Transcript for Episode 156 – Photographer + Writer, Tom Griggs (Colombia + Mexico)
Recorded February 16, 2021
Published March 18, 2021
Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/photographer-writer-tom-griggs-colombia-mexico/
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Matthew Dols 0:13
Today, my guest is photographer and writer Tom Griggs. He’s my first guests from the Latin American region, even though technically he’s not Latin American. But it was lovely to talk to another expat artist, and also start to connect with some people in the Latin American art culture. And we talked about things like juries, because he’s been a juror for many competitions. Being an expat artist, which is nice for me to be able to relate to, because I also am that and how to use text and image because that’s one of those weird things that we all sort of nebulously tried to do throughout our careers. And he seems to have done it very well because he has a number of books out, utilizing the text and image and how to take very personal family stories and turn them into approachable and engaging artwork. The wise fool podcast with me, Matthew Dols, as your host is supported in part by an EAA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in an effort to work together for a green competitive and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners hunt kassner in Prague, Czech Republic, and kuhns Center in a Norgay in Norway. Links to EA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes.
Please pronounce your name correctly for me,
Tom Griggs 1:48
Tom Griggs.
Matthew Dols 1:50
Now, I’ve noticed that you your history you started off in Connecticut, I’m not sure if you were born there. But that’s, that was some of the first education stuff that you’re listed on your CV. So what was your childhood? Like? How did you get to being creative? Was it parents some schooling some what like hat, what led you down the creative path.
Tom Griggs 2:08
So I grew up in Minnesota, did an undergraduate career in Connecticut, and then went to art school afterwards in Boston. My first experiences with photography would be when I was around 2728. So I was relatively late to photography. And we can back it up from there if you’d like. But from there, I was taking painting classes at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, next door at the Museum of Fine Arts, they had an exhibit by F Holland day an incredibly, maybe mediocre is a generous term their photographer, and his the compressed tonality of his prints really impressed me and had an aesthetic connection with my painting. And I took a couple of darkroom classes, I was never somebody who’s interested in the magic of the darkroom, I never felt it, it’s not really a passion of mine or an interest. But to start taking photography classes at the college, that’s where you begin. So I started playing around with the, with my prints and starting to try to echo the the tonalities that I found an F Holland de Prince. And I think I understood photography from the beginning, not as a document or, or recording device, but as an expressive, medium. And so I really liked manipulating what I could, with the levers that I had in a dark room. So I had those first few classes there at Mass art, and then I was still painting, but when I moved out of the school, and was working in my own studio, I start to feel isolated, burnt out all of the things that I had at the university community critiques, great library, I lost and so I got to a point where I was feeling that I was creating artistic problems and solving them by myself in this very closed circuit, maybe with an input from a few friends, was very isolating, and photography and kind of drawing on those initial classes. That Messara suddenly seemed like a way to live a much more contemporary life out in the world being in the world making images, traveling being in communities having experiences and that’s what drew me into photography was this idea that being the pace of contemporary life, being able to create and be with people and not needing to live a somewhat monkish existence alone in a studio. Most of the good painters I know live that life of extreme dedication, and it just wasn’t for me. And from there, I ended up back at Mass art somewhat ironically, I did a pretty wide grad school hunt and decided that what taking those initial classes would actually be the best place for me for for graduate school. And I’ve been dedicated to photography since then, but have also moved writing into some of my projects.
Matthew Dols 5:12
Alright, so now what do you do today to make a living? So are you doing editorial photography? Are you doing, writing? What’s your sort of day to day income,
Tom Griggs 5:23
mostly online teaching, I think that’s the biggest part of the pie. I think that, you know, somebody at some point early on, told me that photographers essentially fall into three categories in terms of making a living, especially within Fine Arts photography, which is my world, which would be the teach. They’re born rich, or they work with properties. And so I took the ladder path at first I had a construction company bought and rehab the property in Philadelphia, I have a place in managing Columbia. And the rent from those properties, underwrites some of my decision making in terms of teaching, so I take jobs that I’m interested in. And the money obviously helps, but it’s not completely dependent on it. And I do some editorial work not very much, if somebody calls me happy to do it, but I don’t tend to seek it out very much.
