Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

No Invite: Ten Years of Capturing Fashion Week by Any Means Necessary

A Retrospective by Dan Bassini

Recorded live at the JKC Gallery.

No Invite is a series focused on capturing Fashion Week by any means necessary. With a lifelong interest in fashion, and no connection to the industry, Bassini set out to shoot the beauty and chaos the only way he knew how. Sneaking into parties, subverting security, and hitting the streets. Shot entirely on 35mm compact cameras, No Invite is a unique look into the fashion world, even...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Writer and artist Donna Gordon joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her series that reimagines Eve in the Garden.

Donna Gordon is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based writer and artist. She graduated from Brown, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and a Ploughshares Discovery. Her debut novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, Regal House 2022, received a starred review from Kirkus Review and was named among the 100 best Indie novels of 2023, having been described as, “A soulful journey that offers su...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Stuart Thurlkill joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his photographs of a famous river corridor in Montana. Thurlkill also has some great insight into how the photo review process can be most beneficial.

Stuart Thurlkill’s work exists at the intersection of observation and intuition. An award-winning filmmaker and photographer, he does not merely capture a subject; he unearths the quiet dialogue between heart and head. His documentary roots provide a foundation of truth, yet his lens often seeks the shadows wh...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Chris Muth joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his landscape work and processing the varying critiques he received.

My name is Chris Muth. I have been a photographer for over 12 years, exploring many different styles and disciplines within the medium, as you may be able to tell. I received my education in filmmaking, and have been photographing, originally, as a way to practice cinematography without a crew and equipment. It has now taken over my creative interest, really since I went...

JOHN BAER: THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY / A MEMOIR IN PHOTOGRAPHS 1945–1954

Andrew Baer and Megan Moynihan join Michael Chovan-Dalton to celebrate the release of John Baer: The Extraordinary Ordinary / A Memoir in Photographs 1945-1954, A Paper Cinema Edition, published by the John Baer Archive. This is, true to its title, an extraordinary collection of the never before published life work of John Baer, Andrew Baer's father. It's also a conversation about how wonderful a collaboration can be between family and professionals such as famed designer Yolanda Cuomo and her team, Alexa Dilworth and Jonno Rattman, Steve Sm...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Katerina Kouzmitcheva joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her work, Butter Melts at 36.6°C, which weaves together political, social, and psychological ideas that create a portrait of her life and the lives of the people she encounters.

https://katerinakouzmitcheva.com

https://www.instagram.com/katerina_kouzmitcheva/

Katerina Kouzmitcheva is a Polish photographer of Belarusian origin based in Wrocław, Poland. Working at the intersection of documentary and art photography, she explores how visi...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer, educator, and editor, Andrea Birnbaum joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her work and limited edition book, Spilt Milk.

"Spilt Milk is about family, memory, and what is handed down through generations. I am using family photographs and other items to construct images, exploring how certain behaviors have affected the family dynamic. Through this project, I am re-evaluating my personal history and altering my perspective with the newly acquired knowledge."

https://www.andreabirnbaum.com

...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Book arts artist, teacher, and photographer, Alexander Mouton joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his work from the former East Germany and his research in the German National Archives in Berlin. They will also discuss his imprint, Unseen Press.

http://www.unseenproductions.net

https://www.instagram.com/theunseenpress/

Alexander Mouton has an MFA in photography from Indiana University, where he studied photography, film, literature, book arts, and digital media. For four years Alexander lived in...

Visual storyteller and photojournalist, Ann Hermes, joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to discuss her advocacy for visual storytelling and her photographic exploration of the loss of local newsrooms.

https://www.annhermesphoto.com

https://www.instagram.com/hermesphoto/

I am a Brooklyn and Boston-based photojournalist and visual storyteller with a flair for the nostalgic. I create documentary tableaus that explore the roles that often overlooked, and sometimes outdated, institutions and people play in our history, culture and future.

I’ve worked in...

Archipelago is a book about connection and isolation as described in the essays by Vicki Goldberg and Jean Dykstra. Chovan-Dalton and Del Amo discuss Del Amo's influence from the worlds of theater and dance, they also talk about teaching and the changes to their practices through the fall and rise of film photography.

