Why Should Anyone Care About Your Photography? Shana Lopes, E130

What does it mean to make images anymore and do we even need more images?

“It's like I borrowed someone's eyes for like just a second.”

And you can see the world through this entirely new perspective. And it makes me lose my breath. This is Shayna Lopez, Assistant Curator of Photography at SF Moma, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She helps decide what enters the annals of photography history. It's a little bit of magic when that happens.

When when you know that something needs to be part of the canon and needs to be remembered, for a work to truly excite me, it needs to have layers, conceptual layers, formal layers. This conversation is about her as a working curator on what she looks for, what she passes over.

The questions every project has to answer and advice on how we, as photographers,

can succeed in getting our work noticed. Why should other people care about this work? Okay, so it's a work about your grandmother. Why should this other person care about it? When I hear an answer, well, I just thought it looked good.

That's actually not like a great answer. If a work, if I just see a work and have everything about the thing that usually means that it wasn't the right thing, it's expensive to make books expensive to live. And it's hard, like, as viewer galleries are there and maybe it's just these larger institutions. Like, how do we get places for artists to be seen?

I worry about that. I worry about how smaller galleries are not able to work and the non-profit art stances and art colleges, some of them closing. A hundred of the emails, people can. Exhibit me, exhibit me, look at my work, not my work.

And yes, the answer is yes, we do need work and it's just, they do need a community.

And I, at a community of other artists, which are run their idea by a photography and peer to say, what piece of advice can you give us on this side

“when we're potentially trying to get our work in front of you?”

So, I'm going to give you a couple of things that I would do. So much to the moon podcast, thank you for joining me today. Well, thank you so much for having me here, Matt. Shania, for those of you who may not know who you are, what you do, please kind of give us a nice little bio of your pedigree, what you do, why you do it, how you kind of got to where you are today.

Hi, my name is Shania Lopez. I'm an assistant curator of photography at SF Moment. I was born and raised in San Francisco. And I've worked at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography.

I have my PhD in art history with a focus on the history of photography. And I've been at SF Moment for seven years, a little over seven years. And I did have an internship there a long time ago. And so it's so wonderful to work at the museum that I grew up at going to. It was in a different location when I was a kid.

It was on Venice Street, but it's pretty spectacular to be able to put on exhibitions now and be able to see friends from high school, old professors and just people from all walks of life at the museum.

“And what does your job in jail actually give us a kind of a little bit of description of what your daily life looks like?”

Every single day is so different for me. It's exciting and I'm so lucky to be able to do what I do. And say, part of my job is part of my day, I do research on upcoming shows. I write the wall text for exhibitions that I'll be putting on. I meet with artists and learn about new projects that they've been engaged with.

And also previous projects they've worked on. I mean, it's everything because I go, part of my job is also to know what's on view around me. And so I try to see all the exhibitions that are happening in the Bay Area. Also have to do the mundane stuff like email, which ends up taking hours at my time. And a project manager may, you know, a lot of the exhibitions I do because there's so many moving parts.

And as a curator, you're like the lynch pin for all the other departments. It's because they're all working on your idea to help bring it to fruition.

And trying to figure out what the goals of the exhibition are perhaps.

“And what's the best way to get the narrative or the thesis across of your exhibition?”

Or I'm meeting with the framework to try to make sure we're on the same page about how many works need to be framed and how to make the object look best. Or maybe I'm having an installation meeting with the entire team, which would include a registrar. The framework in stall point and so a curatorial assistant, the exhibition designer, the graphic designer. And I work on several shows at the same time, but they're all at different points.

And so I have a show that will be opening in January.

So there's a lot of meetings currently about that exhibition. It's Conta City with Michele Sabotsky and Patrick Waterhouse. It'll open January 23rd. And right now we're in the stage where we will be our texts are going to be due in mid-September. And so I'm trying to outline what those will look like and what the point of each text is. Every aspect of the next exhibition is intentional, whether it's the wall color, the way in which

I hang it, the order with which we install. And so I try to be very mindful to not put up text for no reason. And so I'm really trying to think like, do we need text in these rooms? And so that's one of the areas. And we're trying to really, we have the design laid out the exhibition layout ready, but there are a couple little tweaks that we're thinking about. So that's kind of top of mind. But really, my job is to, you know, be inspired by artists

and be able to articulate those ideas and that same inspiration that I receive from artists to people above me and around me so that we can put on the best shows or perhaps we're thinking about acquiring a work of art. And I, you know, when I see a work of art that an artist is showing me, I, of course, don't want to get anybody's expectations up because it's not just me who have to decide when we acquire work. There's my supervisor and our director, the chief curator,

and then our whole sessions committee. So there's layers to this. And but when I see something that I truly love and believe that it would add to SMO was collection that it makes sense for

