was these kind of like amazing metaphors that she was drawing upon. And, you know, she would talk about Henri Le Sec, who was a, you know, a French 19th century photographer, had a very short career. And I think if you didn't have her background, you would look at the picture and say, well, that's a nice picture of a rock, you know.
Right. Yeah.
But she talked about the way he used the black space the negative space, and it was like a Hugolian abyss, you know, I mean, she was really bringing in all of these references and just, you know, I was, you know, young, and I thought, oh, my God, this is. I've never thought about photographs this way.
Right.
I knew I had kind of wanted to go and continue studying art history. And she was teaching at the University of New Mexico, which was a very storied program. And honestly, I had been living my life in upstate New York. It was very cold and snowy. New Mexico was very exotic. And I thought, well, let's just give this a go. So that's kind of how I ended up there, you know. And they really had a lot of specialized classes, specifically in the history of photography. It was a program that Belmont Newhall had founded. So I kind of fell into it that way. You know, I got a job in the print room there as a kind of work study. And that's kind of where I fell in love with photographs as objects. You know, I mean, Nia really had us look at what is an albumin print, what is a daguerreotype, what is a salt print, all of those things. And also at that time, you know, there was a lot of still postmodernist theories that were a little bit antithetical to the idea of appreciating photographs as art. They really kind of rejected some of that. And it was kind of, for me, I knew I wanted to work with photographs as art objects. And so I was kind of put off from going on for a PhD because I thought, well, I don't. I'm not into all of that theorizing. I think it's very important, and, you know, it's kind of like something you need to know about, I think. And I think it opened up a lot of important lines of critical inquiry about sort of how we think about and read, interpret photographs. But I knew I didn't want to write in that way. This was kind of the October crowd. It was a lot of sort of academic jargon, and it just did not resonate with me. So from there, I got an internship at the center for Creative Photography, you know, continuing work there. I worked with. With Trudy Wilner Stack on a William Christenberry exhibition. And then eventually I met my husband at that time, so we. We moved back east. He got a job teaching in Maryland. And I was very fortunate to get a job working in the curatorial department of the National Gallery of Art.
So I worked with Sarah Greenough, which is fantastic.
Which is amazing.
Good first gig. Yeah.
For Sure. I mean, she's. I was. I feel very fortunate in that I've had amazing mentors and that is huge. Huge. I worked there for a few years. You know, it's always a sort of balance between family and professional life. We were in D.C. and 911 happened and we were about to start a family and, you know, the cost of living was really gonna be prohibitive for us to raise a family. And my husband got a job teaching in Kansas City. And I think, you know, I had a sort of east coast prejudice, like, I don't wanna go to Kansas City, forget about it. And it's, you know. Yeah, right, exactly. And it's in Missouri.
That on a map. Yeah.
Isn't it? Flat out there. So Anyway, you know, 23 years later, here we are. And I was, you know, I knew. I kind of came out here without any job and. But knew of the Hallmark Photographic Collection and met Keith Davis and it was just really kind of being in the right place at the right time. Because at that moment they were expanding the Nelson Atkins photography collection. So it was right at that moment when the Hallmark collection was being gifted to the museum and they were really establishing a photography department and they were hiring for a photography curator, so.
Amazing.
Yeah, it was. I feel pretty lucky in that way. So that's the long winded story of how I got here.
Not long winded at all. And tell me, or tell the audience who probably doesn't know what the Hallmark collection is and what a sort of important development that was of that gift to Nelson Atkins.
