FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Eric Pickersgill
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Eric Pickersgill, a North Carolina–based visual artist and educator whose work examines human behavior, memory, and the influence of technology through photography, video, installation, and conceptual art.
You can visit Eric's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
This family comes in and they sit down at the booth next to me, and it's you know beautiful golden hour morning light, and they all sit down, and immediately before they even start talking again, everybody at the table pulls out their phone. And it's a scene that you know it happens over and over again now. But at the time, I think because I was homesick, um, I noticed that the mom didn't have a phone out and she was just kind of trying to soak in this moment, but there's no one to speak to. Everybody's engrossed with their phones, and she's staring out the window, you know. And I I wish, I mean, I needed to just make this specific photograph. I think that's what I've been chasing and remove this whole time. But um, I I just started writing in my journal about how this is wild, that this technology is pulling us from each other so blatantly and so quickly we're gonna change kind of our um expectations of one another socially, that it's okay now to pull this thing out. Where I mean, I remember with my brick phone, you know, my little Nokia. If you got a text, you started texting, it was like someone would be like, What are you doing? Like, why, you know, put that away. It's just you're being it was rude. And then all of a sudden now it's not, you know, it was like overnight. This is not this is not a problem anymore. Um, and so I wrote about that mom, and I wrote about wanting to get home from the residency and that I was going to be very intentional, very present with my wife. Um, and so fast forward, you know, a couple weeks, I get home from the artist residency and school starts back up, we're busy, and all of a sudden I realized, you know, we're in bed and we're both on our phones.
SPEAKER_00This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_04Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olsen, and you know what, folks, today is going to be really, really interesting and really, really cool because we're going to approach photography from a way that we don't really do very often, at least not here on the podcast. And and and let me set it up for you a little bit. You know, in my world at you know, in photography, mostly travel, mostly street, a little bit of landscape, that kind of stuff. It'd be easy to think that the idea comes after the photographs. You know, something calls to my, you know, my eyes or my heart. Um you take an image, then you look at it and you say, okay, well, why did that call to me? What is it? Is there an idea in here? Is there a meaning in here? Is there any merit whatsoever? But the the idea is sort of a response to the photograph. There's a completely different way of thinking about it. There's a way of saying, no, the idea comes first, and you let it get wrapped around in your head, and then you start making photographs around that idea. Certainly a lot of photojournalism is this way. A lot of documentary work is this way. You know, there's an issue, there's a problem, there's a situation, and you go out and you try and capture that and make some images from it. But there is another area as well. There's a philosophic area, an aesthetic area, an emotional area where you come up with a concept, you come up with an idea, and you say, This is something I want to say to the world. I'm gonna go out and make images sort of around this idea. And frankly, one of the people doing the most interesting, the most compelling, and the most sort of thought-provoking work out there right now is Eric Pickersgill. Eric is a fine art and conceptual photographer. His work called Removed has been going viral. It's being shown all over the world right now. Um, you look at his list just of solo exhibitions in the last several years. You know, we're looking at North Carolina, we're looking at China, France, New York, Vietnam, Canada, um, places like Austin, Texas, and Barcelona, Spain are sitting next to each other on his resume. His work is striking a chord everywhere. And he's got an eye and an idea. Um, you start looking at his work and you think, oh my heavens, this is reorienting the way I'm thinking about technology. This is reorienting the way I'm thinking just about pushing the borders of photography and what it can be and what it should be saying. Um, in other words, in in the last little bit, I have been introduced to and become a great fan of Eric's work, and I am really looking forward to today's conversation. Eric, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Hey, Scott, I'm doing well. Thank you so much. How are you? I'm I am doing great. Man, I gotta tell you, this is really, really cool work. Uh you've been all over the world. You've, you know, TED Talks in Paris, you've been in Asia. Um, people are really, really responding to your work. And and what I should tell, you know, those of you that are listening right now, you say, or your work's been described uh as being interested in human behavior, memory, and the influence of technology through photography, video installation, and conceptual art. Um the removed series, like I said, has gone viral. Um, a mutual friend of ours, Julie Graham, said that you, you know, your agent uh has described it as being published in a technical term here, gazillion magazines, uh including Vogue and Vanity Fair and Wired and Washington Post and you know a whole bunch of others. You're being taught in Finland and Norway. And you got into photography almost by accident. I mean, it was a high school guidance person that puts you in a photography class you never asked to be in. But before even that, you've got a story of growing up that I think really influences who you've become as a photographer. You know, you avocado farm in Florida, a hurricane. Uh so so tell you, tell me the story of you before the high school class. What what were the influences? What were the things that were making you pay attention to the universe? I had a great childhood.
SPEAKER_03I just have to preface with that. Okay. Um, and and I think a lot about that because I'm I'm a father of three kids. My oldest just turned nine yesterday. Um my birthday. Thank you. Yeah, he had a he had a big one. Um we uh, or not we, but me as as a as a parent, like, you know, you reflect on your own childhood a lot because you're you're constantly being like, you know, what are the things that my parents didn't quite get right that I want to not repeat, you know, it's it and my wife's also a pediatrician. So um I also, you know, the the standard of parenting is very high in my household. Yeah. Oh my. Um, it's it's a it's a great uh it's a great merger, I think, of skills and parenting that we have. But um, but yeah, my childhood was was, you know, it felt it feels magical when you look back on it. You know, the that big kind of catalyst uh that kind of changed a lot, or actually really is kind of where my memories just start of my own life is uh taking to the date of August 24th, uh 1992, which was my sister's birthday. Um but Hurricane Andrew um was one of the biggest categories five hurricanes to ever hit the United States before Katrina. Um and uh it just like it was such a traumatic moment because my parents decided to have a hurricane party that night. Um so by the end of it, at two in the morning, there's 11 people and two dogs in a walk-in closet, and we're just repeating the Lord's Prayer over and over again while my dad has this comforter and he's holding the uh the slats of the closet door shut because the literally half of the room has been ripped apart. Um, so I had this like intense trauma, and and I don't have any memories prior to that. I just turned five um when that storm came through. And I remember afterwards our entire town was like just completely flattened next door to our house as we walked out that next morning. Um, you could see the uh helicopters flying overhead from uh the National Guard that were coming in to bring materials and um and they this kind of tent city, as they called it, was erected in the high school uh soccer fields next to our house. Um, and it it was kind of like my parents must have been freaking out so bad of like our house is destroyed. Well, what are we gonna do for shelter, food, water? And my sister and I were kind of like interesting, it's scary, but we, you know, so we we managed to get over to my grandparents' avocado farm, which is about two miles away. And it's a trip that would normally take like three-minute drive. Um, and it took like two or three hours to get there because the roads were impassable. But we got there and all of the trees had kind of twisted up into these like monoliths of of of you know, debris, and we just started playing in those piles as dangerous as it was, but we had this like massive playground. I think maybe it was like a coping mechanism, but all of this was happening and everything was completely different overnight, and that's kind of where my life starts. And uh so it's this really unsettling thing.
