Tricky Thoughts: Encountering Photography In New York City Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this episode, recorded at the Guggenheim Museum (and the streets of NYC) on Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday, I was thinking a lot about growth. Not the kind that makes our pants tighter, which is really easy, but artistic growth. Is creative growth something you think about? Give this a listen and let’s get into it.

Artists mentioned on this podcast:

Rauschenberg Guggenheim show: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/collection-in-focus-robert-rauschenberg-life-cant-be-stopped

Chaz Neill: https://www.instagram.com/reddotjournals/

Paolo Roversi at Pace: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/paolo-roversi-2025/

Robert Longo at Pace: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/robert-longo-the-weight-of-hope/

Don McCullin at Hauser & Wirth: https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/don-mccullin-a-desecrated-serenity/

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(More pictures from Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped)

Hello! I’m back with another episode, it’s been a while and I’m sorry about that. Had lots of family obligations in August, and when I wasn’t herding kids I was taking pictures like a fiend.

I’ve run through dozens of rolls of film this summer, shooting all kinds of different subject matter. The work is so varied, I don’t think any algorithm would be able to make sense of it all. And that’s ok with me! In this episode, I talk about the labels that we, other photographers, and social media platforms put on us. Am I a street photographer? A portrait photographer? Documentary photographer? Fashion photographer? A “visual storyteller” (oh FFS please, anything but that…..)

I don’t think about any of this while I’m taking pictures, but when we show our work to the outside world, they kind of want it packaged up nicely, consistently, they want to know what they’re looking at. And you need to decide if you’re going to give it to them that way, or not. I’ve always appreciated artists who stick their middle finger up to the establishment, to societal norms, and do their own thing. Doing things that way is never an easy path - but who wants it easy, anyway?

So this…..is about that. And I had to edit this one a bit because the trains passing over the bridge were hella loud and frequent. Figures the MTA would pick the exact 15 minutes this week I was recording to make the subway trains come fast and frequent. Anyway….thanks for listening and if you have any questions, comments or thoughts, please share them!

Jim

Thanks for reading Tricky Thoughts: Encountering Photography In New York City! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Happy Father’s Day 2025! OK first off: this episode was NOT recorded under a bridge, it was recorded under a boardwalk - and on a boardwalk - at Coney Island, on June 14th, which was just crappy, cold rainy day. Hardly anyone was out. I knew this before I even got on the Q train - but I wanted to get some photos of the Coney Island Sideshow (the photo above was taken on a much nicer day in Coney!) This episode isn’t really about anything other than getting out there, even when we don’t feel like it.

ALSO: I mention a group of beautifully dressed people playing drums and dancing in an African style - after the recording, I went back to watch more and a young woman named Elaine explained that the group was gathered in remembrance of their ancestors, for whom the ocean was a burial ground - people taken as slaves by Europeans and brought to America by ship, many of whom died or were killed on the brutal journey and were thrown overboard. She mentioned they gather annually on the 2nd Saturday of June to pay respects, in advance of Juneteenth. It’s a privilege to live in New York City and have the opportunity to be educated socially.

Some of the things you’ll hear about in this recording (as usual, recorded with no edits, audio verite style):

RAIN!

The Warriors movie: Trailer

The Coney Island Sideshow At Coney Island USA

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade

DJ Ray Vazquez

And mentions of some photographers:

Brian Demby

Purcell Nurse

Reuben Radding

Larry Fink

Paul Reid

Thanks as always for listening- I appreciate your time, encouragement and comments!

Jim

In this episode, I talk about Dave Chappelle (thought he did the bit in DC, it was actually Detroit), Fan Ho, Evel Knievel, The Girl In The Coffee Shop Window, and Colon Blow. And believe it or not, this all has something to do with photography. Recorded as per usual, under a bridge (this time the Queensboro Bridge), with no edits, audio verite.

What is visual signature and why is it important for photographers, or really any creative, to make the pursuit of visual signature a maxim? Join me in the latest episode of my unedited audio chats recorded beneath the Manhattan Bridge in NYC for some fragmented thoughts and foul language about the ultimate goal for any artist.

A brief chat about film photography, consumerism, the digital economy, Wim Wenders and enjoying one raisin.

