Diana Markosian is staggeringly talented, thoughtful, creative and articulate. We had some technical difficulties on our first recording, so I got to be overwhelmed by her amazingness TWICE. She is brave, both in an "I'm going to sneak across this contested border" way and an "I'm going to dig deeper than deep into this personally painful territory to create" way, which is awe-inspiring. You're going to really enjoy this one.

Diana Markosian is an American and Russian artist of Armenian descent, working as a documentary photographer, writer, and filmmaker. She is an artist known for her collaborative approach to storytelling, which explores themes of family and immigration through a layered, interdisciplinary process that uses video, photography, found images, drawings and historical ephemera. Her work is both conceptual and documentary, allowing her subjects to dictate the outcome of their work. Her projects have taken her to some of the remotest corners of the world, and have been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Her first monograph, Santa Barbara, was published by Aperture in November. The project recreates the story of Markosian’s family’s journey from post-Soviet Russia to the U.S. in the 1990s, pulling together staged scenes, film stills, and family pictures in a   compelling hybrid of personal and documentary storytelling. In it, the artist grapples with the reality that her mother, seeking a better life for herself and her two young children, escaped Russia and came to America. Markosian’s family settled in Santa Barbara, a city made famous in Russia when the 1980s soap opera of that name became the first American television show broadcast there. Weaving together reenactments by actors, archival images, stills from the original Santa Barbara TV show, Markosian reconsiders her family’s story from her mother’s perspective, relating to her for the first time as a woman, and coming to terms with the profound sacrifices she made to become an American.

Doing this podcast has really just been a way for me to geek out on photography and give me an excuse to talk with artists whose work I adore, and getting to talk with Kelli Connell was a highlight. The time and focus and introspection she devotes to her long-term projects is remarkable, and she also happens to be the loveliest of human beings.

Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer/sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (Phaidon), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture) and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell lives in Chicago where she is an editor at SKYLARK Editions and a photography professor at Columbia College Chicago.

I had never met Aaron Schuman before this recording, and I'm pleased to report that we are now best friends. His deep love for all things photography and his thoughtful and inquisitive approach to both his own work and others' is infectious and inspiring, and I can't wait for our next conversation and all the ones after that.

Aaron Schuman is American photographer, writer, editor, educator and curator based in the United Kingdom. He received a BFA in Photography and Art History from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1999, and an MA in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium in 2003. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in many public and private collections. 

He is the author of two critically-acclaimed monographs: SLANT - published by MACK in 2019 and FOLK - published by NB Books in 2016 – both books were widely cited by photographers, critics and publications as one of the best photobooks in their respective years. 

In addition to his own photographic work, Schuman has contributed essays, interviews and texts to many books, and he also regularly contributes to journals and magazines such as Aperture, Foam, Frieze, Hotshoe, Magnum Online, The British Journal of Photography and more. Additionally, Schuman has curated several major international festivals and exhibitions, was the founder and editor of the online photography journal, SeeSaw Magazine from 2004 to 2014, and since 2017 has been Programme Leader of the Masters in Photography program at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol). 

Witness my biggest fan-girl moment so far in this interview with the immensely talented and innovative photobook designer, Hans Gremmen. He has the winning and enviable combination of being creatively brilliant and also incredibly down to earth. Speaking with him was so inspiring.

Hans Gremmen is a graphic designer based in Amsterdam. He works in photography, architecture, and fine art and has designed over 300 books. He has won many awards for his experimental designs, among them a Golden Medal in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition. In 2008, he founded Fw:Books, a publishing house with a focus on photography-related projects and books. Together with Roma Publications, he recently founded ENTER ENTER, a project space in the center of Amsterdam which explores the boundaries of the book.

If you want to be inspired to break your addiction to social media, live the #vanlife, and still do all kinds of badass photography-related projects, listen to this episode with Daniel Milnor, creative evangelist for Blurb. If you've ever met him, you're still buzzing from the interaction, and he not only remembers you, but everything you talked about. Prepare to crush hard.