SPEAKER_04But but but you have said in a different interview that you a sense of family and closeness, you know, has become part of your practice and part of your sense of self as a person. So this sense of family must have been tremendously, I mean, in the midst of catastrophe, um, also a kind of developing foundation bedrock thing.
SPEAKER_03Definitely, yeah. And so, because of all of that and our house being destroyed, my parents were able to uh get a hold of an RV and bring it to the farm. And so we were living at my grandparents' house and sharing this RV for almost a year while our house was being rebuilt. And it was like, you know, the our my sister and I's bed was the bottom of the um dining table. There's like a booth in the in the little kitchenette. And so you flip that over that in the bottom of the table's upholstered, and that was our bed every night. Um, but yeah, it was a really, really small space to share, and we had to just learn to work together and be really close. And and also having, you know, being living on the same property as your grandparents, it kind of goes back to not so long ago when a multi-generational household was actually very normal. Um, and especially like my grandmother's upbringing in a in a Hispanic family growing up in Cuba, that kind of multi-layered family style was much more common. And you know, I we we almost I almost missed that entirely, but because of the storm, we all kind of piled back into the same place. And um, I still talk to my mom every day. I remember when my wife and I first started dating, she was like, You talk to your mom a lot. And I was like, Yeah, it's just who I am. It's who we are as a family.
SPEAKER_04So as we all should. But you know, and I'm digging this because I I really do think a lot of our world vision, you know, which is set in childhood for all of us, has obvious once you once you see them, echoes in our art, whether we're musicians or dancers or photographers or whatever. You know, something about the way we see the world is becomes something in the way we express the world. You did say that you wanted, you know, shortly after the hurricane, you decided you were going to be a meteorologist. Yes. Um that that didn't pan out for whatever reason. It did not. Um, but okay, fast forward to high school, and suddenly you're in a photo class.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was uh that that was a lifesaver right there because I was really not sure about what I wanted to do. Um, and I was like a BMX punk kid and getting into some trouble and had a had a part-time job, which kept me out of some trouble. But yeah, photography was like the first time where I was at school and I was like, okay, I have a reason to be here. I'm gonna show up for class because if I don't have a full week's attendance, I'm not gonna be able to use the dark room. I mean, my teacher really saw me as a kid who needed some direction. Um was Miss Smith. And so she gets a lot of credit for being a really great educator, honestly. Um, she pushed me a lot. She cared a lot too. I mean, that was the only class I ever got sent out of, as well. Like she, I was like goofing off during one of our critiques, and she sent me to the, you know, uh in-school suspension classroom for a day, and that had never happened in another room. Yeah, I was like, oh my gosh. Um, but you know, teachers that do that, I think they really care. And they and I think she saw something in me. Um, I don't know. And my images weren't that great in high school, but I did make a lot. I was, I really couldn't stop shooting and trying to find ways to afford getting more film because we just, you know, my family didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid. And yeah, I just loved it. I mean, having a camera around my neck really helped my teenage anxiety of like wondering why I was supposed to be here. I really didn't know where I fit in. You know, there was like the, you know, the athletes at school and the real smart kids. And then I was kind of in the like skater punk group. And having a camera kind of allowed me to start to move around different social groups and feel like I had a reason to show up, whether it was to, you know, uh photograph like a birthday party or to go make pictures at a concert um or at the skate park. I just felt like I had this ID, you know, um, as if I needed some sort of external verification of who I am or what I was supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_04I know, see, I I love this because it, you know, I over all these interviews, I've I've come to the conclusion that there's three possible moments where you can fall in love uh with photography. One is is out in the field, you know, actually taking the pictures. Um the other is in the dark room where you you see something appear, you know, in the developer. Um and and the third is just the love of gadgets. You know, the the here's this complicated, you know, Swiss watch kind of machine in front of me. Yeah. Um would would you say it was the actual being out, you know, at the you know, watching the punk band, doing the BMX stuff, or was it the dark room that was really more, you know, come here, let me tell you a story.
SPEAKER_03I I think it's I think I might be the perfect storm of all three. I really feel like 33% of all of those kind of hit me because I'm pretty nerdy too. I I like I like equipment, I like physics. My my dad is a welder and uh and a carpenter, and I grew up in his his workshop. So, you know, tinkering with things and how things work and mechanics all always you know resonated with me. So I I yeah, I I was bound to be here, I guess, one way or another. All of those interests really um describe me.
SPEAKER_04So tell me about the BMX and the punk rock days. Tell me about going to shoot bands and learning to back up a truck and all that kind of stuff. Because there's just some cool stories here that finally do become something in your frame.
