Photography

Photography

episodes

Interviews with photographers and scholars of photography about their new books.

Marcia Bricker Halperin, "Kibbitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria" (Cornell UP, 2023)

February 25, 2024

Kibbitz and Nosh

Marcia Bricker Halperin
Hosted by Robert Snyder

In the middle decades of the twentieth century in New York City, Dubrow’s cafeterias in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the garment district of M…

Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)

February 24, 2024

Exposing Slavery

Matthew Fox-Amato

Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, phot…

Simone Gigliotti, "Restless Archive: The Holocaust and the Cinema of the Displaced" (Indiana UP, 2023)

December 16, 2023

Restless Archive

Simone Gigliotti
Hosted by Hallel Yadin

The global refugee, the ship passenger, the displaced person. How did their homeseeking routes and visual motifs intersect and diverge in the earl…

Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)

December 4, 2023

The Unintended

Monica Huerta
Hosted by Nathan Moore

The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industrializa…

Rachel Stephens, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Concealing Enslavement in American Visual Culture" (U Arkansas Press, 2023)

December 1, 2023

Hidden in Plain Sight

Rachel Stephens
Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Listen:

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists crafted a variety of visual messages about the plight of enslaved people, portraying the vio…

Kat Mustatea, "Voidopolis" (MIT Press, 2023)

November 25, 2023

Voidopolis

Kat Mustatea
Hosted by Nathan Moore

Shortlisted for the 2023 Lumen Prize, Kat Mustatea's Voidopolis (MIT Press, 2023) is a hybrid digital artistic and literary project in the form of an …

Agata Fijalkowski, "Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial" (Routledge, 2023)

October 30, 2023

Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial

Agata Fijalkowski
Hosted by Alex Batesmith
Listen:

Addressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show…

Diana Kamin, "Picture-Work: How Libraries, Museums, and Stock Agencies Launched a New Image Economy" (MIT Press, 2023)

October 25, 2023

Picture-Work

Diana Kamin
Hosted by Hallel Yadin
Listen:

How the image collection, organized and made available for public consumption, came to define a key feature of contemporary visual culture. The origin…

Visibility

October 6, 2023

Visibility

Margaret Galvan
Hosted by Saronik Bosu
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In this episode of High Theory, Margaret Galvan talks about the queer politics of Visibility. In her work the activist practices of representation tak…

Valerie Hébert ed.,  "Framing the Holocaust: Photographs of a Mass Shooting in Latvia, 1941" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

September 7, 2023

Framing the Holocaust

Valerie Hébert
Hosted by Hallel Yadin
Listen:

Framing the Holocaust: Photographs of a Mass Shooting in Latvia, 1941 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), edited by Valerie Hébert, compiles essays…

Nancy L. Segal, "The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

September 5, 2023

The Twin Children of the Holocaust

Nancy L. Segal
Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Listen:

The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is an annotated collection of original, in…

Steve Nicholls, "Alien Worlds: How Insects Conquered the Earth, and Why Their Fate Will Determine Our Future" (Princeton UP, 2023)

August 15, 2023

Alien Worlds

Steve Nicholls
Hosted by Mark Klobas
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Life on Earth depends on the busy activities of insects, but global populations of these teeming creatures are currently under threat, with grave cons…

Daniel Foliard, "The Violence of Colonial Photography" (Manchester UP, 2022)

August 8, 2023

The Violence of Colonial Photography

Daniel Foliard
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The late nineteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in colonial conflicts throughout the French and British empires. It was also the period in whic…

Alexander Hill, "The War on the Eastern Front: The Soviet Union, 1941-1945 - A Photographic History" (Pen & Sword Military, 2021)

August 1, 2023

The War on the Eastern Front

Alexander Hill
Hosted by Richard Northrop
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In The War on the Eastern Front: The Soviet Union, 1941-1945 - A Photographic History (Pen & Sword Military, 2021), Professor Alexander Hill has colle…

Nina Lager Vestberg, "Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization" (MIT Press, 2023)

July 25, 2023

Picture Research

Nina Lager Vestberg
Hosted by Jen Hoyer
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Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization (MIT Press, 2023) focuses on how pictures were saved, stored, a…

Andrew Quilty, "August in Kabul: America's Last Days in Afghanistan" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

July 24, 2023

August in Kabul

Andrew Quilty
Listen:

Told through the eyes of witnesses to the fall of Kabul, Walkley award-winning journalist Andrew Quilty's debut publication offers a remarkable record…

Why Photography Matters

July 3, 2023

Why Photography Matters

Jerry L. Thompson
Hosted by MIT Press
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Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works--not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. With this provocativ…

The Electro-Library with Jared Green (EF, JP)

June 15, 2023

The Electro-Library

Jared Green
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Way back in 2019, Elizabeth and John were already thinking about collaboration. Here they speak with Jared Green and explore The Electro-Library, a p…

Chris Campion and Bud Lee, "The War is Here: Newark 1967" (ZE Books, 2023)

May 28, 2023

The War is Here

Chris Campion and Bud Lee
Hosted by Deidre Tyler

July 1967. After the arrest, beating, and imprisonment of cab driver John Smith by local police, the city of Newark--already a tinderbox, became a hot…

Tina Post, "Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression" (NYU Press, 2023)

April 12, 2023

Deadpan

Tina Post
Hosted by Brittney Edmonds

Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production. Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acq…