When photographer Amani Willett turns his attention to American life, he does so with a quiet precision that reveals both its poetry and its contradictions. Working primarily in black and white, Amani’s photographs explore themes of history, memory, race, and belonging—often focusing on overlooked spaces and moments that carry deep cultural resonance. His work invites viewers to slow down and consider how the past lingers in the present, shaping both personal and collective identity.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #651 - David Walter Banks
When photographer David Walter Banks began turning his lens toward the spaces where power, faith, and ideology take physical form, he set out to explore more than architecture. His photographs examine how belief systems—political, religious, and cultural—shape the built environment and, in turn, influence how we move through the world. From monuments and government buildings to evangelical megachurches, David’s work reveals how space is used to project authority, belonging, and conviction.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #650 - Ben Geier
When photographer Ben Geier first began making images, it was his Midwest upbringing and a fascination with abandoned places that set him on a path of visual discovery. Over the past decade, Ben’s work has led him across the United States in search of once-vibrant theatres, roadside restaurants, neon signs, motels, and storefronts—places that carry the texture of America’s cultural and architectural history.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #640 - Matthew Finley
Matthew Finley (b. 1972) uses his photography to express himself and connect to the world around him. With a variety of photography processes, he explores intimate emotions through gesture and line to communicate his experience. In 2024 Finley was awarded CENTER Santa Fe’s Personal Award as well as the Center for Photographic Art’s LGBTQ+ Artist Grant for his project An Impossibly Normal Life.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #630 - Valerie Jardin
Valérie Jardin is an award-winning French photographer who has developed a unique style that is both evocative and authentic. Her work is characterized by a strong sense of narrative, capturing candid moments that reveal the human experience in all its complexity and beauty. With a discerning eye for composition and a keen understanding of light and shadow, Valérie Jardin creates emotionally charged photographs of everyday moments.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #622 - Jesse Lenz
Jesse Lenz is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. As an illustrator he has created images for the most well-respected publications around the world, including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. He is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club, Charcoal Press, and the Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio. He latest monograph is titled Seraphim.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #620 - Elinor Carucci
Elinor Carucci (born 1971) is an Israeli American photographer and educator living in New York City. She is noted for her intimate portraits of her family's lives.[2][3][4] She has published four monographs: Closer (2002), Diary of a Dancer (2005), Mother (2013), and Midlife (2019). She teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Shortly after RBG’s passing in September 2020, Time magazine commissioned Carucci to write a commemorative piece on the late justice, focused on the stories behind her legendary collars.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #611 - Barbara Mensch
Barbara Mensch is a fine art photographer who probes her subject matter with the curiosity and stamina of a detective. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she began to draw at an early age, attending classes at The Brooklyn Museum Studio School and the Art Students League as a teenager.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #610 - James Payne
James Payne is a social documentary photographer based in Los Angeles, California.
He is fascinated by how people interact with the places they inhabit, particularly in their homes and on the streets. He has been capturing images of both for decades. American Portraits (in 3D) are a unique series of environmental portraits that are rendered in three dimension using his own approach for showcasing these images.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #607 - Jason Langer
Jason Langer is an American photographer best known for his psychological and norish visions of contemporary photography urban life. Langer apprenticed with renowned photographers including Ruth Bernhard, Arthur Tess, and Michael Kenna. Langer is known for his fine-art black-and-white photography. His latest book is titled Berlin.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #605 - Nina Welch Kling
Nina Welch-Kling is a New York City-based photographer originally from a small town in southern Germany. Her background in fine art and architecture, combined with a love for roaming the city streets, inform her photographic depictions of everyday life.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #604 - Raquel Natalicchio
Raquel Natalicchio is a photographer from Los Angeles, CA, now based in Houston, TX as a staff visual journalist for The Houston Chronicle. Raquel documents social issues, community-driven stories, political mobilization, and migration across the US/Mexico border. Her work focuses on the universality of humanity, including themes of love, struggle, resilience, and community.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #601 - Mark Edward Harris
After graduating from California State University, Los Angeles with a Master of Arts Degree in Pictorial/Documentary History, Mark Edward Harris started his professional photography career doing the stills for the Merv Griffin Show and various television and movie companies. Mark has worked on numerous documentary projects. His latest project focuses on the challenges of orangutans, their habitat, and the people that are helping them to survive.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #599 - Kyeong Jun Yang
KyeongJun Yang is a photographer from South Korea. Born and raised in Jinhae, South Korea. Yang came to the United States at 18 and studied journalism and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. His works focus on how individuals and small communities are impacted by society and culture.
His ongoing personal project, Men Don't Cry, is an intimate exploration of his complicated relationship with his father, who lives with depression and a history of childhood trauma.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #595 - Michael Grecco
Michael Grecco is an award-winning commercial photographer and film director noted for his iconic celebrity portraits, innovative magazine covers, editorial images, and advertising spreads. Michael makes his second appearance on the show to discuss his recent book, Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991. The seminal book provides a personal and intimate of the punk rock scene.
Read MoreThe Candid Frame #583 - Alexis Hunley
Alexis Hunley is a freelance photographer whose work focuses on utilizing storytelling to celebrate the beauty and complexity of living as a human. She specializes in portraiture and documentary projects that explore authenticity and emotions.
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