Sure. Yeah. Well, the Hallmark Photographic Collection was. It was really a private corporate collection. It was begun really in the 60s. They had a Hallmark store gallery in New York City. And it was really begun as a way to embrace photography as an art form. And I think from the beginning the founders really wanted to embrace sort of the democratic potential of photography as an art form. So Keith Davis became the curator of that collection in the late 70s and really expanded quite a bit. And it was at that time American in focus. That was sort of the dictate. So it was largely American photographers or photographers like Robert Frank who had done significant work in the United States. And he started by really building the 20th century holdings with an eye for. I mean, Keith really had an eye for getting the best example, the best print possible by a particular art. So the vintage, you know, Cartege photograph of the fork. You know, he collected some artists in depth, like Harry Callahan. We have a great group of Dorothea Lange photographs. But he really built a collection with the Idea that every print would be a real gem. And then he started from there to go back in time and started with 19th century acquisitions. So we now have an incredible collection of, you know, daguerreotypes, probably the best anywhere of American daguerreotypes and 19th century works. So that collection was known. I think it traveled around a lot in exhibitions, there were publications, and the hall family knew that they wanted to keep it in Kansas City as a kind of cultural resource for the city. So when the Nelson Atkins was expanding, this was probably late 2005, was the moment where they wanted to kind of combine the opening of the new building with this incredible gift of photographs, which was a transformative moment for the museum because the museum really had a kind of a hodgepodge smattering of works in the collection. They had some great things, a great group of Edward Westons, but really it was kind of things that came in through gifts or not really a conscious collecting strategy. So, yeah, it really kind of put the Nelson Atkins on the map in terms of having a very strong photography collection. You know, after it came to the museum, there was, you know, the strengths are still American, but we've expanded to, particularly in contemporary work, to more global contemporary, and then in the 19th century, expanding to, you know, South America, but largely Europe, European 19th century works as well. So we're always. Whenever we're collecting and thinking about expanding the collection, we're always looking to artists who. Whose work, I think, resonates with what we already have in the permanent collection to a certain degree, but while also keeping our eyes, artists who are doing new and exciting things with the medium.
So this is a really actually important point, I think, in our conversation, because I'm. First of all, I just want to say I remember when the collection went to the Nelson Atkins, this was a big thing in the photo world. And these things are very encouraging, you know, in people who are making photographs and people who are selling photographs, when, you know, museums, well established museums, sort of take that next step into the photography realm. Obviously, it's good for everybody, and so it was very exciting when that happened. But I just want to talk about expanding the collection like, you know, the world is your oyster. How do you decide? Like, it must be? I'm sure there's just endless amount of discussion within the museum, but it's, I guess, sort of easier to go back into 19th century to some extent. But how do you decide just to focus on contemporary? Because that's our audience. Sure, we have a lot of ghosts listening, which would be Fascinating, but I don't think we can help them. Right. How. How do you decide you're going to expand, you know, away from simply. Well, not simply, because America is. Sure, yeah, a huge place and there are, as I always say, many, many, many Americas. Right, right. So many different facets and pockets of the United States. But how do you decide out of the whole world what you're going to focus on? You said it has to make sense within your American collection. But what does that mean?
Yeah, well, yeah, it's a complicated process. I mean, some of it is very. To be kind of boring about. It's sort of pragmatic. You know, it's important to have money and funding to make acquisitions. We have budget for our exhibitions. We rotate our photography galleries, of course, for conservation issues. So we do about three, two and a half to three shows a year. And although there are some opportunities where we can build a show that's almost all new acquisitions, which a show I did recently, Strange and Familiar Places, was a moment where I was able to. I had some acquisition money and I was able to go out and acquire some works by some really terrific emerging artists and include them in that exhibition. But a lot of it is you have X amount of dollars, you know, use what you already have in the collection and then think about, well, what show can you put together and what are you missing? And I would say, you know, I would say that the, the Hallmark collection was, was very strong up until about sort of the 1980s. I will, I will say it kind of, you know, we have some gaps from 1980 on where some of them we can, we can fill those gaps, some we can't. But, but I think as coming into the collection, as a curator, I'm really looking to. I mean, you said it perfectly. It's like there's many Americas. And I think when I looked back at the photographers that were being collected, and this is not exclusive to the Nelson Atkins. I think a lot of curators are looking back at their collections and saying, well, there's a lot of white men, there's a certain canonical history of photography that was the dictum for collecting, you know, in the early 70s. And we need to think more broadly about not only, you know, what facets of America we want to be talking about and the kinds of artists we want to include in the collection, but also how are they working? Because so many artists are. They're not just necessarily making sort of straight documentary style photographs, but they're working with multiple images. The book format has exploded. They're doing installation. A lot of them are working in video. So I think it's important to kind of, of be thinking about all of those, those things to kind of circle back to your question. I mean, I think we do try to. Again, it's kind of budgetary. It's like, well, we need to start with what we have in the collection and build and expand from, from there.
It gives you a point of focus.
