PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
SELECTED, RECENT, AND FORTHCOMING
NEW BOOK STRANGE HOURS OUT NOW
Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists, a collection of seventeen essays, interviews, and fiction, with a foreword by Joy Williams, published by Aperture in June; order here or at your local bookstore (and thank you!).
Read interviews with me by Connor Harrison in Lunate, Sarah Edwards in IndyWeek, and by Brian Arnold in Photo-Eye. Read reviews by Robert Sullivan for Vogue, by Madison Reid for Vanity Fair, by Gloria Crespo MacLennan for El País, by Kat Herriman for Cultured, by Rebecca Norris Webb for the Photobookstore blog, and by Alyse Burnside for The Brooklyn Rail.
Listen to me on The Selection Committee Radio Show with Nate Heiges. Listen to Sasha Wolf’s PhotoWork podcast with me and Kristine Potter, Part I and Part II. Watch the Aperture IFA Photo Assembly reading and chat with RaMell Ross and me.
If you’re looking to write about the book, please contact Lauren Van Natten at publicity@aperture.org. Aperture sales and distro info is here.
Stay tuned here for all event news.
ANOTHER BOOK OUT NOW: DARK WATERS
I have a new short story, “Blood Harmony,” in Dark Waters, the second monograph by Kristine Potter, connected to murder ballads and the way they are embedded in the contemporary landscape. Out now from Aperture. Read reviews by Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian, Brian Arnold at PhotoEye, Margaret Renkl in The New York Times, Rebecca Norris Webb for the Photobookstore blog, Laura Hutson Hunter in Nashville Scene, and Kira von Eichel at OprahDaily.
SELECTED AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND NEWS
2024
”Blood Harmony,” a short story published in Kristine Potter’s Dark Waters, is included in Southern Cultures’ Gothic South print issue, accompanied by a photo essay from the book. Terrific work in this issue, including an interview with Jesmyn Ward.
”On New Year’s Day in Los Angeles,” short fiction in Ryan Spencer’s There Is No Light at the End of the Tunnel Because the Tunnel Is Made of Light, out now from TBW Books.
2023
BOOKS
”Naranja, 1984,” a narrative essay in a new monograph, Peggy Nolan: Juggling Is Easy (TBW Books)
“When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There: Music and Time in Danny Lyon’s Moving Pictures,” in Danny Lyon: Journey West (Albuquerque Museum of Art)
MAGAZINES, JOURNALS, AND NEWSPAPERS
"Self Portrait in Other People’s Pictures,” a first-person essay, Literary Hub. Included in “Our Favorite Lit Hub Stories from 2023”
On “William Christenberry & RaMell Ross: Desire Paths,” an exhibition at Pace, essay for Aperture online
On Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home, and a new theatrical adaptation, for the New York Times Sunday Opinion (full essay and photos online and print excerpt in Sunday Review), with photographs by Alec Soth and archival photos and stills by Larry Sultan
On Wendy Red Star: My Home is Where My Tipi Sits (Rez Cars), 2011, for the Brooklyn Rail July/August 2023 issue
”Photography’s Fiction of Truth: Yevgenia Belorusets and the Power of Ambiguity,” Aperture online and reprinted in Strange Hours
“Carrie Schneider Unspools a Riddle about Photography and Cinema,” an interview for Aperture online
On Photographer Andrew Dosumnu’s New Book, Monograph, an interview for Vogue
“Link Wray and the Chord Heard ‘Round the World,” Our State, July 2023 issue
“Why Look at Planes?” a text accompanying photographs by Sinna Nasseri, The New York Times
Fiction reading, with Danielle Evans and Stephanie Ullman, at Hidden Palace reading series, hosted by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips at Fadensonnen, Baltimore
Recipient, Archive of Documentary Arts travel grant for “Bad Roads Ruin Even the Best of Cars”