“SMO and that I think is really important for the history of photography. It's this,”

it's a little bit of magic when that happens. When you know that something needs to be part of the canon and needs to be remembered in part of future generations understanding of the history of photography. And so I have to feel that passion for an object to be able to then convince all the others that need to, that need to okay and approve what I suggest. You're at the forefront and the, you know, the ambassador ship of photography itself, right?

It's such a, you feel that pressure on on the weight of your shoulders to kind of represent, um, not just artists, but a NSF moment, but represent photography as a whole in what you're kind of choosing and uh, gatekeeping is the wrong word, but curating, obviously, the, the works that kind of get filtered through and which ones don't. It's, it's such a privilege to be able to have the job. I didn't even understand what it meant to be a curator until I was

“25, 26. It is a responsibility. And that's why I'm constantly going to show reading, you know,”

any periodical that's just come out on photography. I tried to make sure, and in the know, if there's an exhibition within like an hours radius from, if I'm going on vacation or, um, yeah, in a different city, I try to see everything because that's, and that's also the advice

that I do give to artists, too, is to see as much as you possibly can, because you never know

when you're going to see something that will change the way you think or just shift your vision. And when I, when I see something like that, it's like I borrowed someone's eyes for like just a second. And you can see the world through this entirely new perspective and it, it makes me lose my

it's a responsibility, but I, and I don't take it lightly. And I, if it's hobby, it's something

I never get tired of. It's so, it's so funny. Like, I, as a kid, I would get tired of things

really quickly. I had lots of different hobbies. And it was only when I picked up the photo textbook, um, when I took a class at City College that after that, like, I couldn't put it down.

“And it's because I think photography touches on every single discipline out there. There's”

a written, there's hardly a discipline that photography hasn't touched in some way. And, and so, every project that I begin and every meeting that I have with an artist, whether it's someone at a portfolio review or someone, you know, who's established and represented by a big, you know, blue chip gallery, it's, um, they all have something different that they're interested in. Everyone is interested in different themes, whether it's, you know, um, 1950s labor practices

or South African, um, history of a part, like there's just so many different avenues. And so

with photography, there's never been a moment where I get bored because it's all about the world

around us. It's, um, even if it's really conceptual, then it's still then perhaps it, um, it relates to to something else. It's always, there's something adjacent or a thematically that that is new to me. And so I'm constantly learning, which is probably, probably why this is the best job in the world, I think. Sorry to cut away from the episode for a minute, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly. Now, I spent a long time thinking that isolation

was part of the deal when it came to photography. That if you were, so it's serious about the work you did it alone. You'd consume enough, watching enough, reading enough, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful. And it sometimes did, but mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them. What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop it was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly

the same way I did. The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller and I felt

“more okay with them. They got named. That's what I'm building with the mood inside us. It's a”

place where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions, and of course your hard-finished ideas, and where someone would actually engage with them. We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content. We have monthly Masterclasses, Q&A sessions, and of course the weekly book clubs, and direct access to me and my team, because you don't have to do this alone. So the link is in the show notes and hopefully I'll see you inside. Do you feel there's there's

not a trend, I guess. A movement to more of the conceptual photography and certainly the more introspective photography, or do you still see the beautiful diversity? Or should I say is it kind of your goal to make sure there's as much diversity in the photography, exhibited works as possible? That's an interesting question, because someone was asking me, so do you love documentary photography only? Or is it photojournalism? And I'm actually pretty much a

“genuist, and I think you need to be as a curator at a collecting institution.”

