March 28, 2010 – 11:52 am
Untitled, No Date
© Gil Blank / Courtesy of LaMontagne Gallery, Boston
Gil Blank is a photographer and writer. His photographs have been exhibited at PS1 Contemporary Art Center and White Columns, New York; The Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver; Ville d’Images, Vevey, Switzerland; Lawrimore Project, Seattle; and LaMontagne Gallery, Boston. His photographs will next be shown at Cardwell Jimmerson in Los Angeles in April 2010. His writing has been published in the monographs White Planet, Black Heart by Torbjørn Rødland and Freischwimmer by Wolfgang Tillmans, as well as in the surveys In Numbers: Serial Artist Editions, 1955 – 2008, published in 2009 by PPP Editions, and Words Without Pictures, published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Aperture, the second edition of which is forthcoming in Spring 2010. He was the founding editor of Influence magazine and has served as a contributing editor to numerous independently published magazines, including Art On Paper, Issue, Tokion, and Whitewall.
I’d like to thank Gil for allowing me to pick his brain over the course of the last few months for this interview. It was a sincere pleasure.
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November 9, 2009 – 11:46 am
Mike Mandel, 1975 [from "The Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards"]
© Mike Mandel
Last year I published an interview with Mike Mandel in Lay Flat 01: Remain in Light. Since the time that the book sold out, I’ve received a number of e-mails asking if this interview could be made available online. Well, I thought about it and figured, why not? – so I got back in touch with Mike and with his permission put together a version which also includes some images from his various projects. Enjoy!
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December 4, 2008 – 6:09 pm
Butterflies, 2007 [from "I Want to Live Innocent"]
© Torbjørn Rødland
Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland has been described as “to photography what the Pet Shop Boys are to pop music.” His contemporary, Gil Blank, once described his photographs as “blatantly retarded in a consciously agile way.” For fifteen years, Rødland has been making work that baffles, finding something in common between nudists, priests, Nordic landscapes and curious still lifes of food, such as one of George W. Bush’s favorite things: Diet Coke, tortilla chips, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Häagen-Dazs “Pralines & Cream” ice cream and A Field of Dreams. That’s only the beginning. It was an absolute pleasure to have the chance to speak with him about his books, his work and the meaning of images. The following conversation (text only) can also be viewed as a printer-friendly PDF.
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October 1, 2008 – 12:06 am
Sara, Icelandair, 2006 [from "Flight Attendants"]
© Brian Finke
Over the summer I had the chance to call up New York-based photographer Brian Finke and chat with him about his latest monograph, Flight Attendants (powerHouse Books, 2008). I want to thank Brian for taking the time to work with me on this interview and Photo-eye Magazine, where this was originally published, for putting us in touch in the first place. The following conversation (text only) can also be viewed as a printer-friendly PDF.
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February 25, 2008 – 11:01 pm
Ústí nad Labem, June, 2002 (from “Czech Eden”)
© Matthew Monteith
Brooklyn-based photographer Matthew Monteith graduated from the MFA program at Yale in 2004 and has since released a book of photographs from the Czech Republic entitled Czech Eden (Aperture, 2007), one of my favorite monographs from last year. I want to thank Matthew for taking the time to talk with me about this project and what led up to it. The following conversation (text only) can also be viewed as a printer-friendly PDF.
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December 1, 2007 – 2:44 am
Untitled (Shadow), Mexico, 2001 (from “Shut Up Truth”)
© Michael Schmelling
Recently, I spoke with New York based photographer Michael Schmelling about the curious stories behind two of his most recent projects and about his relationship with photography in general, including how he came to it in the first place. I’d like to thank Michael for taking the time for the interview and for answering each of my questions with care. The following conversation (text only) can also be viewed as a printer-friendly PDF.
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October 14, 2007 – 5:03 pm
Marks of Indifference #10 (Detail), 2006 (from “Marks of Indifference”)
© Mark Wyse
I was very glad to have the opportunity to speak with Mark Wyse about his work. This is the first in a series of interviews called Contemporary Dialogues. The following conversation (text only) can also be viewed as a printer-friendly PDF.
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