The MOOD Podcast

THIS IS PART 1 OF A 2 PART CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW GENITEMPO.

I sat down with photographer Matthew Genitempo, the graphic designer turned photographer and publisher behind the photobooks Jasper, Mother of Dogs and Dogbreath.

In part one we go deep into Jasper, the photobook he made largely in the forests of the Ozarks as his MFA thesis at the University of Hartford: the critique that told him to stay in one place, the Frank Stanford poems that shaped how he saw the landscape, the men who had cut themselves off from society, and how throwing out his shot lists and learning to shoot a slow large format camera fast changed his photography.

If you're a photographer who keeps getting in your own way, your work feels scattered, or your most carefully planned pictures keep coming back flat, Matthew shows what can happen when you stop forcing it, dropping the idea of what your photography should be and trusting it to find its own way.

Other things we discussed:

• Why the photographs that interest him most are the ones he doesn't remember taking
• Moving from graphic design into photography
• What Fugazi taught him about doing things his own way
• The 5-minute critique that told him to keep going
• The story behind the mysterious animal photograph everyone asks about
• Why he sees Jasper as fiction rather than documentary

Matthew's links:
https://www.matthewgenitempo.com/
https://trespasser.co/
https://www.instagram.com/genitempo/

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

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I sat down with Andrea Modica, the ‘Italian Story’ photographer (as well many other books) who has made every photograph since 1980 with an 8x10 view camera and prints all her work herself. Andrea studied with Richard Benson at Yale, teaches photography at Drexel University, and has just published ‘Italian Story’ with L'Artiere, 40 personal years of large format photographs made in and about Italy. 

We talked about what makes a good photograph and why complexity matters more than beauty, how the 8x10 camera changes both the pictures and the way people behave in front of it, why she hands her editing and sequencing to people like Larry Fink, who curated her book 'As We Wait', and why she believes photography is a profession that is largely about failure.

Other things we discussed:

• Why she left painting and sculpture for the rules of the large format camera
• Loading film holders as a grounding ritual inside a process full of unknowns
• Doing everything by hand, from developing by inspection to platinum printing, and why she never hires assistants
• Teaching analog photography to 18 and 20 year olds who want it
• Editing Italian Story from hundreds of negatives down to about 70 photographs
• The personal stories inside the book that the viewer will never know
• Larry Fink's foreword to As We Wait: sensual love aligned with darkness
• Why the print still matters in a world of screens and AI
• The myth of the suffering artist, and why trauma alone isn't complex
• Living inside the confusion of unfinished work

Andrea has 2 exhibitions showing in New York: Catholic Girl at AMR Art DUMBO, Brooklyn, until 22 October 2026, and Italian Story at the Alice Austen House, Staten Island, until February 2027. Andrea will also be signing books at the L'Artiere table at Paris Photo on Saturday 14 November at 4pm.

See Andrea’s current exhibitions:
https://aliceausten.org/italian_story/
https://www.amrartdumbo.com/

Get the book, Italian Story (L'Artiere):
https://www.lartiere.com/en/prodotto/preorder-italian-story-andrea-modica/
https://www.lartiere.com/en/

Find Andrea on her website and Instagram:
https://www.andreamodica.com/
https://www.instagram.com/andreamodica.photo/

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you’ll learn why I believe meditation is the most direct route to a photographic voice that is unmistakably yours, and exactly what it does to your attention, your creativity and the way you see.

I make the full case for meditation as a photography practice. I share my own history with depression, anxiety, loneliness and cancer, the years of therapies and frameworks that never stuck, and how Sam Harris's Waking Up finally gave me a tool I could use anywhere, in any state. I break down what the research says about a meditating brain: the Harvard study showing our minds wander almost half the time we're awake, the 8-week programmes that change grey matter density, and the studies linking open, receptive meditation directly to divergent thinking, the mode where new photography ideas come from. Then I explain why your voice cannot be built, only noticed, and why that makes attention the whole discipline.