If you're not, then your shaping kind of a skewed history of the medium. You have to be looking at photography, whether it's commercial photography, scientific photography, anything. It's anything that relates to image-making is fair game to be at the museum, I think, because we're telling a history of the medium. I was just actually at the B&A, the Victorian Albert Museum in London, and looking at their American photography show. What was fantastic was that they had this one

wall case that had records in it, and they were all the photographs that were reproduced on those records. We're all my famous photographers, like Helen Levitt's beautiful color photograph of a girl kind of in this pose in front of a green car. And when I saw that, I was like, oh my god,

this is brilliant. To show how photography, it's never just about the art, the photograph itself.

all these other avenues. And that, to me, was like a stroke of brilliance. And because, of course, you see in many museums, you'll see photo books there. And perhaps a poster or an invitation. But when you actually start having the objects that you can buy in a store, and how that also relates, the history of photography, and how many artists don't just do fine art, right? They also work in working commercial photography, or they teach. And so pedagogy is a really important

aspect of many artists' practice, because they also have to make a living, and it is difficult to make a living as a photographer, as a fine art photographer, I should say.

“Yeah. Yeah, the reason I ask is, you know, are you going to Paris for a tour this year?”

This will be my first year I go to Kerry Photo. I have had to install an exhibition for the past four or five years at SFMellet in November. Oh, no. And so I am so excited. And it has been, it has been my, this shows that I've installed during peripheral happen fantastic. So it's okay. But this will be my first year, and I'm very excited. Me too. So I will see, I look forward to seeing you there. But the reason I bring it up,

because I hear a lot of rhetoric from other photographers who've either exhibited at Paris Photo, or have been multiple times, and they feel a little bit disillusioned with what gets displayed, their what gets exhibited, what gets sold, and what gets awarded, and they feel like there's that there is a decline in things like documentary photography and and journalistic photography. That's kind of where I was the question I was asking you. Yeah. So there are trends

that you see in museums. And one trend that I've noticed is that photojournalism hasn't been

“forward in on people's exhibition calendars recently. It's not as common as it was. I believe in”

'80s and '90s. And so, and documentary photography has always been, I think, not always,

but it has been popular for a while. Yes, we are seeing an influx of conceptual photography, but I think there's a place for both. And it wouldn't be, I wouldn't be doing my job just as, if I wasn't seeing and promoting all kinds of mediums. All kinds of thematic branches in the medium. There are a lot of artists who are dealing with almost like meta photography, they're kind of thinking about the medium itself, right? And whether it's somebody like in Yachtibonies or even Terracranac

and how her actors re-invisioning other artists' practice or being in conversation with their

practices, there is that a huge strong branch of photography, but there always has been.

If you think about the '70s and Robert Heineken in LA, but it's usually always this undercurrent of conceptual photography, there's documentary and it's my job to be able to think about why sometimes some are more popular than others. I mean, right now, it's a struggle for museums to get people in the doors. And so, there's a lot of pressure to be able to, you know,

“what's going to, is it a name that's going to get people in the door? Is it a particular theme?”

What is it? Is it a geographical occasion? Is it, I've seen there's two shows about the 90s that are on view in different locations right now. I think the tape has a show about the 90s and BGO has a show about a musician that was playing in the 90s. And so, you know, what are those trends? And I can see why, perhaps, a lyrical documentary is what people call it, why that hasn't been as strong of a contender in exhibitions as maybe it was 10 years ago,

or maybe 15 years ago, but it doesn't mean it won't come right back.

Yeah. Like, there's always a place for it. It has always cycles. And I think there's always a place

for all of it. And that's the one of the beauties of photography is that it, you know, it's not only so many, like you said, so many evolving stories and themes and narratives that one as an artist

this, the beauty of it is, is it's diversity in itself. And so, yeah, I imagine your job is

“is extremely exciting, but also, well, I have a, have a big part to play here in, you know, take”

Paris photo and what I was saying about that, the curator of, or the curators that are over there, they have a big part to play in the popularism, or the trends, or the, the way they want their photography exhibitions to make people feel and to, like you said, bring people through the doors, almost like a chicken and egg situation, but we see that across all types of museums, we see that across all types of, you know, physical institutions almost, that there is a huge problem,

a huge demand problem in getting people to kind of see this work that isn't in front of their iPhone screen. How do you, do you guys, do you sit and talk about this, this problem at SF

“moment, is this kind of a big kind of ongoing battle that you're, you're trying to win?”

