My education and professional experience is layered with multiple roles in seemingly unrelated fields, social work, fashion, design, and photography. The common denominator, which links these fields together is my passion, the exploration to uncover and understand the relationship between meaning self-expression and culture. As a curator consultant and educator for over the past decade, my work is to illuminate, elevate and amplify contemporary photography.

To participate in a global visual culture conversation. I created a concept development curriculum called Concept Aware to demystify and activate the moving parts of creating visual imagery. So what's, punctum? It's a Latin word coined by Roland Barthes, a French philosopher, as he grappled with how to describe the emotional impact of an image. To paraphrase Barthes, punctum is that which springs from the image to pierce the viewer's heart.

In my words, it is the wordless exchange of emotion embedded in an impactful image. My premise is that there is a circular relationship between engaging in one's enthusiasm while making an image and the punctum that is inherent in the image. This podcast explores the intentions, ideas, challenges, and resources of individual artists.

We also include voices of publishers, curators, and academics, all the people who are part of the dynamic visual culture conversations. It is a global exchange conducted in the language of photography. Welcome.

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

If you like this show, remember to leave us a rating or review. It really helps.

The Certainty of Nothing continues her intrepid investigation into the limits of the photographic medium. Her palpable agency and precise command belie her playful and organic methodology. With a replete tool kit of mediums and materials, Fifield transforms encounter and experience to illuminate meaning and connectivity across cultures and time. 

In this book group, Sandi Haber Fifield discusses, among other things:

Coupling images

Visual Gestault

Photo as source material

Magic happening in the studio

Stages of engagement with one’s work

Connotation and codification of color

Importance of slowing down

Working with the print vs the screen

“Shifting till they sing.”

Closing quote by Claire Ping for Musee Magazine:

“She uses various techniques to reconstruct images collected over time and create what may be termed visual poems, lyrically opening up new possibilities for looking or even thinking about perception…They suggest the radical potential of the photographic medium to expand our imaginative horizon, and challenge everyday vision.“

Referenced in the episode

The New Museum Triennel 2021 - Soft Water Hard Stone

Marty Forscher 

Books by Sandi Haber Fifields

2013 After the Threshold, Kehrer Verlag

2011 Between Painting and Picking, Charta Books

2009 Walking Through the World, Charta Books

1997 Defining Eye: Women Photographers of the 20th century

“Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews” (2012) edited by Jessica S. McDonald

Visual Studies Workshop

Nathan Lyons book

Erin Shirreff

Sandi Haber Fifield Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

Grundberg presents a personal reflection of his on-the-ground immersion in the world of contemporary art during the conceptual hayday of the NYC downtown scene in the 70’s and 80’s. In this scholarly tour-de-force he chronicles over 100 artists as photography became a means to deconstruct and make contemporary art approachable. 

In this book group, Andy Grundberg discusses, among other things:

The popularity of contemporary art being a consequence of photography

Women photographers use of photo and performance to challenge the male gaze

How photography revealed structures which attracted artists to the medium

Arts’ ability to reveal it’s own contradictions

Shaping culture with Cindy Shermans’ new variant of self portraiture  

Susan Sontag's prescient call to consciousness - ‘images consume reality’

The Starn twins barrier-breaking sculptural use of photography

Sophie Calle being an avatar of surveillance in photography

The import of magazine photography - it is where art photo happened

The contextualists (aka digital natives) leading photo forward

Referenced in the episode

Jill Freedman

John Edmonds

First Womens Congress

The Piedmont Manifest - Andy Grundberg 

10 Female Land Artists You Should Know - Sarah Gottesman

Painting, Photography and Film - Moholy-Nagy

Joan Jonas Vertical Roll 1972

A.D. Colemen Light Readings : A Photography Critics Writing; 1968-1978/ 1979 

Death in Photograph - Andy Grundberg 

The Photography Reader - Liz Wells

Adrian Piper

Andy Grundberg Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

See/Saw compiles observational musings on over 40 photographers plus reflections on the writings of Roland Barthes and John Berger. Erudite, entertaining and thought-provoking this book is a veritable library of looking. It introduces unheralded imagemakers that capture imagination while sending readers into deep research on the plethora of historical and contemporary references evoked. 

