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