Photo of Yolanda del Amo credit: Ignacio Evangelista

https://www.yolandadelamo.com

https://www.instagram.com/yolanda.delamo/

Yolanda del Amo is a Spanish-born, New York-based artist who works in photography. She...

Filmmaker and photographer Ryan Hartley joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to discuss project, Oaksplitter, a southern gothic exploration of the people and land from his upbringing.

https://ryhart.com

https://www.instagram.com/ry.hart/

Crawling out of northwest Tennessee, Ryan Hartley is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and photographer.

In his youth, he roamed the outskirts of his small rural town, skateboarding, making home movies, and photographing both his friends and locals.

He has traveled...

Photographer Yue Sun joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to discuss

His work from Inner Mongolia and the transition of his hometown from coal mining to tourism.

https://www.yuesunphoto.com

https://www.instagram.com/__4le_/

b. 1998, Wuhai, Inner Mongolia, China

Based in Shanghai, China

‍

Yue Sun is a self-taught Chinese photographer, currently working as a freelance-architect in Shanghai.

BA Architecture(ARB/RIBA Part I), Architecture Association School of Architecture

Photographer Klaus Ruckgaber joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to discuss

Sehnsucht, the German word for a kind of longing, and how he uses that in his work.

https://fleischkleidung.com

https://www.instagram.com/fleischkleidung/

I was born March 7th 2002 in Mexico City.

I am attracted by the manifestation of feeling, the existential and the ungraspable.

I am an individual who believes that there are no absolutes, there is no absolute beauty or...

Sipke Visser is a photographer and speaks about how he collaborates through photography at the 2026 Chico Review

https://www.sipkevisser.nl

https://www.instagram.com/sipkevisser/

https://www.chicoreview.com

After being born I spent the first 19 years of my life in Leeuwarden, a small town in the North of the Netherlands. In 2005 I moved to London for love and to pursue a life in photography. While making a living as a retoucher I have consistently been working on making art with photography as the...

Photographers CJ Harker and Jacob McGuinness join Michael Chovan-Dalton and Julia Colonna to discuss the founding of The Halide Project in Philadelphia, Harker's Tintype photography and work with Skate Jawn Magazine, and McGuinness' award winning pinhole photography.

https://www.thehalideproject.org

https://www.jacobmcguinness.com

https://cjharker.com

Jacob McGuinness is a photographer based in Philadelphia, PA. He received his BFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art in 2017. He often works by building his own cameras, using them alongside alternative photographic processes to...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Hannah Edelman is a photographer from South Florida and the 2026 Charcoal Publishing Prize recipient.

We talk about using photography as part of processing traumatic experiences.

Hannah Edelman (b. 1996) is a South Florida–born visual artist whose work in analog photography and printmaking bridges the technical and the poetic. Formally trained as a gelatin silver printer, she uses the camera to create works that explore cultural memory, myth, and the psychological weight of place. Rooted in process and materiality, Edelman’s practice reflects on how land...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Henry Comes-Pritchett, philosopher and photographer, speaks about photography as a tool to describe both memory as well as his vision of the future.

https://twodimensional.space

https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-comes-pritchett/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club

Begin Building your dream photobook library today at

https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Ch...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Mark Woods, photographer and cinematographer, speaks about his love of the stand-alone image.

Mark Woods is a fine art black & white still photographer and commercial cinematographer raised in a California family deeply rooted in photography and film. His father operated a portrait studio in Hollywood, while his grandfather famously purchased and released the film Reefer Madness. Growing up surrounded by cameras, film, and darkrooms would later shape Woods’ lifelong visual career.

Woods discovered his passion for image-making while attending the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, where he st...

Photographer Michelle Arcila joined me at the JKC Gallery to discuss the process of making incredibly personal work that involves family and trauma and who that work might be for. We also talk about photographing your family, especially your children, and how to find the balance between exploring a painful narrative in the work while protecting those you are photographing from your past experiences.

https://www.michellearcila.net

https://www.instagram.com/michelle.arcila/

Michelle Arcila is a Costa Rican/American photographer living and working in Brooklyn...

Susan Weiss speaks about Hello Susan and Black Tulip at the 2026 Chico Review

https://www.susanweissart.com/portfolio-3

https://www.instagram.com/susanweissart/

Susan Weiss works in the visual arts in many mediums, including photography, film, painting and drawing. Her work explores the issues of personal identity and the psycho-social landscape. She also teaches drawing and student artist portfolio preparation both live and in zoom consultation.