It gives a point of focus. I also just, you know, sometimes it's just getting out there and it's a little more difficult being in the middle of the country because, you know, you can't pop into New York or you know, go up to Boston to see the shows. You really are limited. But I try to pay attention to what's going on. I try to visit galleries that I respect and see, you know, who is collecting some interesting, some interesting artists. And you know, I've done portfolio reviews. I'm also really open to having photographers reach out to me. If they're coming through Kansas City. I make time to see their work in person and meet them and kind of start a conversation.
I'm a little nervous that you just said that on the podcast, but anyway.
Well, I figure if you drive all the way out to Kansas City, you know, it's. I feel maybe, yeah, you may have.
A lineup of cars. Yeah, no, that's amazing that you do that. And actually, yeah, let's, let's get into this a little bit because this is. As I told you before we started recording, I had just got back from doing a three day teaching workshop in Massachusetts. My co teacher was the wonderful, amazing Kern Hadelberg. I love you, Kern. And our students were really wonderful. We had a wonderful group of students from all over and quite talented. And the thing that they kept asking about was how does someone like an April Watson see my work? And I understand that it's so mystifying to them. So talk a little bit more about. You said you're always trying to sort of look at things and you know, I know what my process is cause I'm always looking at new work. But what's your process? Are there, you know, certain website. I mean, I know, you know, I'm constantly looking at Lauren Knobloch's Collector Daily. I really trust Lauren and you know, friends are always sending me work to look at. I'm seeing who's getting awards and who's shortlisted for this and that. But what's your process?
I mean, it's not unlike what you do. A lot of it too. Is, you know, I will ask my colleagues, particularly colleagues who are very focused on contemporary photography, and just say, you know, who have you seen that's interesting. Who's doing interesting work, you know, gallerists like yourself, Sasha, really, who are also kind of looking and looking at new talent. So in a way, it's like, it's sort of other people are doing almost the first wave of looking at art. I look at who's winning the book awards, who's winning the Guggenheim Awards, you know, some of the MFA programs, to see kind of who's coming out of those programs. And admittedly, it's a lot to keep up with. And I would not say I do the best job of it.
None of us do.
Yeah. But, you know, I go to the art fair in New York apad I go, I try to see, you know, museum shows as much as I can to sort of, again, see who's being. Who are the new artists being collected at the Getty or who's the new artists that they're including at the Met or, you know, in the National Gallery of Art? I mean, I really try to keep up with that as much as possible. And I'm always happily surprised and I always come away with at least one or two new discoveries, which is always so exciting. Which is exciting. Yeah, I will say, I mean, it's hard, I feel for young artists starting out in the world because I feel like we're all at this moment where arts and humanities are just under attack. And, you know, it can be easy to lose your enthusiasm and your hope. But I also feel like being an artist has never been for very, very few people. Maybe it's a great way to earn a living, but for the most part, it's something you do because you love it and you're passionate about, you know, all of us. You know, nobody's in this to get rich. Also, I, you know, I. Trying to slow down is something I sort of tell young artists and think, you know, this is the beginning of a conversation that might be several years. You know, it's very rare that I meet an artist and I'm so blown away that I immediately want to acquire their works. You know, that rarely happens. But, you know, being in contact with artists, seeing the work in its early stages, seeing how it evolves, that's all really important for me as a curator. And nothing, you know, I really do enjoy in person conversations to really understand the context for the work, who the artist is, what they're trying to express. That's always helpful. People who Send blind emails. That really doesn't work very well for me, you know, because I get so many emails, and it's just, you know, I don't connect so much with that.
One thing you said is you go to portfolio reviews. And I'm always, you know, I do, too, because we see each other at those reviews a lot. And I'm always telling artists, you know, the power of that space because it's so multifaceted. I mean, someone, you know, you make these relationships. It's such a huge networking thing. You get all this feedback. You may make really like lifelong friends and collaborate other than whatever amount of money it costs to do them. And I'm not minimizing that at all because, of course, it's a struggle for many people, but, man, does it pay dividends. It's such a great thing that we have in the photo world. So it's nice to hear you say, mention that on your list of seeing new work.