I work with some amazing people at the museum. We have a small, but mighty photo department,

there are three photo curators and two curatorial assistants and an amazing administrative assistant, and we try to share when we've gone to see exhibitions in different places, as we're, you know, people are all traveling at different times, and we do try to talk about the state of photography and with technology and AI, I think we need to figure out, we work off the public programs to try to figure out how do we get these conversations into

the public sphere and have panel discussions, and so it's up to us to really understand who are the big thinkers and talkers, because yes, of course we are part of that conversation,

but there's always, there's so many voices out there that are so much more experienced,

so we look to our colleagues, of course, in our history and history of photography, but well beyond that, whether it's people in the legal fields or people in more the technology field, in museums should be a place where those conversations happen. If we can, make them happen, and we have an amazing public programs department, a public engagement department, whose end to Kathleen is the head of it, and she just, she's so wonderful at brainstorming

different ways to engage different topics, whether it's about housing and San Francisco technology and San Francisco, or what photography is today. Fascinating. Early you said, you're talking about your role and your team's role roles, but your role as an assistant curator, can you, you said initially when you were younger, you didn't quite understand truly what your curator does, educate me, educate my audience, because I still don't feel like, you know,

I don't know what you're in one of my first questions to talk you through your day by day,

but you know, I kind of genuinely know what your curator does, obviously, but give me, give me some real insights as to, you've already touched upon them again. We can go a little bit deeper for me into what a curator actually does. The basic goal of a, or job of a curator is to organize exhibitions, whether from the permanent collection or special exhibitions in which you have to take out loans and put on shows. That's my number one job.

Second transition, just what do you mean take out loans as an end borrow work? So as so there's a permanent collection exhibition and then there's special exhibitions, special exhibitions means that

“you need to, you don't own the work and so we have to borrow the work, either from an institution,”

from an artist, from a gallery in order to be able to put on a show. So conceptualizing an exhibition, proposing it to supervisor and leadership once it gets green lit, then you work on that exhibition for anywhere from two to five years and perhaps there's a catalog. So you'll be working on a text that goes along with it and so you depending on if it's a monographic show or a thematic show, you'll need to be collaborating with a living artist or perhaps it's someone who

for years so that you become an expert on it. And then, you know, of course, the one-year mark, when you're one year away from your exhibition, that's when the checklist has to be final. That's when framing has to be decided any kind of fabrication of furniture for the exhibition,

“so you need to be decided six months prior to the exhibition, getting the loans to SF Malma”

if it's a special exhibition, you know, that's a whole process. So you work on a show for a very long time. It's like making a date. Like it's, it becomes super important to you and then the best part is when the work arrives and if it's not part of the permanent collection and you get to install it and so the work is laid out in the different galleries and you, you know, you've done a draft layout of the show with an exhibition designer, but the work always looks so

different when you see it in person and it's so exciting and you might change like 10% of it, you know, switching walls and to do where, you know, where objects hang or the order or something because it just looks better, but it's, it's this culminating moment and then you give your first

tour, which I always think my first tours are awful because it's just like you haven't,

that you're never going to work. No, no, no, no, it's like the choreography that it's never right and then you, the with the questions that people ask you from there, you shift and you, I think by the third tour, that's like my sweet spot and then I know how to get the tour of a show and then you're the spokesperson for it and so you've written all, you know, the press release, the text for it, you've written, perhaps the accompanying catalog, and so you are the expert

“and that's what keeps me sane when, when I do a tour, when I think about the fact that”

I know more about this than, you know, anybody except in lessons for the living artists and they probably know a lot more than we, and so my goal or inner responsibilities as a curator is to put on interesting exhibitions that are both for, you know, anyone from like my children's age, like an eight-year-old or a 12-year-old, to my mom's age, she's like 80 and so, but it's also, my audience is the photo historian, the photographer, the person who just randomly walks into the

exhibition and so how can I, um, interest this broad range of people who, you know, might not know the artists who are on view and think through that what do they actually need to know in order to

enjoy and get something out of their experience? And so, that's first, then another large

opportunity. How often are you doing those exhibitions? Like on a year, average per year, how many do you do? One to two, so I just, in November, November 2025, I had a hundred quite de Hano's exhibition opened at SF Malma. In May, I had a three gallery permanent collection show opened about dance called "Feel the Beat" and then in January, I'll have Ponte City, and Mikhail Sabotsky and Patrick Waterhouse opened. So, there are every six months, but then I also

am working on a much larger show in 2019 about photography and magic that I'll be co-organizing with the MFA Houston. And so that show is in, I'm in the research mode for the show. I don't have a checklist for it yet, and just trying to understand the landscape of stage magic. So, so yes,