Kyle Abraham on Transcending Time and Finding Lightness in Requiem, Vanity Fair
Her Own Private Iowa, Aperture’s Sleepwalking issue, guest-edited by Alec Soth (on Nancy Rexroth’s photobook IOWA)
On The Far Side of Belmullet, The Paris Review (on Colin Barrett’s story collection Homesickness)
Postcards from Ellsworth, The Paris Review
Cataloging a Dream House (SSENSE, Spring/Summer 2022; online December 2021 with a different visual presentation. Personal essay on photography and interiors: a housefire on my grandparents' farm, decorating from the Sears catalog, Dolly Parton, Harry Crews, William Eggleston and Elvis's ghost, Walker Evans, Deana Lawson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Kurt Cobain, Les Blank, more)
Coda for Winfred Rembert, Oxford American (Rembert’s memoir Chasing Me to My Grave won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize)
A video conversation with photographer Alec Soth, on the publication and opening of A Pound of Pictures
A tribute to Betty Davis, The Guardian
The Wild and Beautiful Art of Maria Prymachenko in Ukraine
2021
Country Boy Gone City: A Ballad of Johnny Bristol, Al Green, and Battle Creek’s Bloody Corner (longform feature essay, Oxford American Up South Music issue; nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
The World of Judith Joy Ross (profile feature, Aperture Cosmologies issue)
William Gedney’s Timelessly Intimate Photographs of San Francisco in the 1960s (essay, Aperture)
On How to Be in Public: The World According to Barbara Crane (essay, SSENSE)
Spain (the restaurant/bar/portal), collaboration with Michelle Marchessault (Dear New York,)
Lucy Dacus Takes Confessional Songwriting to a New Level (interview, T magazine)
Day Jobs: Susan Meiselas (Aperture Summer 2021 issue, print only)
A Visit with Dawoud Bey in the Place of His Pictures (Vanity Fair)
Day Jobs: On Jim Goldberg’s Photograms (Aperture New York issue)
Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Latest Album Arrives as a Witness to the Emotional Undertow of the Moment (Vanity Fair)
Where the Magic Happens: On Set with Mary Ellen Mark (Criterion)
A Three-Volume Book Becomes a Testament to Mary Ellen Mark’s Career (Aperture Utopia issue)
Here is the 12th issue of the Little Brown Mushroom Newsletter; with me writing about (among other things) Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and film and true stories and Alec on True Stories the photobook (specifically William Eggleston’s contributions), and the book Encampment, Wyoming, and the act of giving flowers to strangers.
BOOKS
Out now: “And the Clock Waits So Patiently,” my essay excerpted by the Paris Review and featured in But Still, It Turns (edited by Paul Graham), published by MACK in conjunction with the exhibition he curated at the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York. My essay is featured alongside texts by RaMell Ross, Ian Penman, and Graham.
Knit Club, a new photobook by Carolyn Drake, featuring a semifictional essay by me. Published by TBW Books. Finalist for the Paris PhotoBook Awards. Excerpt in Contact Sheet.
Girl Pictures, a Spring 2020 photobook by Justine Kurland, featuring my short story The Jeremys (Aperture Books). The Jeremys is nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction.
A ZINE MASQUERADING AS A NEWSLETTER
Ahead of the next phase of collective isolation, I wrote an essay, Time Travel, for the new issue of the Little Brown Mushroom Newsletter, a zine masquerading as a newsletter published in collaboration with Alec Soth. This installment of my column Cosmic Fishing is about time and grief and finding escape hatches, like Bernadette Mayer’s Memory and Charles Burchfield’s journals and paintings. In the same spirit, in the same issue, Alec Soth writes about encountering an old newspaper archive.