Daniel Milnor once worked as both a fragrance model and a hot tub installer but is better known as a reformed-journalist, photographer and writer who is now, once again, performing these duties in his role as “Creative Evangelist,” for Blurb Inc., the world’s premiere indie publishing platform. He lives in New Mexico and owes most of his success to several “Shifter-types” who were kind enough to help him along. He is a husband, brother, son and uncle four times over. He is partially fluent in Spanish, can kinda still ride a skateboard and just picked up a guitar for the first time ever, something he now regrets not doing decades ago. A compulsive journal-keeper, he believes in the power of print, taking one’s time, slowing down, reading paper books, casting off the shackles of social media and talking to one’s neighbors if you really want to know what is going on in the world. He is disappointed in the power of celebrity, American architecture, for the most part, and how mobile phones have reduced most of the population to complete and total zombies. He dreams of downsizing, writing something memorable and living somewhere in Latin America.

Sharp, curious and hilarious, Abe Morell's got the most enviable spark for life and creating, and he does it all with wit and charm. We talk about being Cuban, the role of play in art-making, and his favorite hip hop club in Atlanta. Prepare to be enchanted. 

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962.  Morell received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his MFA from The Yale University School of Art. He has received honorary degrees from Bowdoin College in 1997 and from Lesley University in 2014.

He has published 8 monographs and was included in the second Yoffy Press Triptych, Continuum. He has received a number of awards and grants, which include a Guggenheim fellowship in 1994 and an Infinity Award in Art from ICP in 2011. In November 2017, he received a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art. His work has been collected and shown in many galleries and institutions and nearly 80 museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel.

In this episode of Perfect Bound, we learn that Alejandro Cartagena still has the pen I lent him six years ago in the pocket of his winter coat. We also learn he has 35 book projects in mind to be developed and that he has been able to harness a personal, inner tension to inspire a life's work in photography.

Dominican-born photographer Alejandro Cartagena moved to Mexico, his mother’s birthplace, in 1990, and since then, he has developed a dynamic body of work exploring social, urban, and environmental issues, largely through the lens of the contemporary Mexican experience. His photographs frankly document new urban growth and altered landscapes—namely the proliferation of serially built homes and their ensuing environmental impact—on the outskirts of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area.

Cig Harvey and I talk about all kinds of things from perfume to '90s female vocalists to being present in the moment (she's great at it - me, not so much). We also talk about photography and photobooks. A lot. Cig is charming and earnest and about as authentic as it gets. She's also working on an opera. Take a listen.

Cig Harvey is an artist whose practice seeks to find the magical in everyday life. Rich in implied narrative, Harvey’s work is deeply rooted in the natural environment, and offers explorations of belonging and familial relationships. 

She is the author of three sold-out books, You Look At Me Like An Emergency, Gardening at Night and You an Orchestra You a Bomb and another soon to be released monograph, Blue Violet. Her photographs and artist books have been widely exhibited and remain in the permanent collections of major museums and collections, and she is represented by galleries in New York, London, Boston, Atlanta, Maine, Rome, Santa Fe and Los Angeles.

Kris is a rockstar. Full stop. His own work is thoughtful and important, and he is deeply committed to developing platforms for other artists, especially BIPOC artists, to get their work seen and their stories told. He has the rare quality of being able to tell it to you straight - verbally, visually - with a large dose of grace and humanity.

Kris Graves is an artist and publisher based in London and New York. He received his BFA in Visual Arts from SUNY Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally. Kris Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues. He also works to elevate the representation of people of color in the fine art canon and to create opportunities for conversation about race, representation and urban life. 

Kris Graves Projects was originally founded as a gallery space in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and in 2011, KGP expanded into publishing, recognizing that books and prints have the unique ability to make fine art both accessible and affordable. In 2020, Kris created Monolith as a publishing imprint to celebrate, recognize and lift up BIPOC art by publishing artists who have historically been denied opportunities to gain a wider audience for their work.

Tabitha and I deep dive into a wide range of topics, from emotional resiliency to Tupac.  We compare and contrast journalism and photography and talk about navigating the current art, political, and pandemic landscape. It's a ride.

Tabitha Soren is an artist and Peabody Award-winning journalist, best known for her work as an MTV news correspondent and on-air producer. In 1999, Soren took a fellowship at Stanford University where she shifted her visual arts practice from film to the still photograph. Her artwork speaks to the twists of fate in life that can unhinge us. She visualizes psychological states – the internal weather that storms through each of us.

Her project Running depicts the fight or flight response. Panic Beach upends the viewer as panic attacks do. Fantasy Life is about what it looks like to try to touch greatness. Surface Tension reflects the struggle we all face as we adapt to technological domination. Her photographs are held in many private and public collections, and she lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.