PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf
A Photography & Visual Arts Podcast

Tim Carpenter - Episode 58

2 years ago

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, writer and educator, Tim Carpenter discuss his book, To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die, published by The Ice Plant. Tim also talks about the importance of seeing a place over time as a way of seeing how you, yourself, have changed over time and how he let go of the idea of subject matter.

https://www.timcarpenterphotography.com https://theiceplant.cc/product/to-photograph-is-to-learn-how-to-die/

Tim Carpenter (Illinois, 1968) is a photographer, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of several photo books, among them A month of Sundays (TIS books); Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road (The Ice Plant); Local objects (The Ice Plant); township (collaboration with Raymond Meeks, Adrianna Ault, and Brad Zellar; TIS/dumbsaint); Bement grain (TIS/dumbsaint); Still feel gone (collaboration with Nathan Pearce; Deadbeat Club Press); Illinois central (Kris Graves Projects); The king of the birds (TIS books); and A house and a tree (TIS books). Local objects was included in the 2018 exhibition “American Surfaces and the Photobook” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and was listed for the Kassel Photobook Award 2018. Carpenter received an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in 2012, and in 2015 co-founded TIS books, an independent photobook publisher. He is a faculty member of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program, serves as a mentor in the Image Threads Mentorship Program, and is a co-proprietor of Distant Zine. Carpenter’s book-length essay “To photograph is to learn how to die” was published by The Ice Plant in Fall of 2022.

From the PhotoWork Foundation, the PhotoWork Podcast, hosted by Sasha Wolf, features in-depth conversations with influential figures in the fine art photography world, including photographers, curators, and publishers. Through personal and insightful discussions, the podcast serves as a vital resource for artists, students, and professionals—offering inspiration, education, and a platform for anyone passionate about photography. The PhotoWork Foundation supports the development and education of post-documentary photographic artists and cultivates an audience for their work. Through a diverse program of outreach to individual artists and those who will be enriched by the results of their sustained efforts, the Foundation seeks to empower an aspect of photography that is most often not commercially viable but is essential to the collective understanding of what it looks like to be living in society today. To learn more about the podcast, see additional content related to individual episodes and other opportunities for artists visit: www.photowork.foundation and follow us on Instagram @photowork.foundation.