Susan's projects include the ongoing series Humanity in the Modern World, documenting humanitarian work in other...

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Jordan Monloire speaks about Sweet Tarts and her reasons for coming to the Chico Review

Jordan Monloire is a photographer + book maker living in the pnw, usa.

Presently doing time in the dark room and shooting only a fraction of sites worth seeing. She predominantly focuses on gonzo style black and white, post-documentative portraiture. The core of her practice is her "fruits basket"—the act of capturing the realities of her experience and maintaining the ability to collect and share. You’ll find most of her work in silver gelatin fibr...

Photographer, educator, and writer Odette Elix England speaks about her latest book, Isn't X Beautiful (The Ice Plant) as well as, The Long Shadow: Unwrapped ~ Marion Post Wolcott’s Labor and Love (Libraryman), and to be developed, to be continued (Tall Poppy Press).

https://www.odetteengland.com

https://theiceplant.cc/product/isnt-x-beautiful/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - Begin Building your dream photobook library today at:

https://charcoalbookclub.com

Odette Elix England is a photographer, writer, av...

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth joins Michael Chovan-Dalton to talk about two of her books, Flowers Drink the River (Stanley/Barker) and Fishworm (Void), Pia's collaboration with Jesse Bull Saffire, and how different the approach to these bodies of work were and also how Fishworm was a return to what Pia loved about photography when she started out.

https://pguilmoth.com

https://www.instagram.com/p_guilmoth/

https://charcoalbookclub.com/products/fishworm

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - Begin Building your dream photobook library...

This Alabaster Grave is Cengiz Yar’s first monograph exploring the overwhelming destruction and pain faced by the Iraqi city of Mosul, within the context of its history and unique, now largely ruined, architecture. The book questions the cost of the fight against ISIS and global war on terror as told through the lives and city that bore the brunt of its destructive force.

The photographs were made between 2015 and 2023 and fluctuate between reportage and moments of contemplation.

The book includes a foreword from Azmat Khan, an essay by Ca...

In 2025 Lily Colman took on the initiative to start her own publishing non-profit, FRAME/SEQUENCE, through fiscal sponsorship with CultureWorks of Philadelphia. FRAME/SEQUENCE is a quarterly print periodical spotlighting underrepresented and emerging photographers, writers, artists, and communities across Philadelphia and Greater Pennsylvania — connecting art, story, and place in a uniquely intimate and enduring form.

FRAME/SEQUENCE’s first edition, On Motherhood, captures motherhood’s diverse and powerful experiences through art and storytelling. This collection highlights the complex realities of nurturing, sacrifice, mourning, and celebration, offering a platform to voices often unheard.

Lily Colman speaks about her show, She, Archivist, at the JKC Gallery and her new periodical, Frame/Sequence.

She, Archivist is a project about womanhood, inheritance, and specifically how certain items and feelings are passed down between generations of women. The focus is on matrilineal inheritance through perceived rituals in Judaism, and the questioning of certain beliefs passed down.

Using traditional film-based and alternative photographic processes and utilizing collage with domestic materials, Colman attempts to reconstruct her identity through her family’s matrimonial history as well as her own ex...

Leonard Marcus joins us to talk about his show Click! Photographers Make Picture Books at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Visionary photographer-illustrators from Edward Steichen and William Wegman to Dare Wright, Mo Willems, Tana Hoban, Charles R. Smith Jr, and Walter Wick have long trained their camera eye with young people in mind. Their work reveals the hidden beauty of our everyday surroundings, makes the fantastic seem real in artfully choreographed collages and staged photos, and documents the amazing diversity of life on our planet. Eighty archival photo prints and a...

'Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture', the first book by Ivan McClellan, offers an inside look at Black cowboy culture across the United States in the 21st century, creating a bridge between present and past through sports, community, and love of the land. In 2015, photographer Ivan McClellan attended the Roy LeBlanc Invitational in Oklahoma, the country’s longest-running Black rodeo, at the invitation of Charles Perry, director and producer of The Black Cowboy. Over the next decade, McClellan embarked on a journey across the nation, crafting a multi-layered look at contemporary Black rodeo culture for the new book, 'Eight Seconds'. Wh...

