A Photographic Life - 160: Plus Mark Steinmetz

A Photographic Life

In episode 160 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed announcing that the doctor will see you now, considering the importance of Tik Tok and not getting left behind, being working class and photographers moving into teaching. Plus this week photographer Mark Steinmetz takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Mark Steinmetz was born in New York City and raised in the Boston suburbs of Cambridge and Newton until he was 12. He then moved to the midwest before, aged 21, he went to study photography at the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. He left that MFA program after one semester and in mid 1983, aged 22, moved to Los Angeles in search of the photographer Garry Winogrand, whom he befriended. Steinmetz makes photographs "of ordinary people in the ordinary landscapes they inhabit", and "in the midst of activity". He finds many of his subjects whilst walking around but he has also spent time at Little League Baseball and summer camps. His work has been exhibited in many major institutions, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public collections featuring his work include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Yale University Art Gallery; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nazraeli Press has published nine monographs of his work, including South Central (2006); South East (2008), Greater Atlanta (2009), The Players (2015); and Angel City West (2016). Among other awards, Mark Steinmetz was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1994. Mark Steinmetz resides in Athens, Georgia. www.marksteinmetz.net You can now subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://www.getrevue.co/profile/unofphoto Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). Grant's book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 © Grant Scott 2021