What exactly is a photobook? This episode is with longtime artist, bookmaker, photographer, writer, translator, and editor Hans Hickerson. For the past five years or so, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill has been working as a critic, or at least, writing about photobooks, as Contributing Editor at The Photobook Journal. Hans is the Managing Editor of that publication and agreed to come on the show to share his experience.

In this conversation, Hans and Brian delineate the characteristics of the photobook, and in so doing, discuss numerous famous and lesser-known examples. They discuss how they evaluate books and some that have surprised them. They especially home in on questions that concern image-text photobooks and connections to literature, such as how photobooks represent places, historical epochs, and cultures. For example, how can text be used to complement, rather than dominate imagery? In approaching these topics, Hans also explains how he got into photobooks decades ago, what it meant then versus today, and how the field has changed. He also relates some fascinating stories and insights from his encounters with the likes of Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Jim Goldberg, and more. During the conversation, they also talk about the challenges of distribution, art book fairs, and gallery curation.

Notes:

Fishpond Press - https://hanshickerson.com/books

Kevin Cooley’s Wizard of Awe - https://www.eriskayconnection.com/the-wizard-of-awe/

John Volynchook’s Faultlines - https://gostbooks.com/en-us/products/faultlines

Jordan Baumgarten’s Family Tree Removal - https://smog-press.xyz/collections/frontpage/products/family-tree-removal

Kult Books - https://kultbooks.com

Sleeper Studio - https://sleeper.studio/INFO

Michel Tournier - https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803244306/the-mirror-of-ideas/

The Yearbook Committee - https://www.theyearbookcommittee.com

Jordan Gale’s Long Distance Drunk - https://photobookjournal.com/2025/10/03/jordan-gale-long-distance-drunk/

Gary Alan Fine’s Talking Art - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo28263673.html

Brian O’Neill - https://www.brianfoneill.net

Immaterial Books - https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Wyoming Toad - https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com/album/light-rail

In this conversation, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill, sits down with photographer and artist Ryan Searl. Based in Illinois, Searl explores the places that seem off the beaten path, but that are not often too far from home. Across the seemingly endless horizon of industrial agriculture in the American Midwest, Searl locates the coordinates of poetic meaning, but also questions them, attentive to its many appropriations. In Searl’s multivalent landscape, we encounter, through his persistent approach, a place that evolves and to which he responds, as new issues, risks, and quiet joys unfold.

O’Neill and Searl talk about inspirations in the history of art, as well as from the Farm Security Administration photographers, independent filmmaking, ambient music, and more. Searl explains how he develops his projects and the tensions of when and how to include portraits, as well as how to engage and deepen one’s commitment to diverse communities over time. As they discuss, photobooks and zines, in particular, can offer a potential window into art and art worlds for those without formal art training and multiple publics, free from social pressures associated with traditional galleries.

Searl has an extensive bookmaking practice, working with risograph and other printing techniques. The latest project from Searl published by Immaterial Books is Primary Wires.

Notes:

Blurred Horizons Exhibit - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/fields-of-vision-2025

Ryan Searl - @ryan_ramsey

Primary Wires by Ryan Searl - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/primary-wires

South of Chicago by Tim Carpenter and Nathan Pearce - https://www.micamera.com/en/prodotto/south-of-chicago-tim-carpenter-nathan-pearce/

Democratic Vistas by Jason Lee and Tim Carpenter - https://smog-press.xyz/products/democratic-vistas

The Triggering Town - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69402/the-triggering-town

Russell Lee archive - https://lib.arizona.edu/special-collections/collections/russell-lee-photograph-collection

Analog Gallery - https://analogwines.square.site

Brian O’Neill - https://www.brianfoneill.net

Immaterial Books - https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Wyoming Toad - https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com/album/light-rail

In this conversation, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill, sits down with photographer and artist Ciel Baptiste. Based in Illinois, Ciel has been exploring and experimenting with film photography, especially black and white, as a means to connect with the landscape and region.