“I'm always at different points in the, in the exhibition experience. Okay, so that's what that's the”

one, the primary key, going to roll there, and then acquisitions are really key. So, we, we acquire

a few things, a couple of times a year, and that's why I'm always meeting with artists and seeing

gallery shows and trying to see group shows and figure out, like, what do we need to have in the collection of what stories are we trying to tell through the permanent collection? Any, any museum that is a collecting institution, they, it's always shaped by the curators that have been at the head of their departments or in the curators underneath them, right? Because all of us are bringing different ideas to the table. We all see different shows. We all are meeting with different people,

we all have our interests. And so every, you know, every week I try to see a couple of shows,

for me acquire, it would be that it's going to be in a forthcoming exhibition, but that's not

“always the case. There's also work that you see, and you know that it needs to be part of our collection,”

and so you argue for it whether it's going to be in an exhibition or not. Maybe it's just this lucky moment when something a donor would like to give something to the museum, because we have both purchases and gifts that are given. But it's my job to know what people are working on right now, past projects that are relevant, because maybe I have a colleague who says, you know what, I'm working on a show about X, and I can be like, oh, you know what, I just met by somebody who is

actually thinking about that. That's one of their themes. And so, I have a lot of different

ideas and people that are always kind of milling about in my head, because I, it's, it's actually

my favorite thing when someone tells me that they're working on some sort of thematic show. And I'm like, oh gosh, I know so many people, or maybe it's a geographic show, whether focusing or particular type of grade, and then like, oh my gosh, I, I just saw the perfect thing, and

“it's a second point. And I think so many photos for Ian's love it.”

When they get asked that, because it shows how nerdy we all are. But how much we love, how much we love the medium. So acquisitions are a big part. And there's classes that come to visit that would probably be my next thing. So, um, in my role as a curator at the museum, I, there are local higher education classes from, whatever, you see for, you see Berkeley, or Stanford, or, um, San Francisco State that come to visit, we have a study room, and we pull, uh,

photographs from the vaults and talk about the history of photography. And whenever I do those classes, I talk about how there's so many different histories of the medium, right? Like, there's not just one. And I'm only telling, um, little sliver of, of a history through some of the objects, and whether it's, um, through technology, so, or, and the different processes, so maybe I show a digerotype, an amberotype, a tin type, a cyanotype, and just showing how, how many things

are considered photography, right, that fall under the umbrella, or maybe it's a class that's focusing on, uh, Japanese photography, and then I can pull those works from the collection. So, uh, many curators have, um, either some sort of graduate degree, and part of that is teaching, and, um, and so that part is really fun to be able to share some of the knowledge, because I have so many anecdotes about different artists, and just things that I had read over time,

so it's really fun to actually be able to, um, share that with a class, and have them tell me what they see in pictures, because what I've learned over the years is that everyone sees something different when they look at a photograph. They're coming from their own perspective, they're, they're holding in on some detail that perhaps I miss, and so it's really fun to be able to have a, uh, students in the study room and talk through what photographs mean to them.

Do you think part of the success of a photograph is, is closing this gap between what the artist intended with the image and what is actually received by, obviously, not everyone, because like it said, it's, it's extremely subjective and what we see in the image, but generally speaking, is that kind of what you're looking for is when it just kind of hits that magic mark, where you kind of understand what the artist was intending with an image or with a set of images,

and you're kind of understanding that as well and meeting the artist in the middle. The big role of a curator is to be a mediator between the artist and the public and to be able to articulate those intentions to the viewer. Sometimes that doesn't happen, right? If I write a label, how many people are really meeting all our labels, right? I don't know, maybe 20 percent, 10 percent,

“I'm not sure. So you could only do so much, but when I'm in the goal, I think for any”

artists is that people understand the intention, but I don't, I do my best to guess and you're thinking about, you know, social history when you're looking at an object. One was the object made,

where was it made? Because it's always culturally in historic based specific. And so we try to get

like understand a context, where was the object circulating? That's, you know, really important

write a note on the back of their photograph and say, hey, I want to make this, you know, I would love, yeah, like I want all audience members, oh, all visitors to be able to understand if this is about X, Y, and Z. And so, you know, what I was working with, I hand out right to hang out on his, on his big, mid-career retrospective, that's when, you know, he and just like working so closely with an artist and being able to understand their intentions and have him

properly like walk me through all of his hopes and dreams for a particular series or a particular

photograph. And it wasn't always what I read into it, right? It's different. There's always a

bit of a gap, but I think it's in that gap that it gets exciting and that it gets fun because