Other things I talk about:

• The 10-breath test most photographers will fail
• Why meditation is not about emptying your mind or ignoring your thoughts
• How to tell a useful idea from noise wearing an idea's clothing
• Being present as a photographic skill nobody teaches
• The honest caveats: what meditation will not do for your photographs
• How to start with a few minutes a day

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

In this week’s podcast episode you'll learn why the photographs you're most proud of are probably the ones hiding you, and what a documentary photographer who has stood at 600 deaths says it actually costs to make work that changes something.

I sat down with Richard Sharum, the American documentary photographer behind Campesino Cuba, Spina Americana and the forthcoming American Homicide, all published by GOST Books, to talk about photography as an act of empathy, why he believes the photo industry has abandoned the general public, and what happened to him after a year embedded with 4 homicide squads and 8 prisons. We go from his childhood in a mixed-race, low-income Texas neighbourhood to the night police framed him at 16, the week in a children's cancer ward that raised over $1,000,000, the Magnum editor who threw out 45 of his 50 best Cuba photographs, and the depression that stopped him shooting for a while. Richard is direct about team mirror versus team window, about why he refuses to go to Paris Photo, and about the sacrifice he tells every student to expect before they pick up a camera for documentary work.

Other things we discussed:

• Why he says photography was invented too early in our evolution
• Hurricane Katrina, 7 months after everyone left
• Cancer as an equaliser: a $10,000,000 house next to a trailer park
• Objectivity is a fallacy; photographing like jazz
• The grocery store practice for connection
• Childhood photos of victims and murderers in the same book
• The image is the receipt, not the experience
• The famous photographer who admitted lying for access
• How a documentary photographer actually earns money
• Of Thee I Sing: the American trilogy and American Avenue (2028)

Find Richard on his website and Instagram:
https://richardsharum.com/
https://www.instagram.com/richard_sharum/

American Homicide Book:
https://gostbooks.com/products/american-homicide

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you'll learn the 4 questions curators, juries, and publishers silently ask about every photography project, and how to answer them in 100 words so your work actually gets seen.

I take apart the idea that photography speaks for itself, starting with the Vivian Maier story everyone gets backwards, and share what Shana Lopes, photography curator at SFMOMA, told me she actually needs to hear from an artist: why she has to defend every acquisition in front of a committee, her test of whether she can write about a project, and why "I just thought it looked good" ends the conversation. Then I get into the difference between explaining an image and articulating a body of work, and why keeping the mystery in your pictures means taking it out of your artist statement.

Watch my full conversation with Shana Lopes here:
https://youtu.be/XCSvy5AIGsA

Watch part one of this commentary here:
https://youtu.be/bURDv2Jps4M

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

Learn exactly what an SFMOMA photography curator looks for, what she passes over, and how to get your work seen without an MFA, a gallery, or a 6-paragraph artist statement.

I sat down with Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to find out how photography actually enters a museum collection. Shana has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography, holds a PhD in the history of photography, and has spent over 7 years at SFMOMA curating exhibitions, acquiring work, and reviewing portfolios.

We talked about how a curator decides which photographs get remembered, why she needs to be able to write about your work before she can acquire it, the one question every photography project has to answer, and the practical advice she gives emerging photographers trying to get exhibited, published, or noticed.

Other things we discussed:

• What a curator actually does day to day, from wall texts to installation choreography
• Why she thinks about exhibition layouts musically
• Curating photobooks versus curating walls, and why she reads books from the back
• Trends in museum photography, and whether documentary is disappearing
• How to write an artist statement a jury will actually read
• Portfolio reviews: what to bring, what not to say, and when to come back
• Why an MFA isn't necessary but a community is
• AI, analog revival, and the art schools closing in San Francisco

Find Shana on the SFMOMA website and Instagram:
https://www.sfmoma.org/about/eteam-curatorial-staff/
https://www.instagram.com/lopesshana/

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

In this Moments of Mood episode, I get into the question of whether we as photographers should explain our images or let them try and ‘speak for themselves’, why the readings you want to correct are actually a map to your photographic voice, and the two gaps every photograph has to cross, from Garry Winogrand's famous riddle to a passage in 'Art & Fear' by David Bayles and Ted Orland that reframes the distance between what you intended, what you made, and what people see.