Yeah, it is. I mean, I think it's unique to the photo world, really, you know, and it's so valuable for people to have, you know, especially after you've left school, you know, you need to have a network of people that are looking and critiquing your work and giving you feedback and portfolio reviews, you know, offer you the opportunity to meet gallerists, to meet curators, to meet photo editors, you know, publishers. Publishers. And I also feel like, you know, if you go to a big one like Photo Fest, you come away with an aggravation of commentary, and then you sort of say, okay, well, these people had totally different opinions about my work. But what I heard multiple times was this. And those are the things you pay attention to.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, I think, again, it is. It's a lot of money for some artists, but I think. I do think it's worth it for the experience, like you say, of the connections you make not just with the people who are critiquing your work, but with the other photographers that you meet there.
Absolutely, absolutely. So I want to talk about. I want to use a show you have coming up as a sort of prototype example of how a curator like yourself puts a show together. So you have a show coming up called American Prospects and landscape photography 1839 to today. So can you tell us all about. Tell us all about this exhibition you have coming up?
Well, you know, again, it started off rather pragmatically in that we got a gift of 18 dye transfer photographs from Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects.
Amazing. Makes me want to come in and Rob the museum. But anyway, it was.
It's one of my favorite bodies of work. And, you know, we were incredibly excited about this. And, you know, part of my job as a curator also is to honor donors, you know, to sort of celebrate the gifts that they give us.
Absolutely.
So we knew we wanted to show the work, and we try to show important gifts like this soon after we acquire them. And by soon, I mean, you know, within two years, because museum time is much slower than regular time. And, you know, I think what's interesting as a curator, particularly in a. In a Midwestern encyclopedic art museum, is that our visitors who love the museum, they love photography, but they do not know the names of, you know, major photographers in the way they know, like, Van Gogh or Monetary. So they probably don't know who Joel Sternfeld is. Although many of the people listening to this podcast will probably think that's crazy. But, you know, unless it's Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz. Correct. They're not gonna know these. You know, you can't rely on name recognition to draw people in. And so then it becomes a challenge for me as a curious like, well, how do we make this. How do we bring these photographs to life and get people to understand why they're so extraordinary and also to kind think about them in the context of where we are now as a country? You know, not only where we are now, but kind of how Sternfeld came to that moment as a landscape photographer. So I thought, well, what if we, you know, use these 18 photographs as a kind of core for this show and then extend it forward and backward in time to think about, you know, to pull out some of the themes that he was working with and to think about how. How it sits in the history of photography today. And, you know, there were great shows. You know, Karen Haas had a terrific show, Ansel Adams in our time, which I thought, in a way, was a kind of a spark of an idea for me. It's like, well, that's a great way to kind of situate those iconic pictures in a new and fresh way.
Right. You're talking about in Boston.
It was in Boston. Yeah, a couple years ago, and that show traveled around. So, you know, it really kind of started like that. And again, because we have this really amazing collection of American photography with a lot of strengths in American landscape photography, we were able to sort of build around it. So, you know, when I was presenting the project, I really kind of tried to situate this body of work in the time that it was produced sort of late 70s, sort of 78 to 86. Right. Was the time period it was published in 1987, which is, you know, it was. Personally it's like that's sort of my late childhood, early adolescence. So it was kind of interesting for me too to go back to that, but also to think about. We've had these moments in photographic history where artists have gone in search of America. They've tried to find, do cross country road trip. It's a classic right trope. So what was Sternfeld doing? What was his impetus? You know, he was deeply inspired by certainly concerned about the environment, environmental concerns. He loved the natural world. But he was also really going out in the country at a time where he felt, I think is his quote something to the effect of he felt something was amiss in America. You know, this is the sort of the culmination of the 70s. We have economic crisis, we have energy crisis, the Watergate, the Vietnam War. So there is this sort of crisis of confidence, as Jimmy Carter said in his 1979 speech, where you know, something wasn't quite feeling right in the United States. And that's what Stern felt was, was going out. And frankly it's, you know, not unlike our current, our current moment in the.
Way a little more subtle then it was right to now.
But right now it's, you know, we're really at a. At a much more critical point. But you know, it's like how do you go out and photograph the country? So, you know, pulling out themes too of, you know, he did a lot of work out in the American West. So looking back to photographers like Carlton Watkins or some of the those early photographers who were photographing the west as the railroad was expanding or as they were working on the geological surveys, thinking about, by the time you get to the Great Depression, some of the issues facing over cultivation of the land. And of course Sternfeld, he was very aware of Walker Evans and Robert Frank. He drove around with a copy of American Photographs. So having a nod to those precedents. So that is leading up to the work he's producing in the late 70s, 80s. And then thinking about some of his contemporaries like Eggleston, people who are working in color and then thinking about contemporary photographers who are also exploring ideas of what it means to live in the nuclear age. So photographers like David Meisel, who are also looking at the way we've polluted the land. Mitch Epstein's done a great series on sort of old growth trees. We had a new acquisition of his work. We're including in the show, Barbara Boswell photographed national champion trees. So we have a work of hers in the show. So. And then thinking also about issues about the US Mexico border. So we have people like Victoria San Benares and also David Taylor, who did a whole series, you know, so I think trying really was kind of building a show that would help people look at those photographs that Sternfeld made within a broader context is how we sort of started to build the checklist.
So when you're working on that, are you sitting in a room with associate or assistant, whatever the titles are, curators, and people are throwing out ideas or, you know, how does it. How does that work? If you don't mind sort of giving us that nitty gritty?
Sure, yeah. I mean, sometimes it's very. It's more solitary. Other times, this particular show, I was working with. Working with a younger research assistant, our curatorial assistant, Julie Weber and Andrea Yeager, and giving, you know, helping give them some experience about how you put a show together, how you write a label, that sort of a thing. So. And it was kind of great because neither of them come from a background in photo history. So it was interesting to give them the challenge of, okay, look through the collection and think about works that you think might resonate with the Sternfeld photographs. And I gave them a list of photographers to look at. So that was very specific to this kind of show. Other shows, you know, in terms of the internal mechanism. I have an idea for a show. I present it to our deputy director. He gives it a green light. I then present it to our director and the senior leadership group, and we go through various stages of development. I am working with people in our Learning and engagement team to think about label writing. We have a very long process for writing labels because they're in charge of making sure I'm not using any language that is too esoteric or too academic.
And then also talk about that. That's really fascinating because I think a lot of people don't realize. I remember talking to Greg Harris at the High about this. Like, there are teams of people who do, who work at museums who need to make sure that the visitors are going to be able to, you know, legibly read what's the writing on the wall and understand how it connects. So. Yeah, could you just talk about that process for a minute?
Sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, we are, you know, I mean. And I will say that I've. Now that I've been here 18 years, we've had various waves of working with our education department, and in the beginning, it was a little contentious because curators don't like to be edited very much.
Right.
But, you know, I think we've. We've grown to learn because that whole field has expanded. So, you know, people have shorter attention spans. They don't want to read 200 word labels, you know, so they say, you know, you need to make your main point in under 100 words, which is a challenge. And they also, you know, terms like, say, if you're talking about pictorialism, you can't just throw that term out there and assume that everybody's gonna know what you're talking about. Most people won't. So you need to sort of step back and describe what you're talking about in as few words as possible, that kind of thing. So, you know, I think, you know, they're not there to edit your content or to say, well, you really, you should be saying this about, about this work. And on the rare occasion they do try that, I say, well, no, that's my job.
Denied.
Yes, denied. Reject comment. So, you know, but mostly it's really kind of. They're coming at it, you know, without the deep knowledge of the subject matter, and they're just trying to make it more digestible and informative for visitors. And I'm all for that. You know, I think that's important. We don't want to be off putting to visitors. We want them to get more curious about the work and to actually.
Absolutely, yes, I support that 100%. We want more people to be curious about what we love because it's. I, you know, I mean, this is a totally separate conversation, but I think photography, fine art photography is in trouble in the wider consciousness of folks, and it's complicated. So I'm all for doing anything possible to provide education that makes people feel included and not intimidated.
For sure. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about. You know, I know that's a big topic, but what makes you think. What leads you to that sort of assessment that fine art photography, you're feeling like it's in. In trouble?