“if it wouldn't be that fun, if everyone just said, oh, that's what the artist means. I talk about”

this all that time on the people in my private community because we talk about sequencing and pairing a lot and kind of this, this other art form that is putting images together, right, and to kind of express maybe some kind of story and, you know, meet in the middle in this beautiful gray area. And I always talk about certainly when, you know, if we distill it down to pairings about this,

the pairings being too obvious, like we, you know, this is beauty in the unknown and the ambiguity

of, you know, images that can raise questions and insight dialogue and discourse, that's really what it's all about and that they, you know, a lot of people ask, you know, what do you mean by two obvious and why is that a problem? Well, exactly, as I say, well, you're just giving people answers and then it's like, oh, move on to the next things and that there isn't really an absorption. Yeah, some work can be too ominous for lack of a better way to describe it and

“something I think about when I'm proposing an acquisition and an artist is telling me about the work”

and if, if I can't write about the photograph or the series, you know, however we're thinking about an acquisition or a project, if I can't write that much, that means that I probably don't, it's not the right work. There needs to, I need it, I work a work to, for a work to truly excite me, it needs to have layers, conceptual layers, formal layers, it needs to, it needs to have some texture to it, right? And I'm not, you know, like, I'm not talking about like a visible texture.

I'm talking about like, what, what stories am I going to tell about this picture to audiences? And what will, what will keep them breeding? And I find that when something is too on the nose and too, just straightforward, I just don't have that much to say. And then I, and it's, and it's the work set, I go back to it. So if I see a body of work and then a week later, it comes to me again, like, somehow I, all of a sudden, doing something and it pops into my head, I know that there's

something about it that will keep me interested and stays with me. And if a work, if I just see a work and everything about the thing that usually means that it wasn't the right thing, it wasn't. And I have a really good visual memory, but it has to be, it has to have some complexity to it. And but not, but not so much so that that it's too overbearing, it has to be able to, to welcome me in a little, right? And if it welcomes me and if I'm open to it, that I know that our viewers can

be open to it too, because of course, I come with a mode of history of photography behind me.

“And so probably the first thing I do when I look at a work is I think, how does this add to the”

canon? And how does this add to what I already know about photography? Does it have echoes from 1970s, 1950s, where, you know, photography in New York? Like, where do I see kind of the ripple effective of past projects? And so that's usually where I begin. And then it's about hearing the artists who are reading about the artists and kind of thinking through what their goals are, if there is such a text or if they would like to share, because some artists don't want to share

those things, which is fine. But yeah, there is something about that little gray area that is good.

Love that you, this is the first time I've kind of heard of that approach, that initial approach

of understanding where an image or a body of work might fit into the canon of photographic history.

that that kind of remit of yours is to continue this and to evolve and to, you know,

have got glorified even more than this, the beautiful history of photography and to sit on the shoulders of it with the work that you're choosing to curate and represent. Can you give me an example that comes to mind where just so that we can visualize it a little bit in a body of work that you might have been approached whether you might have found that has done that has kind of achieved that purpose for you. Yeah, I acquired a work by Dion Lee for the museum maybe in 2022.

And it was, it's a framed collage of an eye blinking. It has maybe

200 small photographs of the eye is open at the top and then it maybe it's 10 rows by 20,

something like that. And of the side blinking and it speaks to think about Edward Moybridge and his early photography capturing motion and and what an eye and how odd and strange an eye looks like when it's in the process of blinking. And she, she's somebody who is interested in cinema. She was using a film camera. So those are freezes in there and the film capturing that. And so we think about the history of cinema, the history. So Edward Moybridge, you're thinking

about also the black body and its her eye and how it's been, how it's been captured and to have

it be almost at the self portrait, but is it like it's just her eye? But thinking about the gaze

and so that then moves to a whole other topic, right? Thinking about how collage and cutting up

“pictures is becoming a real big, a real important topic. So cutting things up collaging that usually”

happens in moments of rupture. So you think about data and you think about interwar photography that was really popular then. And these at these moments of rupture that's when collage often comes into the fore. It's like because people need to raise the world around them to then reconstruct it and so that was also part of what I was thinking about. And so if you just listen to what I said, it's like it's like, it's like you dot a history of cinema, the black body, like right? And so

when I'm thinking about acquiring work, I have to think about this map or constellation, I guess. It's a constellation of different themes and branches of the history of moving image or of

“the just image of photography and how that relates. So it was, that's what happens in my brain.”