Join me under the Manhattan Bridge, and listen to the trains booming overhead while I talk about silencing the inner voice that makes artists doubt ourselves. Recorded in one take with no edits on the streets of NYC.

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Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how myopic it may be - here’s mine!

This is a podcast about Diane Arbus “Constellation” show at Park Avenue Armory, which closed August 17th. This show has been fairly controversial, because of the way the work is presented (for example, read this post by photographer Dita Livotsky or this particularly soggy review of the show (Arbus’ work is no longer relevant because “social media shows me world is bad place so don’t need 60 year old picture” and “I confused because mirror and pictures no context so hard to critic”)

Spoiler alert: I loved the show. I’ve seen hundreds of photography exhibits and they’ve mostly been done the same way: perfectly hung right on the sight line, usually with little cards giving context for each image, pictures grouped together by subject matter or project or time period. It’s always very linear.

Constellation, however, does none of that. Some pictures are on the walls, but the majority are hung on lattices. Photographs are down near your ankles, some require you to get on your tiptoe to see them. They are not organized in any discernible or traditional manner - there is no beginning or end of the exhibition, so wherever you start viewing seems arbitrary. The sense of spacial disorientation is compounded by a mirror that acts as the rear wall of the exhibition, which makes the show seem almost endless. It’s as though there was a “big bang” beneath a pile of Arbus’ work, and Constellation freezes a moment in time as it expands through the universe.

And this is wonderful.

Constellation was an experience - an entirely non-traditional one - which I suspect the artist would have loved. Anyway, give a listen and if you have thoughts, please share them.

(Note: while at the show, I bumped into the noted photographer Dona Ann McAdams and we talked about our Leica M’s, Kodak Tri-X, and of course our impressions of Constellation. We had a wonderful chat. I was on the steps of the Armory when she came out, and she was curious about my digital recorder, which had a dead cat windscreen on it. She thought the dead cat (which looks like what it is named) was hilarious and wanted to photograph me with it; of course I agreed and kept the recorder rolling. I was wearing a bright white t-shirt and standing against kind of a dark background, so the meter in her M was jumping all over the place, over then underexposed. The M has this kind of kooky circular meter thing, no spot metering option, so it can be tricky to get a correct reading in high contrast, wider shots. So I completely embarrassed myself and mansplained to a brilliant photographer who has been shown at MOMA, The Whitney and ICP how an M light meter works. I swear it was with the best of intentions! And we got it figured out. I still haven’t seen the picture though…..)

Best,

Jim

(and by the way, Happy World Photography Day!)

Thanks for reading Tricky Thoughts: Encountering Photography In New York City! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Hello there! Thanks for looking and listening. For this episode, I’m in Queens (the borough with the best food in NYC) - sitting on the bank of the East River and talking about growth - all the work we do to build our social profiles and community, and whether or not it is worth all the effort. In a way, this is the complete opposite of one of those posts that are so pervasive on Substack which provide methodologies for growth - for once, I think it’s important to stop and look at what we’ve been doing on social media for all these years and get some perspective.

If you are a creative and you sometimes ask yourself what the point is, I think you’ll find some good thoughts to unpack here. Hope you enjoy it, thanks for listening and please comment if you have thoughts!

Jim

The Substack article that inspired this post: https://substack.com/home/post/p-167179451

Daniel Ek ist ein fickgesicht: https://fortune.com/2024/06/03/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-content-cost-close-to-zero-stearming-subscription-fee-hike/

Obscure 80’s new wave song by Peter Godwin that I like and you might too and is kind of adjacent to this discussion because it deals with the illusion of the ideal and also its just super good:

Thanks for reading Tricky Thoughts: Encountering Photography In New York City! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Hello everyone! Back at you from NYC and this time I’m walking ACROSS a bridge and talking about why mistakes and failure are good things. This is a bit of a noisy podcast as I’m walking right next to speeding cars and subway trains - so you’ll get some real NYC vibes on this one!

Some things I refer to in this episode:

Queensboro Bridge Pedestrian Path: https://qns.com/2025/05/queensboro-bridge-pedestrian-path-opens/

Lomography 100: https://shop.lomography.com/us/lomography-color-negative-35-mm-iso-100

The Highlander/Silvercup Studios:

Embraced Mistakes:

Thanks as always for listening! If you have any comments or questions, please share them with me.

Best,

Jim