Matthew Dols 6:20
And where are you living Currently,
Tom Griggs 6:23
I’m currently in Mexico City. I spent most of the last decade in Medellin, Colombia. And I came here last January with an idea of establishing kind of a second beachhead in Latin America. This is along with my ordinary biocide days in San Paolo, one of the big centres of photography in Latin America. So a lot of work opportunities, great community, great resources, great institutions. And nicotine is a great city, but it’s quite small in all of those terms. And after 10 years, they’re both professionally a good moment for a change. Bogota has a much more lively photography world and much more infrastructure. But I was ready for change. And so I came in last January and began investigating ideas of work. And then the pandemic hit and kind of being here since. And in some ways, it’s kind of just extended the process of integrating myself here and figuring out if it’s going to work or not, but it’s been a good place to be in the meantime.
Matthew Dols 7:29
All right. One of the things when I looked through your CV, one of the things that that and quite honestly, this is probably how I found you in the first place is the doing being a juror you’ve been in it looks through your CV on a number of different being quote unquote, like a juror or nominator. Basically, the the gatekeeper for the ability to like win awards or, or, you know, receive competitions or grants, I would assume it looks like some of them are grants. I’m fascinated with that whole process. You know, I’ve been on that juries, but all my things I’ve been juries are nothing, nobody would know. But the ones you’re on are pretty big. So like, how did you even get on a jury? These juries, first of all, like, who contacted you how, why? And then walk me through a little bit of process, choose any one of them and sort of tell me a little bit about the process of being a juror?
Tom Griggs 8:28
Yeah, so I had a moment where I switched over a little bit. I mean, I’m a photographer, first and foremost, and work on my own projects. And then when I began teaching at the university in, in Colombia, which is a pretty interesting place, the the profile of the average student is, like the highest performing students from the lower economic areas of meta gene. And so I started working there and had a lot of, you know, passionate students, solid students, students who wanted to continue with photography, but they were taking my classes with, you know, borrowed cell phones, well broken slrs. And so, you know, I’m the type of person I can kind of agonize over a restaurant menu, but make kind of whimsical, large scale life decisions. And I thought, you know, I’m going to start a, you know, essentially an NGO and nonprofits and see if I can do some fundraising, for helping these kids out with some equipment. And that led to a project called photo tazo, which is no longer active as an online site. But for, you know, the better part of the last decade was active. I did a lot of interviews as a writing kind of project releases. And the site served as the engine for the nonprofit it would attract leaders and then a certain percent would donate, you know, whatever they would care to, for equipment purchases for now. donated grant students, largely from the university, I was teaching at MIT, a dean, but also there were others, all of them from within Columbia, Berg for the cycling of leadership, that I started to get some contacts and some invitations to take part on the other side of the table, that is to say, as a juror invited to take part in kind of nominating processes. And that’s how that transition happened. So as far as who contacted me, if you want to pick one off a CV, we could talk through that particular process. But generally, I think people found me through photo tazo. In that site,
Matthew Dols 10:36
it would be photo lucija would be the big one that I but also, it seems like it’s the one that you seem to have done the most.
Tom Griggs 10:43
I think the woman’s name was Audrey Osborne, she’s no longer with the org, their organization, but she was the person who was making those invitations. And she just wrote me out of the blue and invited me to take part one year. And it’s a quite a bit of work. I mean, there’s a, a priests, a group of pre screening jurors, which I don’t do, but those people look at, you know, all of the applications, and then they send a selection of 200 portfolios to the jurors for the final round, which is what I do, and they cut it down to 50. And it is quite a lot of work. And I do it every year. You know, I go through the 200. And I don’t think to be honest, all of the jurors do that. So they keep inviting me back, I think in part because I do my job when they asked me to do it. And I also try to comment on work from the people, they give you an option to leave some comments. So I think it’s seriously and I find it’s a way for me to keep up on trends and tendencies and photography, find some new interesting work, I probably wouldn’t come across otherwise. But just by being a faithful juror and doing the work, they seem to keep inviting me back for it. So I’m trying to think of some space in which I’m a nominator or a juror that did not come out of essentially being an editor or a blogger. And I can’t think of one I’m pretty sure they all came from there. Maybe a couple local competitions in Colombia came from my being a professor at the University. But
Matthew Dols 12:21
Okay, wait, I’ve got to ask the question, because I think you skipped over it somehow. Or I’ll let you skip over it. How did you get from Connecticut and mass art to Colombia in the first place,
Tom Griggs 12:33
like most expats in Colombia for a relationship. So I met a woman at an arts residency in New York. She’s a classical pianist. And we were married for about 10 years, and then kind of amicably moved on our own paths a couple of years ago. And she I chose a person not a place, she was originally from metazine, and had left for a summer with an opportunity to take classes in the United States and ended up staying for 10 years, and had always had a very strong draw, to going back to metazine. So we got married, and she won a competition for a full time teaching position at the University where I taught and then I got a grant for a year to go down and teach at the same university. So we went down for we gave ourselves at least two years, then the idea was to sit down once a year with a bottle of wine and make big life decisions. And at certain point, it just became an excuse to drink bottles of wine, because you’re pretty happy. And like being there. And I think professionally, it offered me a number of advantages and opportunities. I said earlier that the it’s a pretty small photo world there. And so in one way that kind of circumscribes your, your experience within photography, but on another level, I think one of the other reasons that people have reached out for my opinion about work from the area or, you know, to, to invite me to be a juror is that I do have a knowledge of photography from that part of the world, and experience of looking at it that I think places in Europe and the United States are interested in. I don’t think if I had started the same nonprofit in Minnesota, that I would be invited to the same opportunity. So it’s it’s sort of that that role of being a bridge between two worlds that people people are interested in photos of for a while, went through a few iterations. But the very last one was to provide an English language platform for looking at Latin American photography, like that was that I mean, there’s so many sites that did the same thing. At a certain point, I started to think about like, what’s the really the reason to continue doing this? And that seemed to be a role I could play would be. I had a number of conversations with curators editor’s people interested in Latin American photography, but not knowing where to go to, in a way that it would be easy for them to look at work, individual sites would be hard to find or in Spanish or not, not working, or magazines and blogs would cover quite a bit of work, but generally be in Spanish. My last version of the site tended to focus on Latin American work with writing in English.
Matthew Dols 15:27
What I’ve noticed that even through this podcast, because like when I want a guest, like I could find some amazing guests in God knows where you know, Timbuktu. But if they don’t speak English, I can’t really do it with them. And so they I feel like there’s this sort of sounds really bad to say, but like a barrier to the the like the pre the central art industry, which seems to be English speaking, whether it’s in Europe or the Americas, that a lot of places and people have a lack of ability to get engaged with B simply because of a language barrier. You know, like, there’s lots of people I can’t talk to, and I’m sure there are lots of people who are amazing, that make work in Latin America, or South America, and they can’t sort of connect with the quote unquote, sort of the central art world that’s English speaking.
Tom Griggs 16:21
Yeah, I think that’s really true. And to cover some ground, I think you’ve covered with guests, social capital is the coin of the realm, right. So if you can’t speak English, it really cuts down your ability to interact with power centers in the photography world. And it’s unfortunate, but it’s part of the reality of the situation. And I think that was another interest with photons. So as a nonprofit, was to try to level the playing field a little bit. And so the students that I would bring into the program would get a grant camera, but they’d also be matched with to mentors in other parts of the world that would comment on their photography. And we started doing trips, we did a trip with I think, 10 students to the United States, and I’ve done a couple trips to Mexico, to get them a little bit more social capital, meeting photographers, getting people interested in their work. And, you know, also just trying to force them, you know, if they’re going to choose their paths forward to have a lot more information with which to make those decisions, and to have as broad of horizons as they could have to make those decisions. And so trying to push them a little bit with English, trying to get them in contact with people was part of the kind of experiment of those grants. But yeah, I mean, it’s crucial. It’s it’s, so I mean, not just for everything online that you can access, you know, these days, all the zoom, lectures and conferences, all the online kind of archives and podcasts podcast. Exactly. And so that’s, it’s, it’s important. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true,
Matthew Dols 18:08
being an expat, because like, it’s kind of hard because, okay, like, so I was an expat in the United Arab Emirates, and I’m now an expat in Prague. And as much as like what my impression, right, so like, my idea of being an expert, I would be this exotic American with all this education and background and blah, blah, blah, great CV, and I’d roll in there and they would love me and they would want to engage with me. absolute bullshit. They want nothing to do with me. They see me as an outsider, I’m an interloper. They like that whole romantic idea of being an expat and rolling into a foreign country and somehow being like the top that big top heat, I find to be absolute bullshit. What was your experiences with that?