Other things I mention:

• The moment someone misreads your photo and the correction rises up in your chest
• Why you're the one person who can't see your own work cold
• Repeated "wrong" readings as a pattern, not noise
• What happens if both gaps close completely, and whether a perfect photograph would be worth looking at
• Explaining an image versus articulating a body of work, and why timing is the difference

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

On this episode, I sat down with David Chancellor, the award-winning documentary photographer behind ‘Hunters’, ‘Handle Like Eggs’, and the Taylor Wessing Prize-winning portrait ‘Huntress with Buck’, for a conversation about the moral grey areas of documentary photography, trophy hunting, wildlife conservation. David has spent decades photographing human-wildlife coexistence across Africa, sleeping beside trophy hunters for weeks at a time, documenting leopard hunting in Namibia that was later stopped, and turning the personal cost of that work, including the collapse of his marriage, into his most intimate project. 

We talked about how beauty gets people to look at what they'd rather turn away from, why access matters more than gear, how a photographer builds trust over years instead of parachuting in, and his current project rewilding the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the National Center for Wildlife.

Watch this conversation and you'll understand how just one photograph can open a dialogue that could end an questionable pastime, and what it costs the person holding the camera.

Other things we discussed:

• Getting fired from foreign exchange dealing and talking his way into photography school with "below average" work
• The lion breeder who learned to see light and made the phone call behind the Taylor Wessing photo
• If it pays, it stays: the brutal economics of wildlife conservation
• The gamekeeper in Scotland whose hands kill deer and delivered his own son
• Whether he has gone numb after decades of watching animals die
• Photographing the birth, death, and compensation politics of community conservation in Kenya
• David Attenborough, his front door key, and the cost of a legendary life
• Film versus digital, the Mamiya 7, and why he shoots one consistent format
• AI, authenticity, and what photography loses when everything becomes content

Find David and his work online:
https://www.davidchancellor.com/
https://www.instagram.com/chancellordavid/

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

Attention has collapsed, and every photographer feels it. In this Moments of Mood episode, I make the case that this might be the best thing to happen to serious photography in a generation. You'll learn why the photographers who matter from here on won't be the ones who make the most, they'll be the ones who compress the best: one photograph dense enough to stop a stranger mid-scroll and earn the second look. I break down what has actually broken in visual culture (the capacity to stay, not the capacity to look), why posting more is a hiding place, and how a single ambassador image is the doorway that gets your photobook, sequence, and body of work found.
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Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

Odette England  makes her photographs and then damages them, and this conversation is about why that is the most honest thing she has ever done with her voice.

Odette is an Australian artist, writer and photography professor at Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, whose latest book Isn't X Beautiful is an autobiographical reckoning with family, memory and the limits of what a photograph can hold.

We talk about growing up on a 200 acre dairy farm in rural South Australia where her father made Polaroid portraits of newborn calves for their birth certificates and her mother typed captions into family albums, and how those 2 modes of picture keeping shaped everything she has made since. We go into her definition of beauty, which is broken, rusty and forlorn rather than pretty, the year she asked her elderly parents to walk their lost farm with her negatives strapped to the soles of their shoes, why she believes photography is drenched in want, and what writing gives her that photography cannot.

Odette talks openly about doubt, about being the least confident person in her own practice, about the drawers of failed work she now calls her box of potentials, and about the daily sentence habit that turned into something she never intended. We finish inside the critique room, on the questions she asks photographers who bring her work they cannot yet explain.

Other things we discussed:

• Being refused entry to her school darkroom because she was a girl
• Being the only woman in her class
• Why the letter X sits at the centre of her book, and why the title ends in an exclamation mark
• The 170 English words for the act of seeing
• The folly of memory, wrong captions, and choosing to remember the fiction
• Her image-based retelling of Susan Sontag's On Photography
• Why she thinks moving forward is not always the right next step
• What she sees in students of every age that worries her most

Find Odette on her website and Instagram:
https://www.odetteengland.com
https://www.instagram.com/odetteengland
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Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Support the show

_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders

The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay