I visited Mark Alice Durant at his home in Maryland to talk about his book, Summer of the White Fox, and After, published by Saint Lucy Books. We talk about how Mark came to photography and why he started his own publishing imprint. Summer of the White Fox, and After is a memoir and a monograph, with a touch of history and philosophy weaved into the essay. It is a recounting of grief and loss that enveloped Mark and his family through distinct events and all during the pandemic. It is also a story about experiencing love and care in ways that were, perhaps, unforseeable before all of the tragedies struck Mark’s family.

https://www.saintlucybooks.com/shop/p/summer-of-the-white-fox-and-after | https://www.instagram.com/saint_lucy_books/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Mark Alice Durant is a photographer whose photographs, installations, and performances have been presented internationally including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Artist’s Space in New York. In 1991, he co-founded the performance duo ‘men of the world’ that for 10 years performed on the streets of Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities. He has written extensively on the nexus of photography, performance and cultural phenomena with essays appearing in such journals as Art in America, Art on Paper, ArtUS, Art Journal, Afterimage, Dear Dave, Exposure, New Art Examiner, and PLUK. Durant is the editor of the online journal Saint Lucy which is devoted to writing about photography, contemporary art and the lovely people of Baltimore. He has contributed to numerous catalogs, monographs and anthologies including The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire, The Gothic, Jimmie Durham and Marco Breuer: Early Recordings. He is author of McDermott and McGough: A History of Photography, Robert Heinecken: A Material History and co-author of Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing and Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costume and Masquerade. In 2005, Durant co-curated and co-authored Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal. Durant was co-curator of Some Assembly Required: Collage Culture in Post-War America in 2002 and in 2008, he curated Notes on Monumentality at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He has served on the faculties of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA, the University of New Mexico, Syracuse University, and the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Center for Creative Photography, the Illinois Arts Council, and the MacDowell Colony. Professor Durant received his B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art and M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute.

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Tim Carpenter and I met up at the 2024 Chico Review to talk about his latest book Little, published by The Ice Plant. We talk about how Little is the last in a trilogy of Tim’s books, Local Objects and Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road, both also published by The Ice Plant. Even though Tim was on PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf in 2023 to talk about To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die, and we do not take a deep dive into that work, we do end up having an amazing philisophical discussion about photography, his work, and his style of writing in that book.

https://www.timcarpenterphotography.com | https://www.instagram.com/timcarpenter | https://theiceplant.cc/product/little/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Tim Carpenter is a photographer, writer, and educator who works in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of several photobooks, among them “Little” (The Ice Plant); “A month of Sundays” (TIS books); “Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road” (The Ice Plant); “Local objects” (The Ice Plant); “township” (TIS/dumbsaint); “Bement grain” (TIS/dumbsaint); “Still feel gone” (Deadbeat Club Press); “The king of the birds” (TIS books); and “A house and a tree” (TIS books). Tim received an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in 2012. He is a faculty member of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program and serves as a mentor in the Image Threads Mentorship Program. Tim’s book-length essay “To photograph is to learn how to die” was published by The Ice Plant in Fall 2022.

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Photographer and Pediatrician, Greg Gulbransen joins me to talk about his book, Say Less, published by Gost Books. Greg and I talk about how facing tragedy in his personal life and being a children’s doctor all lead to this exploration of gun violence. Greg is a unique guest in that he is both a full-time working doctor and had great success with fashion photography. He approaches his medical work and his documentary photo work with similar ideals and practice and we talk a good deal about that. Just a small trigger warning, the life-altering event Greg describes from his own tragedy and the story and descriptions of Malik, the paralyzed former gang leader from Greg’s book, are intense and have some graphic detail.

https://www.gulbransenphoto.com | https://www.instagram.com/greggulbransenpeds/ | https://gostbooks.com/products/say-less

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com

Over the course of three years, Greg Gulbransen photographed Malik, a set leader of the violent street gang, the Crips. Malik was shot and paralysed in 2018 by the bullet from a rival gang, and as a result his world now centres around his small Bronx apartment in New York, where he is cared for by his family and fellow gang members. Gulbransen, a practicing doctor, had been photographing in the Bronx during his spare time and had got to know some of the local kids. He began to notice a lot of young men in wheelchairs with spinal injuries and was professionally curious. He was told they had all been shot. He wanted to speak to someone in a wheelchair and was introduced to Malik through a fellow Crip.

Greg started out shooting fashion but transitioned over to documenting the lives of unique individuals with interesting stories. Greg loves meeting new people and tries to preserve their legacy with photography. Greg also enjoys the solace of cold weather wildlife. His images have been published in the New York Times, Daily Mail, ELLE, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Northwell Health, The Weather Channel, Spirit and Flesh, Grazia and Pandora to name a few. Some of Greg’s documentary work has been featured on the A & E Network’s History Channel.

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