SPEAKER_03The music was really shooting the music was a little bit before the BMX. Um because when I was around the BMX, it was kind of uh well, no, I guess I mean it was really they were all kind of happening at the same time. But the the the concerts, I remember like I was really interested in like, you know, really cliche, long exposures. You get those, you know, streaky lights in the concert hall, um, and the the movement of the crowd in the mosh pit, that type of thing. So I, you know, I just burned a bunch of rolls of just incoherent images at shows and then started to do some more onboard flash, and I would still try to sprinkle in a little bit of that uh drag a shutter so you can get some of that movement of the light. But yeah, I mean that that was again just a reason to be at the show. It was like I, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna photograph it. And it was like people were starting to invite me to their shows because I was taking pictures and bringing them back prints. And this is pre, you know, social media, so they really just existed as prints, and I didn't really know where what I was gonna do with those photographs. Um, and the same thing with BMX, it was like I was shooting around, and the the first time I actually got published was uh was a BMX related photo, and it wasn't even of cycling, it was just this uh kind of still life I took of two shovels and a watering can uh at our local BMX trails. And there was a guy out of Greensboro, North Carolina who was doing this kind of DIY punk, you know, uh zine. And he published that picture when they did a little write-up about um some uh it might have been for like a contest that had happened at a different dirt space, but they used it as kind of a catcher image. Um his name was Justin Holt. And uh that was the first time where I was like, oh, this is there's actually could be, you know, an audience uh outside of just making the pictures for myself or for my friends and family. So that that was like a a push where I was like, you know, hey, I'm published now. I can, I can, you know, I'm like 16. Um, exactly. Yeah, yeah, I'm the man now. Um so that that pushed me though. It was like, you know, I'm you have all that pressure as a teenager of like, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I really had no idea at that point. And um, so that that was the first step where I was like, okay, maybe there is an avenue for this. Um, there was a bigger catalyst after that, also where my both of my grandparents had uh strokes about a year apart from each other, and this was right after high school. And I'm kind of back and forth in between Central Florida and North Carolina um because I was the only one in the family that could go down there, kind of oversee their rehab, and we we didn't really have the resources to move them up to North Carolina yet. And um, while I was down there, I ended up getting my first digital camera. And I just, you know, I was really alone a lot. I'm living in this like um, you know, retirement community of people, you know, you have to be 50 or older to be there. I was really isolating. And so just to take up time and to like keep my mind busy, I just started photographing a lot. I was like trekking around ponds and you know, looking for alligators, you know, anything that seemed interesting, peacocks, you know, really cliche stuff, but it was um, but it was just an activity that kept me busy and kept me thinking. And I really enjoyed uh like that. Was where I really started to push about composition and and and kind of get the kind of the um nuts and bolts out of the way about just really understanding that kind of triangular relationship between aperture and uh ISO and chutter and all that. And and and that was like really good just kind of practicing.
SPEAKER_04Um were you in any kind of a community then? Did you have a mentor or or you know, people that you could talk to about photography?
SPEAKER_03I had uh I had some friends back in North Carolina who were like I guess more affluent and their families were pushing them more on a path of if you're gonna be an artist, you know, go to art school. And um, neither of my parents went to college. So I didn't really have that influence. And my parents were just kind of surviving. And so I yeah, I had friends that that were ended up going to Chicago to the School of Art Institute Chicago, as well as Columbia College, Chicago, and and that that kind of small network of friends started to plant the seed of like, hey, you know, there's more to this. You could actually get some better training and um actually spend some time dedicated to this craft. And um, there was also a friend of mine who uh had a really good relationship with a local arts professor named Elena Bergman, who was teaching at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. And she would host like parties, and artists would show up there. And um when I was back and forth in town, I would go over there. And I remember one night she was like, Eric, when you're done with this, you know, deal with going back and forth to Florida with your grandparents, she's like, You really need to either go to art school or just go couch surf in Europe. Like, you gotta have a life experience in your in your early, you know, or your late teens, early 20s. Like, there's no reason for you to just be sitting around in Charlotte. And so I ended up going to Chicago and I applied to uh Columbia College Chicago and was accepted. And how did the didn't your mom like buy you a ticket sort of out of the street?
SPEAKER_04She didn't say, you know, get get your ass up to Chicago.
SPEAKER_03She did, yeah. It was one of those like dark nights where I was down in Florida still, had been down there for months, and um my my good friend Chris and also my friend Hillary were both in Chicago, and they had sent me a link to the uh open house that was coming up um that that year, or that's uh I think it was yeah, it was that fall. And um I remember going to bed, you know, that night I called my mom and I was like, hey, you know, we should check this out when I when I get back and we can figure out if I could if if there's a way that I could go see this school. And she was like, Yeah, I think you should do that. And I really didn't think anything like it was gonna happen. And I woke up the next morning and my email account was uh a flight that she had booked um for me to go to Chicago, and that was just huge as a parent, you know, to to do that. Um and of course, you know, it it all happened pretty quickly, or at least in my memory, it did. And um went up there and got to spend a couple days in Chicago. I'd never been to a big city like that. I'd never been in New York before at that point. I'd seen Miami as a young kid. Charlotte's a pretty small town compared to Chicago, and got up there and I was, you know, just I remember riding the train and feeling like you're big part of this big machine. And you know, it's real, it's real romantic, you know, when when you see you fly into I flew into Midway. I don't know if you've ever flown into Midway. It's a small I grew up in Chicago, yeah. Okay, yeah. I I know it well. Yeah, so I'm I'm in like a gray hoodie and it's you know it's winter when I went up for this open house, and we're flying into Midway, which is like one of the shorter, you know, international runways in the country. And you it you feel like you're about to land on a rooftop in Pilson, and then all of a sudden you touch down. It was really rattling flight. I remember it very well. Yeah, and I I did not have the clothes for it either. I was freezing when I got up there. Um I was coming, you know, from Orlando to Chicago, unprepared, naive, you know, 19-year-old, 20-year-old, however it was. But yeah, getting up there, it was like uh my friends who had already moved up there, one of them was living kind of in this uh alternative living space where it was kind of a commercial space they had converted into rooms and um really funky performance space. A lot of students who were at uh the uh experimental um performance program at SAIC. So just you know, wild mix of noise bands and music and uh just sensory overload. There was so much to photograph, so much to experience. And uh I just remember being like, I have got to get up here by any means necessary. Um, fast forward a couple more months, I you know, I got accepted. My grandparents were able to move them up to North Carolina so my my family could uh continue to take care of them. And by the time it was time to load up the truck and go, there was uh six other friends of mine from high school, and we were we all decided to move up there together. Um and two of us were planning to go to school, and the rest of the guys were just planning on being, you know, punks and bike mechanics, and yeah, just living, you know, delivering sandwiches for Jimmy Johns on their bikes. That was their job. Um yeah, it was it was a it was cool.
SPEAKER_04But something really I mean, the this is a non sequitur coming up in your life because you're doing concerts, you're doing BMX, you're you're out, so you know your gear should be getting smaller and smaller and more lightweight. Um, and yet you move into this performance space, you know, you build the walls and stuff, and you fall in love with large format, you you supersize your gear.