And here, is the archive of back issues, starting with the first issue on January 1, 2020 and continuing on to subsequent columns, many written while I was a visiting professor of creative writing in Virginia, Zoom-teaching from a beach motel:
Refresh the Map (on language and Jake Skeets’s debut poems, Issue #10)
and others on Spalding Gray, T.C. Cannon, David Berman, Mary Frank, ghost forests and Thomas Edison’s spirit phone:
Who’s Gon Bring You Chickens When I’m Gone? (#8),
Keeping Vigil (#7), and I Dyed My Hair in a Motel Void (#6),
The Sleeping Prophet (#5), Or Was It Like This? (#4),
The Smoking Car (#3), Spirit Phone in the Ghost Forest (#2),
and the inaugural column (#1)
2021, MAGAZINES AND WEB
How Alice Rose George Helped Shape a Pivotal Era in Photography, preface and collective tribute for Aperture
OTHER 2020 PUBLICATIONS
Still Speaking to the Streets: a visit with Danny Lyon (New York Times Sunday Arts and Leisure)
An Exhibition in Tucson Looks at the Things We Leave Behind (Aperture blog)
Frames of Mind: a profile of Garrett Bradley (WSJ magazine)
The Children of the Appalachians: On Wendy Ewald’s Portraits and Dreams (The Paris Review)
Subvert Normality: The Streetwise Voice of Linda Manz (Criterion Collection)
The Gospel of Brother Theotis Taylor (The Guardian)
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda, including Three Lives, an essay by me on Varda the artist (Criterion Collection)
Film Studies, on the cinematic influence of Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Aperture, Summer issue)
Talking to the Ancients: William Padilla-Brown Is Revolutionizing the Mycology World (HAOMA journal)
On American Origami, by Andres Gonzalez (The Nation)
The Man With the Keys: Writers Remember Charles Portis (Oxford American)
Toward Transcendence: Stephen Shore (IMA Issue 32)
Desire Lines: Reframing the American Road Trip Narrative in Alec Soth’s Photographs (IMA Issue 30, republished by Magnum Photos. and here it is in Japanese)
The Deadpan World of Nathaniel Mary Quinn (WSJ Magazine September Men’s Fashion issue)
It Resonates In My Soul: A Brief History of Georg Kremer’s Quiet Revolution in Color (Ursula)
The Seas Are Rising and So Are They (in collaboration with Joel Sternfeld, Vogue)
Songbook: On Bobby Womack’s Rendition of “California Dreamin’” in Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (Criterion Collection)
Some Plant Stuff, Man: Tending the Global Garden with Milford Graves (HAOMA journal)
Signs of Change (on my family’s history of Deafness and the 125th anniversary of the NC School for the Deaf, Our State, October issue)
One Photographer’s Experience of the Paranormal: Shannon Taggart’s Séance (T magazine)
On the Sixth Day: Alessandra Sanguinetti’s Portrait of Life and Death in Agricultural Argentina (Magnum Photos)
How to Map a Territory You Don’t Own: An Interview with Mitch Epstein (Aperture)
Knit Club: a story paired with photographs by Carolyn Drake, from her forthcoming book (Magnum Photos)
Sunday Review: Roky Erickson’s Never Say Goodbye (Pitchfork)
Prince: Originals (Pitchfork, Best New Reissue)
ALSO RECENT
The Trap House–Busting Vigilante of Pine Ridge Reservation (Topic; photographed by Taliesin Gilkes-Bower; a Longform pick)
This Side of Paradise: The Camp Fire Recovery (Vogue; photographed by Justine Kurland)
The Blue, Wandering Life of Townes Van Zandt (The Guardian)
Sonic Youth: Sister (Pitchfork)
But I Don’t Ever Lie: On Lucia Berlin (The Paris Review)
Everybody Has Tones, essay for David Byrne’s True Stories (Criterion Collection), order here…and read online here
That Chord! (on Etta Baker, for Oxford American’s North Carolina Music Issue, print)
Cover story profile of musician and artist Lonnie Holley, The Guardian (Film & Music issue)