And so sometimes I talk faster than I can just, it's because it's so exciting when you actually start to see the connections between all the different works. And then, you know, I've got to know Dion really well. We worked on a project together through unseen California. And so this was a whole other world in since then. She was in the Whitney Biennial. Her work is been acquired by several museums. And it's a, it's really beautiful to be able to get to know these artists

and bring their work into action. It's such a privilege to get to know them and have them share what they're doing. Because when I acquire the work, I also have to defend it. Like, I have to give the talk about it to our committee. Both are written talk, written argument, but also a, you know, five to seven minute presentation about a work. And so I get, you know, I have a lot of conversations with the artists to make sure, like, I truly understand not only how the object is made, but

“why they did it. What was it that inspired this work? Were they, what were their influences?”

Were they, you know, how does it relate to the past work? What are they thinking about for the future? What are the main themes that excite them? What are the books that they're reading? So I really do get to know people well. And so, you know, thinking that places like Perry Photo or RRL, it's like, when you see these artists around, it's, there's a reason why, you know, that that relationship is really special between a curator and an artist. Because they're trusting

us to be able to tell their stories and to respectfully do so. And, you know, whenever I hang the

if it artists is living. I will go back to them and send them my text before it goes on the wall,

“because I want to make sure it's appropriate and they feel good about, you know, that I haven't”

misfoken in any way. I hate my worst nightmare would be that I would write something and not send it to them. And then a friend perhaps of theirs would like see the label send it to them. And then I get a horrible collar email being like, this is like, what did you write? And so that relationship is sacred. And I really learn a lot through working with artists and, you know, every artist is different. Some artists don't, you know, don't want to be involved in the writing of those texts, some really

do. And it's exciting to be able to see how they, what to see what they want people to know

in a hundred words, right? Because that's the length of an extended label, a hundred to a hundred and then eight words. Which is nothing. But yeah, I'm not sure many people read those labels anyway.

“I know, like I try, when I go to galleries and museums, I'll always try and read the label.”

And then I know like ten minutes in, I'm just scanning. And then by the end, I'm not reading them at all, you know. But to talk me through that, because, you know, we know each other, kind of more in the photo book world. And, you know, as much as I'm obsessed with photo books and kind of the art and skill behind creating books and publishing, et cetera. As well as curating for that, right? There's a whole curation process for photo book and that differs so much to curating for

museums, galleries, exhibit and exhibitions. So tell me, talk to me about those differences. And I mean, obviously, one is a lot more tactile when it comes to, you know, the individual experience. One is a little bit more participatory and involved and kind of three dimensional with that experience of walking through an exhibition. So kind of those surface, those surface layers are sighted, kind of can see that. But as a curator, going between these two kind of mediums

of exhibition, should it, should we say? What are the big differences or big challenges that you have as a curator? Certainly when it comes to the exhibition side, because you don't have

“as much control over the experience, I guess, would that be correct?”

I mean, I have a lot of experience with the design of exhibition. So I collaborate with

an exhibition designer for every show we have for SFMOMA. And for me, it's always about choreography.

I try to think about the flow of a space and where I want people's attention to be first and what stories am I trying to tell on each wall? So I kind of group works together on a wall for reasons, right? It's not the strand and it's usually thematic. And it's, I try to listen to music when I work with an exhibition designer or when I'm looking at the layout after I've done the first draft with an exhibition designer. I really think about it musically. I know that's odd

but it's about choreography and walking, like in your mind's eye before the exhibition is home, you're walking through the space concept. You're kind of imagining it and you want people to kind of come forward to walk forward to like look up at closed details that also to move away to to look at maybe the full ball installation and think about how you do it. And you want to have simple, some simple walls, some more complex and constellation or cloud type hangs that you want

like a grid or a double hang. And so it's all about variation and like, but the work, it's all about the work that's on view that will be what inspires the design of the wall. So it's for Alejandro Show, for example, it was a lot by series. And so how what is a series about does the series call for a grid? Just a series call for just single line of photographs. What's the rhythm and the music that I hear in my head when I look at as project or a series and with that

in mind, that's kind of what I do then for the wall. And so I just also did this exhibition on dance called "Deal the Beat" and I was listening to music and trying to think about it. There's a Malik CD-A portfolio that I included called "Molly Twist" and it hurts back to this song from 1963 with

on the portfolio box. It was a twist on it. And so I realized I should try to replicate that

that both that went that twisting linearity, the name "Molly Twist" but also the song that has some like back and forth to it and I needed to replicate that somehow on the wall. And so I made these lines of four photographs each. There's five lines and they're each shifted. They're topped to bottom's touch and there are two inches shifted apart to the right and left so they almost look like DNA twisting on the wall and so back to me tells its own story.