SPEAKER_03Why? I think it's it's it's probably Paul Diamato's fault. I don't know if you're familiar with Paul. Um you know, Columbia has just a lot of large format shooters, so you get There and I Arthur Lazar was my first darkroom teacher there, him and Valerie Burke. Uh, and that those classes were 35 millimeter for color. And uh, I remember with the the 35, I actually hadn't even gotten my eyes checked before. Paul DeMato one day we had critique and and all my 35 photos were blurry, just a little off focus. And he was like, Have you ever had your eyes checked? And I was like, No, that's that's a huge miss.
SPEAKER_04I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_03I'll I'll never forget. Yeah, so I never forget. I walked out of uh the lens crafters in in uh on Michigan Avenue, and all of a sudden I could see. It's like I've been making pictures for five years, and I had terrible vision, terrible stigmatism. Uh and I look, I look, I have all these work prints, you know, from high school, and I look at them and I'm like, yeah, I just literally, the only focused images I got were just because I was lucky. I got lucky on those ones. Um, you know, set it on an affinity. I went away. Yeah, yeah. It was not an aesthetic choice, it was a physical hindrance. Um yeah, so but uh after those 35 classes and getting, you know, my uh my eyes checked, uh, I I remember using a view camera um because it was it seemed like everybody around me at the school who was making important work went to large format. And that was the first, you know, impetus. And and and then when I started actually using the view camera and having to slow down, and also, you know, because I'm I'm kind of impulsive by nature, the view camera makes you not do that. I mean, you can't be successful or make a successful image with a view camera, or at least you make a lot less if you're just shooting around. You've got to really slow down and frame and um, you know, I mean, you've got to wait for the wind to stop blowing. All of those things have to come into place. And so uh, I also at that point had not been diagnosed with uh ADHD and ADD. And and so um, you know, this is pre-medicated Eric, where I'm just all over the place. I can't get one thing done. So it it forced me to just like cut the noise and make the picture with intention. But um, yeah, it was it was really a lot of a lot of photographers there that that pushed that. And when I started going out and and making kind of still lives, because we were living in a part of the city that I, you know, hadn't we hadn't I hadn't been there very long. I was kind of this outsider coming in, um, you know, didn't have any connections in the neighborhood, and and originally just started making portraits of people um that I could find. And it was, it really wasn't that difficult to find people to photograph because if you're just set up with a view camera, kind of hanging out at a scene that looks interesting, someone's gonna walk into it and either ask you why you're there, you know, approach you. So it it took that uh that part out of it for me.
SPEAKER_04You know, so many people think the camera, you know, is an imposition. It's also an invitation. Uh, you know, people walk by and and you they say, What are you doing? Um, it it's a great sense of permission and like I said, invitation if you you approach the street or the scene or whatever in a kind of generous way. Looking looking at your website, looking at your works there. The the the gallery you call House Sitters, that's pretty much your undergraduate thesis, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Correct. Yes. Tell me the story of how this came to be. Yeah, so making portraits on the street for several weeks um and bringing them into the class and and having uh I can't remember what the course was, but it was um it might have been an actual documentaries class. And really just having this impulse to photograph people being very connected to portraiture, but not necessarily getting any deeper or further into a story than just you know making a snapshot and moving on for the day. And I had a professor who was just like, you've gotta, you know, let's get inside. I think it was Paul Diamotto, um, who was like, you've got to get inside, you've got to move forward with this. Um, and Whitney Bradshaw, she was also um one of my professors when I really started to push into house sitters. Uh, there was this curiosity of like, you know, you you're only getting this kind of surface level of of your the community you're in. And you know, Paul Diamato had done this book, Barrio, pretty much on the same blocks that I'm working on. Then he was focusing on the Hispanic and and Mexican community there uh in Pilsen. And um, and it, you know, I wasn't trying to copy his work, but he just had these beautiful interiors. I remember this you know, photograph of this dad. He's looking through the the blinds that he's pulled through, and the um Paul's so, so successful at mixing cool and warm light to create space, and and there's always just a little bit of movement happening. Um, and so I I knew I needed to get off the street. I was like, I'm I'm this is not gonna be compelling on the street. And I was out photographing and um ran into a guy, BT, who I'd photographed several times in the past. And that day we were shooting and he was like, you know, we're gonna watch the Super Bowl at the house today. Do you want to, you know, come over? We're gonna cook out and and watch the game. And I was like, absolutely, yes, this is like the invitation I've been waiting for. So we went or we kind of split up. I had to take care of some stuff, and then uh I met up at the address that he gave me, and I really didn't know him well. I mean, I'm this is just like, you know, we we had maybe photographed two or three times prior to this. And uh my girlfriend was like, you know, are you sure that you're safe? I was like, I, you know, I don't know, but I'm gonna go and see what happens. Um, and I was like, I'm just gonna, you know, feel it out. So I don't feel comfortable, like I'll just get out of there. Um, and I go and I show up at this house and I I pull up up front and I notice right off the bat that some of the front windows are boarded. Um, and then the other windows that are not boarded, they have um like some uh magazine clippings and newspapers kind of taped in the windows. So they've obscured the view into the house. I was like, this feels a little off, but we'll see what's up. So I go and knock on the door, and um right away BT's like, you know, I think he hands me a beer, and uh, I hadn't even brought my gear in yet. I'm just kind of, you know, okay feeling it out. And uh I look around and I'm like, there's no furniture. You know, there's like some milk crates, there's a stack of uh wood across these two bar stools that kind of turn into like a raised bed. Um, and I was like, Are you guys moving in or what's up? And he was like, No, no, uh, this house is uh this is a foreclosed house. And mind you, the year's 2008. So this is right after the housing market crash. Housing prices, yeah. Yeah. And um he said, This this house is, you know, the the people had to move out of this house. So if if we're not here, uh, you know, people will tear it up. So we're we're security for the house. It's like, oh, this is totally fascinating, completely different story of you know, the housing crash that I didn't even think of, you know, um and uh and realizing it's being repeated all across the city, and these guys were kind of tasked with shifting around to different properties that kind of unuh scheduled manner so that there just seems to be always either someone there or someone potentially coming there, which kept people out of the houses. Um, because if there wasn't, you know, people I've got photographs where people are literally busting through the walls to pull out the copper piping because they can scrap that and sell it. Right. Um, and so uh all of a sudden there was this kind of big story right in my lap. And I had to kind of navigate hanging out and drinking beer with these guys, which I wanted to do, um, but also to kind of document what their situation was and to kind of show what it looked like on the inside of these houses, where seemingly, you know, just kind of it was a banking story, but really there's these remnants of these families that used to be in these houses and this group of guys who are uh house sitting, if you will. And uh so I spent several months doing that, making their portraits, kind of trying to tell that story and also moving in and out from still life's and uh and just trying to, you know, capture light, but also, you know, be a little more poetic. At the same time, I was doing an internship at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. And so um, you know, I'm being exposed to a lot of historical works in the collection, but also hanging these contemporary shows and seeing all these different ways to make portraiture, but also not just be a documentarian, but to be almost um, you know, more expressive than that and allow pictures to tell a little bit more on their own.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_04You know, that's the bit where I'm just thinking, you know, the universe conspired to make you a great photographer because, you know, to understand that documentary work, which is absolutely magnificent in and of its own, um, is not necessarily the end. If you've if you're given a story, you can say, I'm gonna, you know, tell it that way, or I'm gonna tell it that way plus, uh, and and and bring in all this other influence, all this other knowledge and and and background and stuff. Because if I remember right, you know, the the response to your thesis was that you need to do more. You you need to get out of the one-to-one correlation between what I see and what I've printed.
SPEAKER_03Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04How did you know yourself well enough to know what to do?
SPEAKER_03That's a good question. Um I don't know. I I think it was a culmination of listening to peers and my professors at the school. And um, you know, there's that voice in your head where you, you know, as an undergraduate, you're faced with a lot of choices. You don't realize how free you actually are. And I think that um I just kept making the work. I wanted to to get as much out of being there as I could. So I just was relentless with picture making. It was, you know, just producing as much as I possibly could, making decisions to not do other social engagement so that I could go and hang out with BT and Gino and Bo and get, you know, get the work done. Um but I mean, even still, that it it kind of started to fall flat for me at the end. And um, I think that towards the end of my undergraduate studies and how my next chapter began was because I I put all of this effort, this time into these photographs, but I wasn't, you know, I was like, what exactly, other than having this life experience, what exactly is the purpose of these pictures, you know? And I didn't I didn't know how to fulfill that or to answer that question yet. Um and then I was also faced with the notion of you're done with undergrad and you no longer have this protected period of creation, you've got to start making money and living and uh supporting yourself. And um and and so that part was really how I ended up shifting into teaching. Um and I should I should add the other piece too, because I always kind of jumped from my House Sitters project to my my time as a high school teacher with Teach for America. But in between that time period, um, when I wasn't an intern at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, uh I was hired as a teacher's assistant within the photography department at Columbia College. Uh and that was where I learned I'm actually pretty good at explaining things. I'm a decent dark room printer, but I really like teaching. I really like working with other people, helping them see where they can improve and uh and help them lift up their ideas. And I think that that's also why when I tell my story, I'm always reflecting specifically on the educators that influence me because I know how important their role was, because I've now been in their shoes. And that just kind of always plays back in my head now that you know, having that um being a teacher's assistant for Alan Cohen, um, John Cook, uh John Giddelson, and John Giddelson's like huge, uh you should look up his work as far as a huge influence on me because there's this kind of sprinkling of humor within his work. And and it it was it's always allowed me to kind of have these breaks or these moments when we get into talking about removed, but uh that you can kind of allow some humor to kind of filter through. Um but anyway, to get back to the point, the the teaching aspect really was was embedded in me, and I really uh gravitated towards that. So when I was trying to figure out what to do after undergrad, and I saw the Teach for America program where you promised to teach for two years in a low-performing school, uh, I was like, yes, I want to absolutely do that. And I knew it was gonna mean a break from photography because it was an extremely demanding program and highly competitive. And um, you know, when you're not getting training from the district itself, the actual organization is then putting you in even more training. So you're just constantly trying to perfect your craft at uh understanding education. Um and uh and the bar set really high. You know, you get this classroom full of kids and you've got that one semester with them. And I happen to be placed teaching earth and environmental science at a low-performing school here in Charlotte. Or it's better now, but at the time it it needed a lot of improvement, and there's still disparities. But um you have this, you know, short window of time that you can make an impact with these kids, and you just super hyper focused on that. So the camera really got put down for a couple years there um uh while I was teaching high school. And um, during that time was also when I met my wife, and that was a huge shifting point in my life because she was gonna be a doctor. Um, so two years of teaching was kind of her plan, and then she was gonna go uh off to medical school. And um, I remember when she was applying to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, uh, I got really sad because I was not sure what I was gonna do again. And uh she was like, you know, why don't you try to get an MFA? That seems like a natural step. You you love she's the one that reminded you you're an artist. She is, she absolutely is. Um, I owe so much to her. I can't even get into it in this conversation. She's uh just my absolute guiding star. But yeah, she she she was like, you know, you've got to get back into this. And so I applied to the MFA program at Chapel Hill. Um, I remember that literally it was the the day or the day after she got her acceptance letter to from Carolina for medical school, which is like her dream letter. Um, I'm trying to not detract from this like, you know, shining day in her life. And uh, I'm like getting kind of sad and down. And I'm like, she's gonna go off to this school. I'm gonna be staying here in Charlotte, we're gonna not be together. And then all of a sudden my phone rings, and uh it's Jeff Whetstone, who was the person who selected my my portfolio from my house sitters project uh and gave me the call to say, hey, we want you to come to Carolina. Um and all of a sudden the the world was right again.
SPEAKER_04Uh it should not be that easy, but okay, fair. No, but here but here's the question. You know, and we're gonna get to remove, and we're gonna get to no show and that kind of stuff in a second. But there is creeping into your other portfolios more and more of this conceptual-based versus I'm gonna just call it response-based uh photography. Yeah, was this just the natural evolution of who you are? Was there a something, you know, a sea change, something, you know, Tuesday afternoon where you thought, you know, I could play a little bit more? Or tell me where this notion of intention, you know, your aesthetic intention starts to become recognizable to yourself and then more expressed in your images.