Willie Nelson Tour Bus interview: ‘I don’t believe in closing the border’ (The Guardian)
The Power of Nathan Phillips’ Song (Vogue)
Sharon Van Etten Gets Free (Vulture/New York)
On April Dawn Alison’s secret photographs (Bookforum, Summer 2019 issue)
A Joyful Noise Grows in Brooklyn (Curbed Longform, photographed by Chris Mottalini)
SOME FAVORITES
In the Place Where Prince Lived (a collaboration with Alec Soth, Vogue)
Return to Standing Rock (a collaboration with Mitch Epstein, Vogue)
The Girls (an essay on Justine Kurland's early Girl pictures, So It Goes, Issue 11)
Repo Man: Glen Campbell in Charles Portis's Norwood (Paris Review)
An extended essay on Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, Sunday Review (Pitchfork)
Frank’s Cocktail Lounge Is an Iconic Neighborhood Bar — Frank Perkins Was the Man Who Made Sure of That (New York)
SOME MORE FAVORITES
Searching for Sam Shepard Aboard the Sunset Limited (Vogue)
An Afternoon with William Eggleston, Who Changed the Way We See the World (Vogue)
Chauncey Hare's Protest (Aperture "American Destiny" print issue)
To Burn Again (on the narrative of fire, and Brandi Twilley's paintings, Affidavit)
NIgel Poor and the San Quentin photographs that led to Ear Hustle: Prison Nation issue (Aperture)
Reimagining Female Identity in a Ukrainian Orphanage: Carolyn Drake (Paris Review)
SHORT FICTION IS WHERE MY HEART IS (BUT THERE’S LESS OF IT ONLINE)
Mash Turning (Southwest Review)
Captioning for the Blind (Monofonus Press; Best American Nonrequired Reading)
Return to Standing Rock (a collaboration with Mitch Epstein, Vogue)
All Eyes on Standing Rock: The World Is Watching (Vogue)
Congratulations, Donald Trump, You Just Reignited the DAPL Resistance (Vogue)
MORE FROM THE GUARDIAN
William Ferris and Capturing the Voices of Mississippi (The Guardian)
The Last Poets Sunday Workshop in Harlem (The Guardian)
Hailu Mergia: the Ethiopian Jazz Legend Who Jams in His Taxi (The Guardian)
'You Don't Own Me or Control Me': Janelle Monáe cover story (The Guardian, Film & Music)
ESSAYS
Rewriting Love Underneath the Hollywood Sign: The Story of eden ahbez and “Nature Boy” (Vogue)
Breakfast at the Peppermint Lounge (an essay for the Criterion Collection edition of Smithereens)
A Gun and a Guitar (The Paris Review)
Outlaw’s Territory (Guernica and Guernica Annual)
Slowly, and With Much Expression: Alec Soth’s Songbook (Guernica)
Protest Soul: Music for Healing a Broken World (Pitchfork Review)
The Interstellar Style of Sun Ra (Pitchfork Review)
A Story of Two Sisters, Rikers, and Russian Roulette (Topic)
Lake Fun (The Believer) *recently republished online
Brown Mountain Lights (The Believer) *recently republished online
The Year the Music Died (Vogue)
ON WRITERS AND WRITING
On Sam Shepard's Final Book, and Patti Smith's Tribute to Her Longtime Friend (Vogue)
The Tears of Denis Johnson (a collective tribute, published by Longreads)
Beautiful Country, Burn Again: On Joan Didion’s New, Unfinished Book (Vogue)
Reading Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book (Vogue)
Nobel Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich Speaks in New York After Orlando (Vogue)
Where James Baldwin Left Off: A New Book Reignites the Conversation About Race in America (Vogue)
Katherine Dunn, Author of Geek Love, Has Died (Vogue)
Gay Talese on a New Illustrated Edition of Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (Vogue)
Why Matt Gallagher’s New Novel About the Iraq War Matters Now (Vogue)
War Stories: Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the Iraq Experience Told Firsthand (Vogue)
Nevada Gothic: An Interview with Claire Vaye Watkins (The New Yorker)
An Interview with Damien Echols of the Memphis Three on Life After Death (Signature)