And so trying to be able to get across kind of these ideas about music and dance but within through it installation and so that's really special. Doing something like that for a book,

“it's I think I have to say I think I'm probably better at doing wall installations”

because I'm like the worst photo book reader. I always started the back if the story. I want to those and I know that all the artists are like oh my gosh why is then she starting from the beginning? I was like oh it's the goal from the back here and so I have my own way of

looking at books I always start from the back and then the second time I do that. I start from the

beginning. It's fun for me is like seeing when I flip through it from the back it's those bursts of amazingness that like come through all the sudden like a picture will grab me and I'm like oh and then I keep going and then I stop on this other random picture and it's it's those little bubbles of a of brilliance that come out when you're looking at a photo book from back to front was the for me the photo book is so much about its objectness and about

being able to touch at the tactility because one thing that I love about the photography or some photographs I truly love are the ones that make me think of other senses so like the photograph about dance it makes me think about music and sound or the photographs you know where it's like icy cold it makes me think about temperature and touch and well like textures and and or maybe

“it's a food photograph and then I think about smell and so I love how it can spark these”

the other sensory experiences and so with books it's about like looking at this paper stop looking at the cover how that to me is really important the is it not is it glossy and then and then I'll think about the pacing and you know and how each picture because I know that there is some sort of rhythm that the artist wants me to to glean from it but for me the the actual sequencing of the work it's much harder in book format I love seeing it on the wall and thinking about walking

up to it and how like a like it's architecture and dance combined into one when you're thinking about an installation right because it's all about motion and your own movement and experience of

“the space whereas a book it's so much more intimate and you're looking at the pacing and I almost”

wish that artists would have to give me a soundtrack that they want me to listen to when I'm when I'm reading their book because I don't know it's I want to get in their head in many ways but I thought about having a QR code or you know in the front of the book you know just scan this listen to this track as you you paste through the book totally I would love that I would absolutely adore it now when it comes to photography the whole infrastructure of the

internet reward speed post more post faster be first be everywhere the algorithm doesn't care

whether you went deep it cares whether you showed up yesterday and I guess that's not photography specific now for me I built my work around a different bet that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand a something fully then go fast and understand probably nothing that depth is not a liability that the work you make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed maybe or chasing the algorithm

and visual artists who are serious about the slow work we have monthly masterclasses where we

“actually go deep on craft and thinking we have a weekly book club monthly Q&A's we have the”

podcast of course but add free with bonus content and we have direct access to me in my team it's not another newsletter you'll forget about not a discord server full of noise to room with a

small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus it's just $19 a month

the link is in the show notes and I really hope I can see you inside tell me now more about

“and I really don't want to put you on the spot but I imagine one of my audience is thinking”

as well as you know myself throughout the last few years how do we get how do we get exhibited you

know co you know a stream you know two big dreams with a lot of photographers photo

work or published you know published from the book and an exhibition anywhere but at a recipe for you know it institution where do we you know put the photo book aside how do we go about because I imagine you get you know hundreds of emails people going except me except me look at my work look my work me being one of them but you know how how what recommendation

“should you should I say what advice can you give us to not possibly try and stand out at all but”

what are you looking for in terms of I know you have this innate instinct feeling when you open and what what makes you open that but that work to begin with what are you what piece of advice can you give us on this side when we're potentially trying to get our work in front of you. Sorry to stop you here in the conversation and thank you so much for listening up into this point. Now if you're enjoying it so far and would like to hear more than the remainder of this episode

including bonus questions extra content and conversations I don't release anywhere else lives the inside my private community for photographers called the mood inside us so if you would like to listen to the rest you'll find the link in the description to find out more about this community and if not of course thank you so much for listening this far it really does mean a lot and I hope to see you inside.