In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha is joined by Pauline Vermare, Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum, and Lesley A. Martin, Executive Director of Printed Matter. They discuss their collaborative efforts on "I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now," published by Aperture. This publication offers a counterpoint, complement, and challenge to historical precedents and the established canon of Japanese photography. Lesley and Pauline share their connections to Japanese society and their interest in the representation of women in photography. Together, Sasha, Lesley, and Pauline explore how they balanced the academic and historical aspects of their work with the artistic appeal of a photobook that highlights the contributions of Japanese women photographers.

https://aperture.org/books/im-so-happy-you-are-here-japanese-women-photographers-from-the-1950s-to-now/ ||| https://www.instagram.com/la.martin_/ ||| https://www.instagram.com/paulinevermare/

Pauline Vermare is the Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum. She was formerly the cultural director of Magnum Photos NY, and a curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, in Paris. She sits on the boards of the Saul Leiter Foundation and the Catherine Leroy Fund.

Lesley A. Martin is executive director of Printed Matter. Prior to that, she was the creative director of Aperture, founding publisher of The PhotoBook Review, and co-founder of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. She has edited more than one-hundred and fifty books of photography, including An-My Lê’s Small Wars; Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi; LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Notion of Family; and Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama. Martin has curated several exhibitions of photography, including The Ubiquitous Image; the New York Times Magazine Photographs, co-curated with Kathy Ryan; Aperture Remix, a commission-based exhibition celebrating Aperture’s sixtieth anniversary; and most recently, I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers Since the 1950s, co-curated with Pauline Vermare and Mariko Takeuchi. She received the Royal Photographic Society award for outstanding achievement in photographic publishing in 2020, and has been a visiting critic at the Yale University Graduate School of Art since 2016.

This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com

Image © Mikiko Hara