Odds & Ends
Winter Pictures, We, the Free, and Scenes from Wisconsin
It’s a lazy Sunday here in Madison, and there are a bunch of photography things rattling around in my head, so I figured I’d put pen to paper and share them with you. As many of you know, it’s a tradition to show winter pictures on FlakPhoto when the snow flies. Amazingly, that hasn’t happened yet in our neck of the woods, but I know it’s on the horizon. This wouldn’t be the first Christmas holiday without snow, but we’ll see what happens.
I wrote about my relationship with winter a few years ago and how pictures helped me see the season differently. Since then, I get hungry for these kinds of images when December rolls around. So, if you have any winter pictures in your archive, I want to see them. Please email me anytime. I plan to show the pictures that catch my eye on Instagram and in the newsletter. I may also show them on my nascent Bluesky feed. Please show me your stuff!
Special thanks to Nick Dantzer for sharing his work with me this weekend. The picture up top is perfect as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes photography can put your head in the right place, and Nick’s image delivers in spades for me. I hope you like it. Please make some time to explore Nick’s website. He’s very talented.
I've been toying with the idea of writing a year-end photobook roundup. I used to do that every year but stopped for various reasons. Would that be useful? I can’t tell if we’re all too overwhelmed with photobook lists for another one to matter. One book I want to ensure more people know about this year is Matt Eich's We, the Free, published by Sturm & Drang.
Matt is one of the most talented documentary imagemakers working today. He must see things differently from other photographers. At a time when America is changing so rapidly and frightfully, Matt's pictures are particularly relevant — they're powerful narrative windows into American life. Personally, I feel we need that now more than ever.
When I read Matt's book before the election, I kept thinking that the mood of these pictures belonged to the past and that something better lay ahead — that progress was just around the corner. Now, I'm not so sure. A sadness pervades the book, and after the election, I realized that Matt's pictures expressed much of my own confusion and distress about what's happening in America. I could say more, but I know you tune in for my thoughts on photography, not politics.
If you're looking for a new book, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of We, the Free while supplies last. It's a book for our time and uniquely powerful. Thanks again for sharing your work with me, Matt. I appreciate that you're out there doing what you do. Please keep it up.
Would a 2024 FlakPhoto Booklist be useful? Let me know what you think!
It was literally freezing in Madison last week, and temperatures hovered just above 0° all day Thursday and into the evening. So, I was expecting a low or no turnout night for our screening of Paul Sng's Tish documentary. But I was delighted to see Madison's photo/arts community turn out to see the film — 21 people braved the elements to see the movie! That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's meaningful for a burgeoning DIY documentary film program.
My co-curator, James Kreul, and I have both been really pleased with the initial response to this series. We hope to program more documentaries at the Arts + Literature Laboratory in 2025, and we'll keep you posted on those plans in the coming months. I don’t think Tish is streaming on VOD yet, but I have been talking to the distributors about hosting an online screening for FlakPhoto readers. Does that sound interesting?
Finally, I forgot to mention our friends at PhotoMidwest in my previous post. Sincere thanks to Ralph Russo, Robin Downs, and the entire PMW team for co-presenting these photography films and helping us make this series possible. Meeting so many PhotoMidwest members this fall was great, and I look forward to connecting with more of you in the New Year. Stay tuned!
One more thing…
I’m partnering with The Capital Times and ArtLitLab to present a photography discussion on politics in our swing state next week.
Scenes from a Divided Wisconsin will feature a conversation with Cap Times photo director Ruthie Hauge and state government reporter Erin McGroarty, moderated by Capital Times associate editor John Nichols on Tuesday, December 17, at 7 p.m.
This is a free event. Please join us!
Okay, that’s all for today. I’m lining up a few more Show & Tell interviews and will publish a new one later this week — watch your inbox for that. And if you’re one of the many folks testing the waters over on Bluesky, please look me up (here’s my profile). I’m having a blast there and would love to connect. Stay warm!
I highly recommend Alec Soth's photobook reviews on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9aSFMVpi-w He did one in 2022 that covered several photobooks, all completely different. It's a remarkable dive into what's special about photobooks. For 2024, he just released another video on a single photobook, Rosalind Fox Solomon's "A Woman I Once Knew." One might consider the book too self-indulgent, but it is still a very powerful autobiography of Solomon's career, introducing striking book-design styles with the chapters of her life. She was a contemporary of Diane Arbus, with a large archive and many photobooks. She's in her 90's now. Soth makes a point of thanking her for NOT committing suicide as Arbus did.
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