SPEAKER_03It's it goes to grad school. Uh being in a multidisciplinary program where you're working uh and going to critiques every Wednesday night with painters, sculptor artists, um, you know, musicians, all forms of art. Um, you try to put a just a you know, a static photograph of something that you're saying is representing something else only. Uh immediately people are like, why are you narrowing your scope of creation to this one specific set of rules? You don't have to do that. And grad school was really where that opened up for me. It like it literally hit me over the head. Like I was this very literal person in the past, and then all of a sudden, it was like you don't there's literally no rules. There's literally no rules. You can use the deep understanding of the history of photography that you have. You know, you've been around these institutions, you've been around a lot of formalist photographers and in a very photocentric program, but you don't have to actually either tell the truth or make a picture of something that has to be real or even represent truth. Just the notion of truth in something up on a wall is just kind of absurd in itself. And so grad school was the first time where people pushed back and said, you're free. You can literally go do whatever you want. Um, and and almost, you know, exploit all of that uh baggage, if you will, that I had with photography in in my past. And I can I can open it up and I can pit it against itself in ways that maybe common viewers are used to looking at something in a certain way, and I can, through the way I'm constructing an image, flip that on its head, and therefore now all of a sudden it's something much more interesting. I can add context to the other.
SPEAKER_04We're not talking you know, something like sky replacement here. We're talking something really kind of of aesthetically or or philosophically uh reconstructed in your images.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I I I really think it was the stripping away of of truth, the the idea that I don't have to make a picture that um represents truth. And and I can I can change things, I can alter them. I can use the structure or the formal qualities of a portrait sitting that looks like um, you know, that that it was happened upon um from a vantage point of either seen or unseen, but not uh the photograph can exist as if there wasn't a previous conversation having that I'd wandered into something and and made it quickly, but behind the lens, and actually in reality, it's it's a complete construction. Um I remember looking at uh you know Gregory Crutzen is obviously very famous for these massive tableaus of street scenes that feel like you've walked into a movie set, but he kind of hides the construction of it and allows you to kind of create this surreal narrative, but he he pushes it just a little bit into the surreal that you know what you're looking at can't be real. And I was like, maybe there's a middle ground where I can construct this thing and it's a little deceiving in the sense that it's not constructed, but for the viewer, they're they're thinking they just happened into something that's real. Um and then of course, with the removal of the phone, which we can get into in a little bit, but you you you twist that on its head, and you people start to have to question the the photograph itself and whether or not what they're looking at has been tampered with, um, which is I love the way you describe it in your SVA lecture where you talk about you know your understanding of gesture as performance, you know, even your images that are in black and white, you know, that's something constructed.
SPEAKER_04And you talk about meaning being injected, not represented, meaning being injected into a photograph. When you know, when you pick up the camera in the morning and your you know finger goes to the shutter release, uh are you looking about what I can add or what do I see, or both, or what?
SPEAKER_03I think it's usually more of an execution of an idea first. Um, I I I used to keep the camera in my car all the time. Um, and I would kind of shoot snapshots and things that I find interesting or jarring. But the real way that I work now uh and since grad school was that I have this kind of idea first, um, and then I go out and I find a way to place it and and just kind of be influenced in my day-to-day observations um and then learn to kind of twist those and and make something new out of it. And I but I but I don't, you know, it's I don't go out and really like look for the picture anymore. It's more, you know, I get an idea and then I become hyper focused and kind of addicted to the the completion of it. And and uh it's often why I think I work in serial as well. So I I get an idea and I stick with that for a long form, and it's something that there's a process that's repeatable, and I can kind of keep doing it over and over and over again. Um, and and you know, it it's modulated now that I've become a parent because um, you know, removed is kind of having this viral moment again this year. Joe Rogan and his guest kind of brought it up on their podcast just conversationally. I mean, there was no placement there or anything, it was just the images were on the guest's mind and he brought it up. And right since then, is you know, I've gotten really busy again. But this work really, you know, it started almost or it's been 10 years now that I've been making these removed photographs and just trying to expand the uh the content of them.
SPEAKER_04Um but well, if for for for people that don't that don't know uh the project, because this this is such a cool project, it's such a cool idea. Describe what it is, but but but start with the moment where the phone falls out of your hand onto the floor and you think, oh, you know, uh maybe that there's something here. Tell me the genesis, tell me the idea of the removed project. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So removed, I have to give the context that it was um I was my uh second year of graduate school, and that summer I was very fortunate to be accepted to two different artist residencies, and they coincided or they just coincidentally happened like weeks after I'd gotten married. And so um I was up in uh upstate New York at an artist residency and uh just got married. My wife's, you know, doing summer stuff at the med school, and I'm up in New York and uh it's raining all the time, and I'm in this dark old church that had been converted into this residency. Great program, but I I got really down while I was there, just like incredible homesickness. Um, and I remember there was this one morning where I went out to this cafe. Um, they just had a great breakfast sandwich, really good coffee there. So I would go there in the mornings and just start, you know, writing because I needed to get out of the church for a couple hours to start my day. And uh I remember sitting there and I'm drinking my coffee. And this family walks in and they've got they're pretty lively, they've got a lot of energy. Um, and the and the year is 2014. So smartphones are like, you know, just hitting kind of max, you know, market penetration. That, you know, not everybody had a smartphone. I I just gotten my first iPhone, um, like I don't know, six months prior to to this moment. I was still with like a little tappy Blackberry phone. Um, but this family comes in and they sit down at the booth next to me, and it's you know, beautiful golden hour morning light, and they all sit down, and immediately before they even start talking again, everybody at the table pulls out their phone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it's a scene that, you know, it happens over and over again now. But at the time, I think because I was homesick, um, I noticed that the mom didn't have a phone out and she was just kind of trying to soak in this moment, but there's no one to speak to. Everybody's engrossed with their phones, and she's staring out the window, you know. And I I wish, I mean, I needed to just make this specific photograph. I think that's what I've been chasing and remove this whole time. But um, I I just started writing in my journal about how this is wild, that this technology is pulling us from each other so blatantly and so quickly, we're gonna change kind of our um expectations of one another socially, that it's okay now to pull this thing out. Where I mean, I remember with my brick phone, you know, my little Nokia. If you got a text, you started texting, and it was like someone would be like, What are you doing? Like, why, you know, put that away. It's just you're being it was rude. And then all of a sudden now it's not, you know, it was like overnight. This is not this is not a problem anymore. Um, and so I wrote about that mom, and I wrote about wanting to get home from the residency and that I was going to be very intentional, very present with my wife. Um, and so fast forward, you know, a couple weeks, I get home from the artist residency and school starts back up, we're busy, and all of a sudden I realized, you know, we're in bed and we're both on our phones, and uh, I'm sitting there tapping away on social media or whatever. Um, I think Instagram was like pretty brand new back then. Um, I'll have to go back and look and see if I even was posting anything back then. Um and uh we're laying there back to back, and I drift off to sleep, and as as I fall asleep, my hand lets my phone slip out just enough for it to hit the floor. And we had hardwood floors in this little cottage in Chapel Hill, and my eyes kind of snap open from the sound of the slap, and my hand is right in front of my face on my side, as if you know my phone is still there, and I can still see my thumb articulated. And um, at the same time, I can see the blue glow of my wife's phone behind me, you know, casting its light around our little room. And I was like, holy crap, this is a photograph. This image right here of a couple, a young couple, attractive if I do so so myself, attractive young couple, um, you know, touching, but our brains are elsewhere, is just a holy loaded image. Uh, and I could see it, you know, I could see it from the perspective of our ceiling fan. Um, and I jumped out of bed. My wife's like, what's going on? And I was like, I I have this idea. I just need to, I gotta write this down because I'm, you know, I don't think I'll forget it, but I need to write it down. And I wrote it down. And starting the next day, I just started planning out, you know, I was like, all right, I need to order some more sheet film. I'm gonna get the bigger tripod, we're gonna get this up the ceiling. I got to convince my wife that she's gonna be in this picture. And then I also was trying to tinker with, you know, the original idea was, you know, am I gonna Photoshop these phones out or is it gonna be a performance? Does it even matter? And we did a quick little test shoot the next day. Um, we used to go to this little caribou coffee in Chapel Hill. And um, while my wife was working, I had her post for just a couple digital kind of test shots and actually was pulling those up recently as I was putting the book together uh and looking at, you know, what's the difference of her posing? Can I Photoshop this out? You know, asking these bigger questions of uh what does it do to the picture if it's constructed? What does it do for the viewer if uh I'm just you know finding people on their phones and then uh editing out later? You know, is there consent there? Does that even matter? You know, just asking these kind of bigger questions early on, because I knew I knew I was like, you know, I I am in love with this idea enough that I'm gonna do a lot of them to figure out if it works. And so, you know, after that first little test shot, I was like, okay, I can't Photoshop this out. I'm not, you know, I know I can mask and stuff, but I can't, it's too intricate. Hands are, especially if I was gonna do some close-up shots, hands are you know very detailed. And um, I'm sure now with AI you can pop them out real easy. Probably. Yeah. Um, but I realized it was this was gonna be an in-camera kind of thing and it was gonna be a little more deliberate. And I was gonna take the time to um go back to using the view camera like I did in Chicago um and get that full detail of a scene, but also be artful and intentional with each photograph and know that I'm making the investment on every exposure, so I'm gonna really focus on all of the elements within the picture and and make it as strong as I can. Um, and so then once I made those choices, we went back to our cottage and I set up the uh that photograph that's now, you know, is probably gonna be the photograph I'm most known for, which is titled Angie and Me, and it's my wife and I back to back in bed, and it was the genesis of the idea. Um, I started out making more and more images of family and friends at first, just to try to get into my groove. I also hadn't been shooting four by five for a while. Um that first year in grad school, I was doing you know, weird film projects and messing with the archive of my family's like 16 millimeter motion picture films. And um, so I had to really kind of get back into the photographer mindset as I was getting back into that body of work. And after making several with family and friends, I was like, okay, this is this has legs. This project really, you know, it matters to me. And also I was butted up against, you know, in a two-year graduate program, you've got to, I was I kind of drew the short straw and my thesis exhibition was on the front end. So really I only had grad school for like three semesters, and then I had to hang this thesis show. So honestly, that that's you know, that's kind of I I don't think I've ever verbalized that before uh in an interview. But you know, it's like you've got to kind of sink your teeth into whatever your thesis is gonna be and and get ready for it. Cause I had till like February to get this show mounted. And I remember I had early critiques on it, and not everybody was into it. They there was some people that said the project was too late, you know, like the transformation had already happened, which in hindsight now it feels like removed was 10 years too early because nobody cared, or I guess maybe we didn't know how far our phones were gonna kind of separate us, separate us from one another, uh, which is where we're at now. But um, but yeah, I started going out and photographing people that I didn't know, and that part was really fulfilling to me again, was to go out and make you know portraits of people in everyday situations. And those images add a lot more layer to the project for me because now it's almost like, and I think that's where it's conceptual about it, is that the image has affect outside of the camera, outside of the gallery. It literally is, you know, the experience of being photographed is also the art within that series.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And and the the series, we glad everyone know, is not only North Carolina, it's India, it's Indonesia. It's it's it's it's a global effort or what's what it's a global um response that we're having to the technology in our hands. And it's one of the things that, you know, listening to you talk about this elsewhere, you will often, when you when you're photographing other people, actually have them sit with the phone in their hand for five minutes, whatever, to get a certain that certain expression or you know, relaxedness or nervousness in their face, whatever, and then take it out. So you're not just saying, put your hand up as if you're holding a phone. You're saying hold the phone for a while, then I'm gonna take it away.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And that and that's part of using the large format too, is to let me slow down and get them into a place where visually and even you know psychologically, they're getting into a headspace of I'm kind of, you know, like we all do, I'm I'm separating myself from this physical world now and I'm being consumed into this other channel. And when I can get them to kind of freeze at a certain moment of disconnect, uh, I think that that comes through more in the picture. And it gives me time too to just work around them. I'm, you know, I really want to make sure that I'm getting the best composition possible. You don't need telephone poles sticking out of people's heads and that kind of thing. Um, and so yeah, you just kind of work around them, let them get, you know, bored or or just kind of forget that they're being photographed for a while, uh, and then I'll come up and slide the phone from their hand. Um, it was so interesting when I first started. I remember like the first kids that I had photographed in an early one. There was like a mom and a daughter on a couch. It's my mom's good friend Tanya and her daughter. Um, and she's holding a tablet and her hands are like separated far apart. And I was like, she's doing this so well. And I think she was only four or five at the time. Um, and just you know, the the the habitual nature of being on a device had already become so uh internalized that the performance of it was was just you know incredibly believable right off the bat.
SPEAKER_04Tell tell me about I mean, first of all, I'd I'd love to go through all of your portfolios because this is the work here is just magnificent. Um but tell me tell me about the response because I I was really captivated uh when I was reading about the showdown in in Rio because this was a conference or a convention, whatever, where people are learning about technology. And I mean, Julie Graham was right. It is a huge um display of your work, which is a critique of the very thing that people are there to learn about. Um, you know, there's a kind of really pleasant complication going on there in terms of you know messing with your head a bit. What what are people saying? Well, first of all, what they say in Rio, and and what are people in general saying? Because the book's coming out, it's a viral moment. Um, this is this is resonating deeply with a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03I will say the so the the show in Rio um was at the Rio Innovation Week, and uh the curator Andre Weller uh he he stumbled upon my project like literally weeks before this conference that they had been planning for a year. So this was like a very quick, he was like, I absolutely have to add this in. And I will say, um, at face value, it does feel a bit of a contradiction or a juxtaposition, but actually um it is a reflection of where a lot of people, or at least the momentum within technology, is heading. I think we're at this inflection point right now where people are realizing that yes, this technology, as always, has been helpful in many ways, but we are at a point where we are seeing a lot of harm happening in real time, whether it's from just literal device addiction or within the division that the algorithms are creating for profit, mind you. Um, you know, the the more pissed off people are online, the more they engage. The more they engage, the more advertisements are sold. And it's as simple as that. That is the entire ecosystem of our quote social media. Um and the conference at Rio Innovation Week, they're really responding to that in a way that now it's about uh a lot of people coming together to discuss governance of technology and policy of technology. And a lot of the companies that are getting funded now, and a lot of where the energy is going is towards companies who are being um more conscious of this, whether they're actually applying it or not is yet to be seen. But I think that they're realizing that the general sense of people is that we can't keep going down this path that we're on with our our device use and with the way that uh you know, entire you know, governments and populations are being uh divided up, uh it's not it's not gonna end well, it seems. So um, so the the the show in Rio was really about having a moment to go into these pretty heady conversations and exhibitions and um and uh panels about policy and moving forward and keeping technology humane. And then as you exit in the sun setting, you've got my exhibition uh in that main thoroughway of over 50 images printed largest scale I've ever had my work done, um, and they're backlit and they kind of draw you in as you're leaving. And it felt like this really punctuated, reflective moment where people would stop. And I would just kind of stand off to the side and watch people exit. There was there was over 200,000 people that came to this, so it's a huge, huge event. Um and I would just watch people stop in their tracks and just really take it in. A lot of people seeing this work for the first time, and they'd go over to the statement, which was in you know Portuguese and they'd read it, and um, you know, and then of course they'd take selfies in front of it, and that's fine, you know. I was like, I need to be making more pictures here, but um yeah, it was really uh it was a great application for the series. I think that you know, when I go back to when I was talking about the House Sitters project in Chicago and trying to figure out what this what that work was going to do, what its intention was, and I was left with those questions. Removed has really been fulfilling in the sense that the the application for it and the reflection of it um just has such a sustained and important purpose, and that's very, very fulfilling for me as an artist. Oh, rock and roll, man.
SPEAKER_04You know, I would love I'm looking at your portfolios here again, and there's so many stories I want to, I want to hear about interventions. I want to hear about no show, it's just a great story. Um, but you know, we could talk for hours and hours. I I do want to hear you, though, you know, you get to a little bit of advertising here. Snap Collective has a project coming out. Tell me what's happening.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so um my book is literally at the printers right now. Um, there's a uh a publisher out of Germany called uh Snap Collective. Um they approached me earlier in the year and were very excited about doing my book. Um, I've kind of been waiting for this. Uh the book ecosystem in the photography world is very complicated and people are very opinionated about it. There's also a lot of poaching that happens. There's a lot of companies that are out there that are specifically just trying to find an artist who you know can come up with 40 grand and then they get to publish this book. And Snap Collective really flips that on its head. They they just say, hey, uh it you can have people just pre-order your book. You've got your set number of copies that you get to keep, and uh, we will, you know, fund the printing and we'll fund the uh advertising and the designing and uh and collaborate on this book that, you know, I mean, Collective, I think, is in their title on purpose because that's kind of their model. Um they I took a while. It was really hard for me to say the book was done because I wanted to cover so much in it, but there's over 150 photographs in there. Um, I actually delayed the press just slightly because I wanted to squeeze in some new photographs that I made while I was in Rio to add in another country to the series. Uh, Brazil's a beautiful place, and I had a wonderful team of people that went with me um down at uh Coca-Cabana and uh Hocina and uh really beautiful place. So um great images that are new that I've never before seen. And also um our family has uh my wife's family has this property in North Carolina on uh kind of a private lake, and so I've that's where we spend our summers now. And so I have included uh my family and the kids as well um in in the series now. So those are all in the book and the book's off to print. And it should be shipping the I think they said the second week of January. So uh I'm hoping uh we'll have a lot of programming around that in the coming in the new year, and um yeah, just just really fun time for that.
SPEAKER_04Well, very cool. That that is likely the time that this podcast will go live. So we we we will be in in good calendar stead. Eric man, this is work that I admire, that I find impressive, and that I find really I mean, you know, inspiring for my own work because it it explodes what my understanding of what the hell I'm doing is. And it's just frankly, deeply interesting, completely um elegant in terms of its composition uh and its execution. Good job, man. I I've enjoyed this conversation immensely. Thank you very much. You're so welcome.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having me. I really appreciate getting the time to chat with you all.
SPEAKER_02Visit us at www.readframes.com.