In this conversation, O’Neill and Baptiste talk about inspirations in the history of art, as well as from the Farm Security Administration photographers, press photography (e.g., Jack Bradley), the history of documentary photography in Illinois, inspirations in cinema, garage sales, Instagram, and more. Throughout, Baptiste discusses the importance of experimentation and exploration in photography in the creation of projects. The most recent project of Baptiste’s work that has been published by Immaterial Books is En Plein Air.

While many photographers busy themselves in the studio, Baptiste is drawn to the airy landscapes of central Illinois. Charmed by waterlogged fields, termite-ridden barns, and the symmetry of phone lines and cornfields, Baptiste’s workis a collection of rural vistas and landmarks, moments frozen in time. For them, these images allude to distant memories of a once-bustling hub of agriculture, left to decay as the country aged. And yet, it remains a place of new questions and possibilities.

Notes:

Blurred Horizons Exhibit - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/fields-of-vision-2025

Jack Bradley photography archive - https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/bra_jack/id/1714/

Ciel Baptiste - https://www.cielbaptiste.com

Ciel Baptiste - @crrrrl

En Plein Air - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/en-plein-air

Champaign Urbana Small Press Fest - https://illinoislibraries.wixsite.com/smallpressfestcu

Analog Gallery - https://analogwines.square.site

Brian O’Neill - https://www.brianfoneill.net

Immaterial Books - https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Wyoming Toad - https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com/album/light-rail

How can we work at the boundaries of the landscape as well as our perceptions? How can we work across multi-media within the context of still image-based projects? How do our projects mobilize a certain poetics?

In this conversation, Brian O'Neill and Jeff Smudde discuss paths through higher education like MFA programs, as well as the importance of the mentors one can meet along the way. They also cover questions about work-life balance and how to navigate the seemingly ever-present desire to be pushing one’s work forward.

Jeff discusses his background in design and music and how he got into being a photographer, and the connections and disconnections between fine art photography and journalism worlds regarding concerns about what documentary photography is and can be, more broadly. The conversation also covers the challenges and skillsets involved in making portraits and photographing in a variety of scenarios, as well as how to construct larger bodies of work and the levels of planning/degrees of premeditation that can be involved. Throughout, the conversation explores the use of multiple methods of working within the same project, like sound recording and text alongside still images, all with an underlying theme of zine and bookmaking.

Printed Matter LA – May 15-18, 2025

Jason Reblando - https://www.jasonreblando.com/CV

Jin Lee - https://jinleephotography.net

Juha Suonpää, The Forest is on the Move - https://www.morainebooks.com/pages/books/2258/juha-suonpaa/metsa-liikkuu-the-forest-is-on-the-move-skogen-ror-sig-der-wald-bewegt-sich-signed

Vanessa Winship, Snow - https://deadbeatclubpress.com/products/vanessa-winship-snow?srsltid=AfmBOopsHBmxvcq-pLILCRoRDsReaAqmcUnWl29c3SdpExPJc-A0OFen

Christian Patterson, Bottom of the Lake - http://www.christianpatterson.com/bottom-of-the-lake-book/

Kristine Potter, Dark Waters - https://www.kristinepotter.com/dark-waters

Jordan Weitzman, Magic Hour Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/magic-hour/id1122201914

Tycho - https://tycho.bandcamp.com

Jeff Smudde - https://www.jeffsmudde.com/perennial

Ready for Mistakes, Jeff Smudde’s Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ready-for-mistakes/id1477842413

Brian O’Neill - https://www.brianfoneill.net

Immaterial Books - https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Explicit rating: low-level profanity

How, and by what means, can we capture urban atmospheres and mobility? What can we learn about cities, ourselves, and our societies through these dimensions?

Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill becomes the subject of this conversation for the podcast, guest hosted by Tim Hale. They discuss Brian’s book-making work from the past few years and its connections to his training in the social sciences. Brian discusses his first book project, Beach Boulevard (Immaterial Books – 2021) and his forthcoming one - A Desert Transect, drawing connections between the two. While not premeditated as such, the books have become a kind of sequence unto themselves. In both instances, Brian unpacks how different types of mobility, such as walking and train riding, afford distinctive viewpoints on urbanism in the American West. Where Beach Boulevard took on a region nearly over-photographed - Southern California (and more specifically Huntington Beach), in A Desert Transect, Brian discusses how he approached Phoenix, Arizona – a place that is comparatively undertreated by photographers and storytellers. In so doing, he discusses his forays from photography into image-text work, and even field recording and video. Brian also talks about his side projects, such as a self-published book on the Paris metro system, which further illustrates his commitment to visual and textual modes of investigation and experimentation.

Brian and Tim also discuss the issue of whether to work in sequences or series, and what kinds of projects such systems of presentation serve. Throughout the conversation, Brian emphasizes the curiosity necessary to work through the world, and one’s own ideas, often invoking his approach through various literary and social scientific texts and concepts. For example, the idea of a transect – which in biology refers to the systematic study of a landscape along a line to assess species richness – was used as an heuristic inspiration for Brian’s exploratory project on the Phoenix Light Rail, which emerged as much out of personal interest in urbanism amidst climate crisis as from the simple everyday necessity of commuting in the United States’ 4th largest metropolis.

Links:

A Desert Transect: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/a-desert-transect

Tim Hale: https://www.timhale.net

Beach Boulevard: https://photobookjournal.com/2022/04/15/brian-oneill-beach-boulevard/

Brian O’Neill’s Paris book: https://www.blurb.com/user/brianfoneill

Brian O’Neill on Anima Loci: https://animaloci.org/walking-the-toxic-triangle/

Alex Wilk, designer: https://alexwilk.com

Arturo Soto: https://www.arturo-soto.com/#1

Natura Urbana: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551335/natura-urbana/

Wyoming Toad: https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com

How do we learn how to see? How is that images take us over time and space? What modes of practice, and of travel, introduce new ways of seeing?

In November of 2024, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill had the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee in Illinois with photographer, writer, and scholar Bill Cope. Initially, the plan was to cover just Bill’s four titles with Immaterial Books, all collected in the series, The Rail Way. However, as tends to happen when curious minds get together, the conversation took numerous turns into other territory. Bill recounts some of his early photographic history and memories of when he got his first cameras, heading off to India as a young man with two medium format bodies and film in tow (which has now led to the books in The Rail Way series of books), and how he continues to be fascinated with the developments in camera technology, from digital to artificial intelligence. However, always more interested in the act of photography and what seeing does to us and our minds, Bill and Brian discuss the visual ethnography of figures like Claude Levi-Strauss, and the lesser-known work on train systems of Colin T. Gifford. For Bill, Gifford’s images in particular were revelatory, because they were capturing the emotional qualities of train travel, which opened up a new way of seeing for him. We also get into the role of text in informing images in books and galleries. Across all these topics, an engaging conversation emerges that emphasizes the enduring quality of images, their relation to memory, and photography as a profoundly social practice.

Links:

Bill Cope: https://newlearningonline.com/kalantzis-and-cope

The Rail Way series at Immaterial Books: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/the-rail-way

The Rail Way Facebook (Meta) Page: https://www.facebook.com/@WWCopeRailPhotos/

Colin T. Gifford’s Each a Glimpse: https://rivetingbooks.com/products/each-a-glimpse-gifford-colin-t?srsltid=AfmBOoqqEjDvr9-dL2DmwxkfBfMldEKDBqGY3DdYVpfItC6KuDrxGMXa

Claude Levi-Strauss: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Levi-Strauss

Saudades Do Brasil, by Claude Levi-Strauss: https://www.abebooks.com/9780295974729/Saudades-Brasil-Photographic-Memoir-Levi-Strauss-0295974729/plp

Frank Cancian – Visual Ethnographer: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1472586X.2021.2008815

Wyoming Toad: https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com

Immaterial Books: https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Brian O’Neill: https://www.brianfoneill.net

What is (im)material in the world of photography? What does it mean to be modern? What is the role of the photobook today? How do artists and scholars work across disciplines to craft unique ideas and objects of reflection and how do those objects live on, beyond us? And, what is the meaning of contemporary art in the American Midwest?