Yeah, well, it. Unfortunately, I'll. I'll try and make this short. It's. It's. I think I'll need to listen to your other podcast. Yeah, yeah. I have talked about this before, but I think it's a few things, but I don't think it's a million things. I think there's a few things that have just brought us to where we are now, and, and they're unfortunately extremely potent. You know, one is, I think that the people who, like the hall family, that created the fine art photography market in the, you know, 60s and 70s, sort of the heyday of when we really started to think about photography as an art form. And then that sort of accelerated into the early 2000s. I think that that. That was really propped up, created and propped up by a group of people, mostly men and mostly white men, who had studied photography when they were young, probably in high school, and fell in love with the dark room and that whole sort of beautiful, mysterious. Right, the magic of the dark room. The magic, absolutely. And. And these guys ultimately decided to be good sons and go to law school or medical school or into finance or whatever it was, but retained this incredible passion for photography. And I think they really created the market in a lot of ways. I think that those people have aged out and are not correcting anymore, or not many of them are. And that group of people cannot be replaced because the dark room barely exists anymore. And I think the dark room was a key component of that. And I could talk about that for a long time. But I think when I say that that theory sounds a little shaky because that sounds sort of superficial. It's not superficial. It was a tactile thing. It was a thing you did that you did with your hands. And I think it put photography for many people sort of in the same realm as painting or drawing or sculpture, where, you know, you were making something that most people couldn't do. I mean, I know for myself that, you know, I made photographs in high school. I was in the darkroom all the time. That was my place. And my friends were amazed when I came out with prints of places we'd been together or them. I handed them a picture of them, portrait I'd made of them, and they were like, holy cow, I don't even remember you doing this. And look, you've come out with this amazing object and that sort of thing that separated someone with an Instamatic or whatever from someone who was seriously into the entire process from taking the picture to making this print object doesn't exist anymore. And I think, you know, with the advent of digital, I really think everyone thinks they're a photographer now, whereas when I was growing up, that wasn't the case at all, at all. And I think that's put us in a very tricky position. I don't think people have the reverence for photography that they once had. Now, having said that, that photography was never, as you said, people don't know. I mean, I was just talking to the students in this workshop about this. When you are a photographer and you are seep deep into the world that we're in, you can think that, of course the average person is gonna know who Robert Adams is or Jeff Wall or Mitch Epstein or Joel Sternfeld. How can someone not know Joel Sternfeld? I mean, American Prospects is one of the greatest bodies of work ever. But I could grab 500 people randomly off the streets of New York City, a pretty sophisticated place, and they're not going to know who those people are. It's so niche to begin with. And I think that, you know, it always had a real vulnerability in that way. And because we don't have old masters, we don't have Vermeer and Rembrandt and. And, you know, it's like these names that have been allowed to become more and more sort of iconic as centuries have gone on. You know, we don't have that. It's such a young art form. I think that all these sort of things coming together have caused a real. Yeah, I don't wanna say crisis because it's like my. Tell me if you feel this way too. But like, my work life is just as thrilling as it's ever been. I may not. Not. It may be harder for me to make sales to individuals. It is. It's way harder for me to make sales to individuals. But I'm lucky because I make way more sales to institutions. And, you know, that's. That's my business model. But I see so much incredible work and I am just as engaged and just as thrilled and just as excited and I feel so lucky to be working in this space. So my enjoyment, putting it mildly, it's way more than enjoyment. My deep satisfaction that I have, you know, having carved out this path in life is in no way altered by the fact that there isn't that same really big group of excited photo collectors. But there isn't, you know, and it is a thing. And I think it's. I think it's something that we have to really deal with because it does, of course, affect. There's way less photo galleries. You know, some of the most important photo galleries of the past, you know, 20, 30 years are barely selling photography anymore. I won't name names, but because it is so difficult now. So it's.
Yeah, it's interesting. I was just meeting with a colleague just last week and he. He was mentioning he had met a former director of a major institution who will remain nameless. But, you know, he said, oh, you know, I'm a photography curator. And this former director said, Photographs are interesting when they're big, you know, and that was, you know, he just didn't care, you know, And I thought, my God, did no one get the memo from, like, you know, 50 years ago that photography is an art form? And I feel like it is this kind of cycle where. Where it is at a moment of kind of transformation. And, I mean, I think part of it, too. And Sasha, that's why things like this podcast are so great, is that we also don't have decent critics or reviewers in the major newspapers. You know, I think it's dispersed, and I think we don't have a lot of people who are talking insightfully and intelligently about what it means to make an interesting. You know, I mean, you can talk about somebody like Cindy Sherman is like, well, here's how she makes her photograph, and then that's understandable. But it's much more difficult to talk about. How did Joel Sternfeld, how did he make that picture of the exhausted renegade elephant? Like, how. How on earth did that come about? You know, And I think it's. You don't have people who are really out there in the general public getting people interested and excited and giving them a language to ask questions about photography.