Marshall To is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on photography, painting and illustrations. He grew up uniquely in a Taoist family in a small town called Red Deer which created a unique integration of western landscape and eastern beliefs.

He moved to Vancouver where he currently resides working as a Chef -  growing up in a Chinese immigrant household food was integral to the culture and more importantly a language used to communicate. Unsatisfied with just cooking Marshall began taking pictures of food and quickly began photographing and styling for local magazines and websites then o...

Kai McBride is a photographer, teacher, musician, and maker who recently uprooted from Brooklyn to sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico. He spent ten years teaching photography and managing the photo facilities at Columbia University, his alma mater, where he received an MFA in 2008.

Born on the island of Kauai in 1972, by his 18th birthday Kai had lived in California, Oregon, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Texas, Oahu, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. He sharpened his powers of observation while adjusting to life between suburban ranch-style homes, cabins with no running water, and a twenty foot teepee in the...

Vann Thomas Powell, Lisa Beard, and Micah McCoy remotely joined Michael Chovan-Dalton and Dani Paglione at the JKC Gallery at Mercer County College to talk about their newly formed photography collective, Disparate Projects. We will also discuss the process of publishing their first book, Fractured by Christiaan Lopez-Miro.

Vann Thomas Powell is a photographer, curator, and researcher. Vann received his MFA in Experimental and Documentary Art at Duke University (2023) and has been featured in solo exhibitions, books, and periodicals in the United States and abroad including The Independent (UK), Glitterati Editions (New York, NY...

Amani Willett is a Boston-based photographer whose practice is driven by conceptual ideas surrounding family, history, memory, and the social environment. Working primarily with the book form, his three monographs have been published to widespread critical acclaim. Disquiet (Damiani, 2013), The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer (Overlapse, 2017) and “A Parallel Road (Overlapse 2020)” were selected by Photo-Eye as “best books” of the year and have been highlighted in over 70 publications including ​Photograph Magazine, PDN,​ ​Hyperallergic, Lensculture, New York Magazine, The New York Times, 1000 Words, NPR, The British Journal of Photography, Collector Daily and Buzzfeed and recommended by ​Todd Hido,​ ​Elisabeth Biondi (former Visuals Editor of Th...

Anika Burgess | Flashes of Brilliance, The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History

WW Norton & Co

Anika Burgess is a writer and photo editor. She has been published in The New York Times and Atlas Obscura. Anika has won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and has presented at Photoville New York. She holds degrees in law and history from the University of Sydney, and qualified as a lawyer before changing careers to journalism. Anika lives in New York with her husband, son, and an...

Anika Burgess | Flashes of Brilliance, The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History

WW Norton & Co

Anika Burgess is a writer and photo editor. She has been published in The New York Times and Atlas Obscura. Anika has won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and has presented at Photoville New York. She holds degrees in law and history from the University of Sydney, and qualified as a lawyer before changing careers to journalism. Anika lives in New York with her husband, son, and an...

The eighth and final installment of attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book C...

The seventh installment of attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Ch...

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ave Pildas worked early in his career as a photo stringer for Downbeat Magazine in the Ohio Valley and Pennsylvania in the 1960's, and has been a successful photographer and educator for the past 40 years.    In 1971 Pildas began working as the Art Director at Capitol Records in Hollywood and designed and photographed album covers for the label's recording artists. He launched a career as a freelance photographer and designer soon after, specializing in architectural and corporate photography. His photographs have been exhibited in one man shows at the: Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Photographers Ga...

The sixth installment of attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Ch...

The fifth installment of attendee recordings from the 2025 Chico Review with those who came to Chico to share their work and their stories with incredible reviewers. This year I recorded with over 40 attendees! I’ve also linked to the guest’s Instagram and Websites so you can see the work. And again this year, I was recording in a variety of spaces at the beautiful Chico Hot Springs resort so there may be a number of different ambient sounds across the recordings.

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Ch...

Nat Ward lives in Queens, NY. His work is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Parrish Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His previous book of photographs and poetry, Big Throat, was published by +KGP in 2020. Ward founded the collaborative photographic project space A New Nothing with Ben Alper in 2014 and has had features on his photographic work published in Aperture, Interview, Collector Daily, Photobook Journal, Photography & Culture, C4, The British Journal of Photography, Unseen, Vogue, Vogue Italia, Vice, and Juxtapoz. He has exhibited photographic and...