In this book group, Geoff Dyer discusses, among other things:

Talking about meaning versus talking about the photographs 

Conjuring images in words

Writing that combines the critical with the creative

Language everyone thinks they can speak

Ability of photos to illuminate consciousness

Instability and ever-expanding nature of photographic history 

The aesthethic purity of Walker Evans

What constitutes signiifers now

A photograph as memorial

Referenced in the episode

The Ongoing Moment

The Street Photography of Garry Winogrand

On Photography NYT, The Mysteries of Our Family Snapshots, January 2017

The Suffering of Light by Alex Webb

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960

Believing is Seeing Errol Morris

Antonioni’s Blow Up

Geoff Dyer Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

A master weaver intersecting the past with the future, Brea Souders constructs visual analogies that expose the layered intermediaries of communication. Positing centuries-old existential questions, Souders discovers her own lexicon, creating a language built on correlation, random chance and fleeting reaction.  

In this book group, Brea Souders, discusses, among other things:

How we experience images now

Establishing an economy of means in image-making

Allowing other viewpoints to influence your creative decisions

Accidential observation

Science influencing art by experimenting with an objective

Being in dialog with your work

The creative limbo when between bodies of work

The fluid intersections of analogy and digital processes

The iPhone as sketchbook

Referenced in the episode

Google Photo Sphere

Millay Colony of the Arts

Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photo by Kim Beil

Photography is Magic by Charlotte Cotton

Ina Jang

Bruce Silverstein Gallery

Rachel de Joode

Blow Up

Brea Souders Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

A manual on female dairy cows provides a portal for Odette England to unearth the latent truths of her girlhood, formed in the deeply gendered community of family-run dairy farming. Sequencing hauntingly mysterious images with succinctly insightful text, England explores conventions, offering an expansive and empowering response in their place. 

In this book group, Odette England discusses, among other things:

Listening and living with your work

Making photographs as a conversation - before having a context or conceptual frame

Employing sincerity 

An economy of text and image

Making in community and the importance of collaboration

Color as character

“A vertical experience of a horizontal wish” 

Non-conforming females

Photos as slippery storytellers

Gifts & Omens

Referenced in the episode

Sexual Politics of Me - Carol J. Adams

Green Eyes - Marguerite Duras

Ordinary Affects - Kathleen Stuart

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Lightwork

Saint Lucy Press

Cara Buzzell

The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano

Decasia - Bill Morrison

Odette England Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

Cig Harvey’s fourth monograph celebrates the sacred and the profane in lush, glossy, saturated color. In a hefty book of french-fold pages chronicles in image and text, Harvey’s courageous exploration of visual storytelling in form and narrative. Utilizing the medium of photography to illuminate the quotidian, Harvey reflects our human paradox, the unbearable lightness of being.

In this book group, Cig Harvey discusses, among other things:

The camera as a ouija board

The subconsciousness of sequencing

Living with senses wide open everyday

Color as subject

Photographing with a point of view

Flowers as healing agents and as reflecting the ephemeral nature of life

The push and pull of a strong image

Knowing the seasons of your own creative clock

Referenced in the episode

Cig’s Books:

You Look At Me Like An Emergency

You An Orchestra You A Bomb

Gardening At Night

Joyful - by Ingrid Lee 

Interactions of Color - by Josef Albers

Modern Nature - by Derek Jarman

Wednesday is Indigo Blue - by Cytowic and Eagleman

The History of Bees - by Maja Lunde

InHarmonicity, The Tonal Walkway - by Julianne Swartz

Do Walk - Navigate, Earth, Mind and Body - by Libby DeLana

*Wildgeese - by Mary Oliver

Cig Harvey Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

Multi-media artist Stacy Mehrfar presents a collision of sensory experience in an actualization of the emotional terrain of migration. Portraits, landscapes, and still life images are purposely devoid of signifiers to place, time and space, inviting a collective encounter of dislocation. 