In this episode, Immaterial Voices host and Immaterial Books curator Brian O’Neill sits down in Champaign, Illinois with Phillip Kalantzis-Cope. Immaterial Books is a publishing project that grew out of Phillip’s motivations as an image maker, scholar, designer, and long-time publisher, where he could combine his expertise with his aesthetic interests across his diverse practice. Founded in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he began to see more clearly how “books are something that happen in the world, whether they are digital or print.” Furthermore, Phil brings a unique voice to bookmaking and publishing, as he also holds a PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research where he focused on intellectual property and digital platforms, like Flickr. Such spaces, Phil argues, at one time both constituted a commons and a space for the work and play of the mind in an earlier age of the internet. Digital spaces, he offers, still can constitute an emancipatory space, providing productive alternative avenues for authors young and old. As Phil continues to develop these ideas, he has been working to bring together diverse voices, while building community and providing a multi-modal platform for independent creation. Thus, Immaterial Books has expanded its operations and titles in the past few years since its first title, Middlescapes.

Brian and Phil also discuss Mid-continent Modern, a book that had its opening exhibit at the Krannert Art Center in Champaign Illinois earlier this year. Mid-continent Modern was the culmination of a 10-year collaboration between Phillip Kalantzis-Cope and architect Jeff Poss. Phil talks about the development of this project from its inception all the way to the ongoing work surrounding it, such as working with the University of Illinois Architecture Department to uncover the past history of the sites, as well as their ongoing, living present.

This conversation took place just a few hours before the Fields of Vision exhibition, held at Analog Gallery in Urbana, Illinois.

Links

Mid-continent Modern: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/mid-continent-modern-book

See it when I believe it: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/see-it-when-i-believe-it

Jeff Poss: https://www.jefferypossarchitect.net

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope: https://www.phillipkalantziscope.com

Fields of Vision Exhibit: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/fields-of-vision?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2YpvQ_WT2kYv-D_jU6ibnv7TVO-9Kf6zzyk7A4XiArznGjcoyHhDJ6VIg_aem_ojNGzeS6OSr7KcGWWk-zsA

Music provided by Wyoming Toad: https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com

The Visual Politics of Elections: A Conversation with Matt Schneider and Gizem Melek

Are visuals biased? Is the media biased? Is it possible to be politically neutral? What is the role of “fairness?” How do visuals make themselves felt in elections and who is giving them their meaning?

In this episode, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill sits down with two scholars to understand the visual politics of elections. First, Matthew Schneider of the University of North Carlina at Wilmington discusses what President Trump means in terms of the visual culture of American Presidential elections, getting into topics about race and racism in America, the role of whiteness in the election cycles of recent memory, and the limits of news media communications. Then, sociologist and former journalist Gizem Melek of Queen’s University Belfast, discusses her research on the media framing of elections. In so doing, we talk about the rise of social media and the polarization of politics and society in the United States. And, she also draw parallels and contrasts with election politics in Turkey. Taken together, we hope this episode provides a well of insights about the role visual media in elections globally and across different visual and political regimes.

Additional Notes:

The opinions expressed here do not reflect the position of the University of North Carlina Wilmington, nor do the opinions that might be expressed reflect those of Queen’s University Belfast. In the same way, the opinions expressed here do not reflect those of the University of Washington.

This episode contains explicit content, because profanity is used to describe signage visibilized (meaning, there is profanity on the signage) on some of the images that the conversation unpacks.

Links:

Matt Schneider: https://mjschneider.net

Gizem Melek: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/gizem-melek

The Grift: https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/grift

Matt Schneider’s Review of The Grift: https://photobookjournal.com/2023/06/14/andrew-kochanowski-the-grift/

Gizem Melek’s article on US elections: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1472586X.2023.2209050

Gizem Melek’s article on Turkish elections: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15551393.2023.2232292

Music provided by Wyoming Toad: https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com

Brian O’Neill: https://www.brianfoneill.net

Immaterial Books: https://www.immaterialbooks.com