No, not at all. And, you know, we always, for a very long time in the photo world, we'd talk about sort of this joke that we were always declaring photography, and we mean fine art photography as being dead. And I would always sort of laugh at that. And I don't believe that now. I think it's actually just so thrilling. But I do think that it's going to be hard to come back to the place we were collecting for, individual collecting and maybe even museum collecting to some extent, because just not enough people, not enough citizens have learned the language of photography. And, you know, I've had people say to me about some of the work I represent. I've had people say to me, I think I could make that picture, what makes that picture special. And. And, you know, I actually. I don't feel angry when people say. I feel sort of just disappointed that people never learned the language. And I will patiently explain what I think is happening in the picture that makes it so special and why I don't think the person standing in front of me could do it with the tools they have right now, the intellectual tools. And people will often come around and say, oh, I see what you mean. And, you know, talking about subtext and multiple meaning and. And of course, form and, you know, exposure and light, but, you know, I really just Think. Yeah, people have no idea what the language is. So when you're, you know, looking at. I've been looking at Sage Sawyer's work from the 70s a lot lately because I'm just completely obsessed. And yeah, she's great. You know, that amazing that, you know, wide angle, that format she used for her pictures where there's something just unbelievable going on in the foreground, usually involving people, and then there's just so much to offer you in the background and, like, how unbelievably precise the framing is. And, you know, I wish people understood, you know, how complicated that is and how genius it is, but right now they really don't. I don't think they ever have, but I do think, particularly now we're at a. A low point. But thank God, you know, just to end this part of the conversation on a up note, the community is strong and if we are one another's audience, you know, I think that's okay because we're growing by the day, and so that's not so bad, you know.
Yeah. And I take hope in the fact that, you know, people spend so much time in front of screens. I mean, we see it when students come in just to look at the photographs and to see the actual objects really gets people excited. You know, I think they really do care about them. And I also still think that still photography is the best medium for telling stories. And, you know, I mean, video has its. Does what it does, for sure, and film, but there's something about still photography that allows people to slow down and, you know, think about. There's obviously many, as you say, many valences to looking at a film photograph. But there's something arresting about the medium, I think that distinguishes it from other sort of lens based media and also from painting and that. So I try to have hope, but like you, I know we're at a moment where it's definitely different from when I first started. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. So getting back to the exhibition, so you sort of have a sense of who you're going to include and then I assume we're dealing with sort of, you know, just space consideration and how big the show's gonna be and do you know ahead of time where the show is gonna be within the museum walls and how much space you have, or do you have some leeway there?
Yes, I know exactly how much space I have on the wall. I'm pretty good at figuring out how many works I could fit in the space. You know, we have just under 3,000 square feet in Our photography galleries. So space definitely is an issue. I mean, I think the other thing that again, when you have a permanent collection where it's mostly male photographers, especially in the contemporary section, you try to make sure like, okay, well, these are all great photographers, all great pictures, but let's think about diversity of representation and different angles. And so we do try to make sure to include, as best we can, given our collection, women photographers, photographers of color, photographers that are coming from different process perspectives and that kind of thing. And that's what I really see. My task as the current curator is to really start building a collection so that the people who follow me will have more to draw upon when they're in the same situation.
Of course. Yeah, that's a bigger menu. Yeah, yeah. And did you have to. Were there any acquisitions for this exhibition or you just drew from the collection?
Let's see. There were a couple. Not as much as the previous show, but like the. Mitch Epstein was, was a new acquisition that we got that not necessarily thinking it would be in this show, but. And I'm trying to think of what there's some photograph like we've never had David Taylor's work up, although we collected it a long time ago, again, museum time. So I would say this show may be less new acquisitions than previous shows, but, you know, I'm always trying.
Is collecting mostly done for exhibitions or are you randomly, throughout the year picking up work by other artists?
It's really a combination of both. I mean, I'm always thinking like, if it's an artist whose work really resonates with me and I have acquisition money, I really try to move on it, to add it to the collection, knowing that at some point, you know, we will find a space to have it on the wall. And other times, like I would say that the strange and familiar places, you know, I was looking at this idea of storytelling through photography and sort of different sort of geographic regions of the United States. And so once you get that idea in your mind, you start seeing other, other photographers who are, who are doing that work and kind of going after those bodies of work. And you know, I do think it's very important to try to support emerging photographers. So I do try to, you know, not always be going to the, to the big fancy galleries or, you know, buying at auction. But I really do think it's important to be supporting photographers who are at maybe earlier or mid career stages of their practice.
Right. I mean, one thing I just want to make clear to people listening who may be thinking of getting in their car and heading out to see you is that, you know, it's very important for someone like you and for someone like me, for Sasha Wolff projects that in order for me to work with someone or you to acquire work, when we say emerging, we don't mean just fell off the apple cart because we want to make sure that this is someone with staying power and who didn't have one body of work and that's it. And someone whose vision is going to remain strong. And, you know, you just, you want there to be some amount of Runway there so that you have a good sense of who the person is. So emerging does not mean one body of work. It means someone who's still young in their career. But yeah, someone who really has. You have a sort of faith that they know what they're doing and they're moving in a good direction. You feel confident in that. Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Exactly. That's exactly how I'm defining it as well.
Well, April, we're at the almost one hour mark, so I'm going to wrap it up. But thank you so much for being on today. And I think it's so, so helpful for the audience to hear about how these things, you know, how the sort of larger ecosystem and different mechanisms all work together because I know it can be just a little bit of a mystery to folks. So it's so exciting to hear about and it's really energizing. And again, it's like, you know, I know I sort of took us down a little bit of a dark hole there, but I don't think of it that way. And it's just one part of the whole thing. And it's a part of the whole thing that is complicated right now. And I'm not exactly sure how it's going to resolve itself, but we're really just talking about one little facet. And as far as the strength of the whole fine art photo world, I think right now it's stronger than I've ever known it to be in terms of the quality of work being made, the fantastic curators and just mind boggling young publishers who are putting out incredible books. Someone asked me recently if I think thought there were too many books coming out. And I was like, I can't even relate to that concept. It's like, let them all come out. Right, right. And people can decide for themselves what they're interested in. But it's so thrilling that everyone who's making good work has so many more options. I mean, that's where Things have shifted. There may be fewer photo galleries, but there are way more photo publishers. And as someone who loves photo books and sitting here right now surrounded by them, it's just a joy. And that part of the fine art photo world is stronger than ever. So.
Yeah. Well, I just wanted to also thank you for inviting me. And I feel like something you said, I think really resonates with me as a curator, is that we are part of an ecosystem. Because I think sometimes people think curators are these gatekeepers and you can't get in to talk to them and all of that. And it's. I always feel like when I can have a conversation with artists and let them and sort of demystify what my job is like, some of the. Some of the protocols I have to go through, it helps everybody kind of better understand, you know, how a bill becomes a law, so to speak. And, you know, I always feel like curators are advocates for artists. And I like to think of ourselves like that rather than these sort of gatekeepers.
Oh, my God, 100%. Let me just say that I am constantly telling people ask me if I miss working with individual clients and having my business, my practice, you know, be more curator centric. And I'm like, hell, no. I love working with curators. I love you guys. You're so incredibly engaged and invested. And, you know, your. Your photo history. We. I have the best conversations with you guys. It's like the most fun nerding out sessions about all the photography we love. And no one, no group are better advocates for photographers than curators. People. I mean, 100%, hands down. And out of all the curators I've met in my career, you know, I don't know what the percentage is. 95% of you are just the most wonderful people, so incredibly engaged and such great champions for photographers. So I don't know those gatekeepers. I only know incredible advocates. And I'm so thankful to get to work with you guys.
So the feeling back at you, I would say.
We'Re lucky. We have wonderful colleagues, so we do. Anyway, April, thank you so, so much and be well. And I'll see you at a portfolio review soon enough, I'm sure. Yes.
Take care, Sasha. Thank you so much.
Okay, thanks, April. Bye.
Photo Work with Sasha Wolff is a production of the Photo Work Foundation. Executive producer is Sasha, and the associate producers are Taylor Salzback and Noah Lynn. The show is also produced and edited by me, Michael Chovendalt. In a real photo show, music is by J. Walter Hawks, if you like the show and wish to find out more about the foundation, please visit Photowark foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.