In this book group, Stacy Mehrfar discusses, among other things:

Picturing emotion

The purpose of a portrait - is about the subject or the photographer?

Importance of place and how landscape defines us

Subjectivity of color

The  power of montage

The invaluable role of a book desinger

Referenced in the episode

Documentation of TMBTE Immersive Video Installation

A Collective Performance, TEDx Live Stream

GOSTBooks

FIlm Form and the Film Sense

American Palimpsests 

Tall Poppy Syndrome with Amy Stein

Naomi Riddle - Running Dog Art

Also see: Stacy kindly sent links to Avinu Malkeinu renditions and Farsi music from her childhood that are shared below.

Stacy Mehrfar Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

Avinu Malkeinu:

Anne Vetter on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUFh_I7Axwx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Barbara Streisand: khttps://open.spotify.com/track/25FJtwokc905OMHwyJsEbJ?si=7cc6ee37f6734c05

Phish Live Performance: https://open.spotify.com/track/4dcuDn0bswyBMyPCbLyRLy?si=fe60dcd8b39b4ded

David Grisman and Andy Statsman: https://open.spotify.com/track/055U63Cn1Z5EsFQ7K0LjN0?si=48c67e79a99e4236

Hilton Chilchik: https://open.spotify.com/track/68z5UU7tvw1Q5PTCg09I6z?si=3daa117d949b4881

In Sovereign, photographer Jocelyn Lee actualizes the democracy she sees between humans, nature and the animal world as she explores their cycles of fecundity. Her sensual and intimate portraits made in collaboration with mature women create fictional narratives which challenge the cultural coding of shunning the aged female body. Using natural light, a medium format camera and film, Lee skillfully composes portraits which expand notions of power, possession and passion. 

In this book group, Jocelyn Lee discusses, among other things:

The camera as a philosophical tool

Consciously layering one’s subject with other priorities to inspire and expand imagination

Making visible the mythology of cultural codes

The beauty of our ‘animal bodies’

The magic of not knowing

The dance and performative nature of photography

The metaphorical power of portraiture

The excitement of exploring new methods and processes

Being in conversation with your work

Referenced in the episode

Mary Oliver

The Naked and the Lens

Justine Kirkland

Kristen Joy Emack

Erick Hawkins

Recollections of My Nonexistence

Jocelyn Lee Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

Renée Jacobs, a photojournalistic turned civil rights lawyer turned erotic documentarian, uses  photography to explore her own sexuality and to listen and give voice to the desire of her co-collaborators. Joyful, intense, alluring and lustful, each image is a story grounded in visualizing felt emotion. Jacobs notes; “ I switched the lens and the lens switched me.”

In this book group, Renée Jacobs discusses, among other things:

Standing in your own light

Carving a space to listen to co-collaborators

Desire needing context

Twin motivators of loss and longing

Relating to Gordon Parks’ experience of needing Paris

Widening technical exposure, experiment

The luck to have mad genius friends

Inspiration from Japanese bookmaking techniques

The rule of 6 twists to pop French bubbly

Referenced in the episode

L'Oeil de Photographie- PARIS

Sinners Exhibit in Paris Video

Photo de Femmes

Cynthia McAdams

Alice Austin House

Smith Colleges - Voice of Feminism Oral History Project 

Body; The Photography Book - Nathalie Herschdorfer 

Fan the Flames ; Queer Positions in Photography at the Ontario Art Museum 

Art & Queer Culture - Catherine Lord & Richard Meyer

Aperture 218 Spring 2015 - Queer 

Joan E Biren - Dyke Show Lesbian Images in Photo 1850 

Renée Jacobs Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith