”History and Photography: A Conversation with Henry Horenstein”

*Please note: Henry's work is so comprehensive and gorgeous, we have only selected a few images to highlight. Visit https://horenstein.com to dig deeper and truly appreciate the scope of his work. From Mitch's Notebook about this episode: "I must immediately mention a film in which I played a role in its kickstarter funding that Henry Horesntein made called Partners , if only because we failed to get to that stage of Henry's career on the show, so prodigious has been his output. The film is an unusual portrait of these couples, whose lifestyles are contrary to the "mainstream" of society, talking about their romantic and sexual lives in a most immersive and direct fashion, using a single backdrop. When I watch it I am reminded above all of Shirley Clarke's masterpiece Portrait Of Jason, though that is black and white and of a single person talking rather than a diverse group of individuals speaking intimately of their lives. All of this of course only confirms why Henry Horenstein is a perfect guest for our podcast. That I wanted to spend some time discussing his study with the great E. P. Thompson - perhaps the premier socialist British historian of his generation (in a way the Howard Zinn of England) as well as our mutual friend and, like Henry, RISD instructor Richard Merkin is all testament to the wide and highly diverse career Henry has had. As for Merkin, he remains a major influence on my own dress and I am fortunate to own a signed painting of his which I proudly hang in my living room. Henry describes his art in terms of history and documentary. One of the things that is most important to me on this show is hearing how a creator talks about their own work. Of course when I look at any of Henry's photographs I am seeing photographs I love to look at and can return to again and again without ever losing interest in them.

I certainly am not thinking of any of the more pulitosophic terrain that we were fortunate enough to get into in this episode. Still less do I ever really know what was behind or went into making an artwork; only the actual author can know that. And I know that we always want to hear as much about that as the artist is willing to express. I enjoyed the hour we spent in this episode immensely and certainly learned a lot from it.” Henry’s Biography: Henry Horenstein has been a professional photographer, filmmaker, teacher, and author since the 1970s. He studied history at the University of Chicago and earned his BFA and MFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Henry's work is collected and exhibited internationally and he has published over 30 books, including several monographs of his own work such as Honky Tonk, Shoot What You Love (a memoir), Histories, Show, Animalia, Humans, Racing Days, Close Relations, and many others. He has also authored Black & White Photography, Digital Photography, and Beyond Basic Photography, used by hundreds of thousands of college, university, high-school, and art school students as their introduction to photography. His Shoot What You Love serves both a memoir and a personal history of photography over the past 50 years. In recent years, Henry has been making films: Preacher, Murray, Spoke, Partners, and Blitto Underground, which will premier in 2021. Henry is professor of photography at RISD and lives in Boston. Additional Links to Henry’s beautiful body of work: Henry's Books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Henry+horenstein&ref=nb_sb_noss Website: https://horenstein.com/partners Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/HorensteinPhotography/ Visit our show Facebook page for a more in depth look at Henry's maginifent body of work: https://www.facebook.com/journeyofanaesthetepodcast