On Patti Smith, Joseph Mitchell, Mary Karr, and Alec Wilkinson (Signature)
In Big Sur, Storytelling Under the Redwoods (T/The New York Times)
SOME COLLABORATIONS
To the Lighthouse — On Staten Island (Curbed Longform, photographed by Chris Mottalini)
In Louis Armstrong’s World: Corona, Queens (Curbed Longform, photographed by Chris Mottalini)
Living on an NYU Superblock (Curbed Longform, photographed by Chris Mottalini)
The Fire This Time: California (with photographs by Nich Hance McElroy) (Vogue)
ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART
Southern Gothic: William Eggleston in Memphis, on the Eve of His Whitney Retrospective (New York Magazine)
Common Thread: Profile of Jordan Nassar, WSJ magazine September Men’s issue
The Cultish Allure of the Children's Book "The Lonely Doll" (The New Yorker/Page-Turner)
The Strange, Accidental Allure of Craigslist Mirrors (Vogue)
Through the Looking Glass: Profile of Ming Smith, Cultured, photographed by Katsu Naito
On Dawoud Bey’s Seeing Deeply, Bookforum (print only)
Saving Grace: Garry Winogrand's Art of the Ephemeral Moment (April/May 2018, Bookforum)
A Young Japanese Photographer's View of Harlem in the Nineties (The New Yorker/Photo Booth)
Rose Marie Cromwell’s El Libro Supremo de la Suerte (Bookforum)
Alec Soth's Mississippi Dreamers in a Nightmare America (Paris Review)
Everything That Rises (catalogue essay for Robert Knight's "Transnational" exhibition)
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz on Gordon Parks (Cultured cover story, photographed by Jamel Shabazz)
On Alessandra Sanguinetti's Photographs of France (Vogue)
Camping with Mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs (Vogue)
Behind the Scenes of Another Night: Choreographer Kyle Abraham (Vogue)
The Threat of Being Seen: Alex Prager (Aperture)
George Steinmetz Photographs a Protest at Battery Park (Vogue)
Sadie Barnette Turned Her Black Panther Father’s FBI File Into Art (Vogue)
The Radical Feminist Posters of the U.K.’s See Red Workshop (Vogue)
He Shot Andy Warhol: Billy Name, Photographer of Edie and the Velvets, Dies at 76 (Vogue)
Through the Lens of Blondie's Chris Stein (T and The New York Times)
Come for the Photos, Stay for the Films: Danny Lyon at the Whitney (Vogue)
Reframing the Legacy of Walker Evans, in a New Exhibition (Vogue)
Picturing the American South: The Year's Best Photo Books (Vogue)
Buck Ellison (Aperture "Elements of Style" issue)
A Conversation with Nan Goldin on the 30th Anniversary of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Vogue)
A New Documentary About Robert Frank Goes Beyond The Americans (Vogue)
Robert Frank’s Newsprint Retrospective Is True to the Photographer’s Revolutionary Spirit (Vogue)
The Family Acid’s 1970s Photographs of Big Sur (Vogue)
Remembering Malick Sidibé, Who Captured the Look of a Changing West Africa (Vogue)
A New Francesca Woodman Photo Book Demands a Closer Look (Vogue)
A Trove of Vintage Countercultural Photographs Sees the Light of Day (T/The New York Times)
Spot's Photos of the 1980s Southern California Skate-Punk Scene (T/The New York Times)
Justine Kurland’s Vivid, Haunting Photographs of Men and Cars (T/The New York Times)
After Sally Mann’s Memoir, a New Look at Her Most Famous Photographs (Vogue)
130 Ways of Looking at Los Angeles: A New Book Reimagines the Golden Dream (Vogue)
The Grand Ole Opry Turns 90! Henry Horenstein on His Photographs of ’70s Nashville (Vogue)
Mary Ellen Mark Has Died at 75: A Retrospective of the Photographer’s Pictures for Vogue (Vogue)
Julian Wasser’s Photographs of the California Dream, and Its Underbelly (The New York Times/T)
Bohemian Rhapsody: Peter Schlesinger’s A Photographic Memory (Vogue)
Where in the World Do Agnes Martin’s Visionary Paintings Belong? (Vogue)
Writers and Designers Build Their Ideal Bookshelf (Vogue)
Object Lessons: A Conversation with Christian Patterson (The Paris Review)
Photographer Karlheinz Weinberger’s New Book Is a Treasure Trove for Rebellious Denim Heads (Vogue)
An Interview with Joseph Szabo: The Photographer on His Rolling Stones Fans (Vogue)
LONGFORM AND TRAVEL
Following the Dust Tracks: Touring Florida Through the Eyes of Zora Neale Hurston (photographed too; The Washington Post Magazine)
On the Water Frontier: In Search of New York City’s Last Pioneers (photographed too; Transgressor)
Soul-Searching: Graceland’s Daily Visitor in Memphis, Tennessee (The Washington Post Magazine)
Spin Control (The Washington Post Magazine, honorable mention in Best American Sportswriting)
This is Carolina Country: Bringing the South to Brooklyn, One Truckload at a Time (Edible Brooklyn)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Story of a Land of Oz Theme Park (photographed too; Oxford American; print only)
MUSIC AND FILM
Jlin: Woman of Steel (profile of the artist in Gary, Indiana, Pitchfork)
Jane Birkin: On Film, On Serge, On Refusing to Say Her Own Name (Vogue)
An Interview with Marianne Faithfull (Vogue.com)
Angel Olsen: Phases (Pitchfork)
Jackie Shane: Any Other Way (Pitchfork)
The Leon Bridges Phenomenon (Vogue)
X: Los Angeles (Pitchfork)
With Quest, A Documentary Disrupts American Narratives About Race (Vogue)
The Making of the Outlaw Country Documentary Heartworn Highways (Vogue)
To Remember the Missing and Murdered, a Marathon of One (Vogue)
Betty Davis: Nasty Gal (Pitchfork)
On Lynn Castle’s album, Rose Colored Corner (Pitchfork)
Blue Velvet Revisited: A New Documentary on the Making of David Lynch’s Classic Film (Vogue)
A New Documentary Explores Unseen Life on a Native Reservation (Vogue)
Famous for Being Famous in Downtown ’80s New York: Susan Seidelman on Smithereens (Vogue)
The Future Is Psychedelic: Purling Hiss’s “3000 A.D.” (Vogue)
A Wanderlust Soundtrack of L.A.: Kevin Morby’s New Album Singing Saw
How River Phoenix’s Coming of Age Anticipated My Own (Vogue)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl Cast on Rewriting the Sexual Coming-of-Age Story (Vogue)
The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Jim Reid on the Making of Psychocandy (Vogue)
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert (POV/American Documentary)
The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel About His New Album Lost in a Dream (Vogue)
What Music Inspires David Lynch? (Vogue)
Catching Up with Linda Manz, the Original Punk Rock Girl of Film (T/The New York Times)
An Interview with Angel Olsen (Vogue)
New Songs from Old Friends: An Interview with Vetiver (Vogue)
#JeSuisKim: Kim Gordon on Her New Memoir (Vogue)
FASHION AND CULTURE
On Rihanna and Fashion (Pitchfork)
Venus X, a profile (November 2017 print issue of W magazine)
William Eggleston’s Daughter Andra Turns Her Father’s Drawings Into Fashion (Vogue)
KIm Gordon and the X-Girl Factor (Vogue)
A Vivid Folkloric Tradition Is Alive and Well in Oaxaca City (Vogue)
Scenes from a Beauty Pageant in Thailand, Where Fashion Takes Center Stage (Vogue)
Patti Smith and Ann Demeulemeester (Vogue)
The Grievous Angel Style of Gram Parsons Lives On (Vogue)
Why Dolly Parton Doesn’t Need Fashion (And Why Fashion Desperately Needs Dolly) (Vogue)
Melia and Mirabelle Marden Fall for Apiece Apart (Vogue)
Vogue Stories: Isabella Rossellini and Lauren Hutton (Vogue)
EXHIBITIONS AND READINGS
Stories from the Issue, Oxford American North Carolina Music Issue, Charlotte, North Carolina, November 28
Self Storage, Testsite exhibition with Dave Bryant at Fluent~Collaborative, Austin, Texas, through October 28