Tom Griggs 19:04
I would say less. So I actually found ESPN, least in Columbia. I mean, Columbia, for its political history was cut off from the rest of the world for a long time, obviously. And what that meant for arts education were these very close circuits. So professors taught students who became the professors who taught students who became the professors. And the information was very close. And I think there was actually it is what it is, but there was a bit of, Okay, this is a new guy. He’s got a different outlook. He’s got a different take on things and a different educational background is, at least at that point, enough Spanish to get by and some of my students from that era still make fun of me about how they used to have to get together after my classes and you know, piece together what I was saying because I arrived 11 years ago, pretty basic. But I actually At least within Colombia, and this might relate to some of its larger cultural inclinations towards the United States, I did actually find it to be an advantage, Mexico have a much smaller period of time to draw on. And I have a sense that it’s a lot less currency here kind of having a CV littered with non American education and kind of professional experience. Mexico has a much stronger scene, much stronger photo world. And to kind of backtrack a little bit to our last question, or maybe the lead into this question. There is, you know, some connection with the outer photo world and a participation in that world. But there’s also a very self sufficient world here. It doesn’t depend on or necessarily need to take part in a broader world and it has its own dynamics, its own chiefs and followers, its own incredible institutions, its own pettiness. It’s I mean, it’s, it is both participant in and very much removed from the broader photography world. And so I think, yeah, tracking the broader kind of cultural relationship to the outside world. I don’t think it’s as helpful here from New Mexico to be to have CVI have we’re in Colombia did feel more of an advantage for sure. Well, fuck you. I want to have that empathy with you. But it is what it is. Yeah,
Matthew Dols 21:38
exactly. I’m perfectly fine with it. It’s the situation I got myself into. So there we go. All right. Now helped me out first of all, because of my tact is pretty low.
Tom Griggs 21:52
So like I do on that my tap is also quite low. So.
Matthew Dols 21:58
Okay, great. All right. So Latin art, like when I was in school, we had it like, there was Central American art, there was South American art. And they sort of segregate separated that way. And of course, then there was like, pre Columbian and you know, all these different terminologies as what would be the appropriate term right now for Contemporary Art Made in Central or South America?
Tom Griggs 22:23
There’s probably somebody that can answer that question better for you. But I would just say Latin American art is just kind of a blanket term. I mean, you can break it down from there. But when I see articles about this area of the world, it just tends to reference it as Latin American art or unlisted as a juror, let’s say on pre pick day. And it’s probably mispronouncing that, but it’s just like Latin America or something, it seems to be how people denominate the region from outside and actually I think from with inside in Spanish as well, people would refer to the broader the broader region, that way, you could break it down to South American or Central American or Mexican or Colombian. But I would say that the blanket term
Matthew Dols 23:05
living where you were in Colombia, which is which is many in which is not as let’s say, affluent as where you were raised in America, or even, you know, a lot of sort of the American larger cities, and then go to Mexico City. The question I have is not about that, but it’s that sort of setting the basis for it. I find in America, that photographers are really arrogant about their equipment, they’re like, Oh, yeah, I got the lens with the red ring around it, or I’ve got these really expensive strobe lights and the biggest megapixel blabbity, blah. It do see a difference in that sort of attitude towards sort of, you know, comparative equipment, judging between photographers in other countries.
Tom Griggs 23:59
Not that much. I think it depends a little bit on the strata photographer, you find. I mean, it’s every semester at the university, you know, I’ve got my classes, and there’s always like, one kid in the back that first day is asking about lenses, you know, so there’s always the gear head, there’s always somebody that’s interested in equipment, but I would say generally, you know, especially, let’s say melodien, which I can speak about that or just having spent a lot more time there. I don’t, I don’t find equipment to be in really a central conversation very much. I actually, I think a lot of the conversations revolve around interests of your podcast and some of your questions about like, how to make contacts, how do I get in the world? How do I get my work seen? How do I take part in a larger, larger conversation? How do you meet so and so? So I think a lot of it is a strategy. I mean, you’re living in that part of the world. Let’s say you don’t speak English, let’s say Your your budget is low for equipment, let’s say your social contacts are, are minimal, like how do you grow a career? That tends to be the line of conversation. And I think actually like one of the great services of this podcast in terms of like trying to talk with people involved with the industry and answering that question more broadly for people trying to find their way forward. Go ahead. You can cut and paste that into your like podcast intro.
Matthew Dols 25:25
Thank you very much.
Tom Griggs 25:27
But I you know, maybe I think Columbia is very segregated between photography world. So the photo journalists are one community, the art photographers are another community. There’s a role of like art educators that I think form like a different group. And so maybe I think the photo journalists tend to be the ones most up on equipment, sit down at the bar and talk lenses, but it’s not my world, it’s not what I’m necessarily interested in. It’s like, you know, that student that I saying is always in the class is the one I’m always afraid of, you know, some somebody can ask me existential questions about photography and life, and I can go on for days, but somebody asked me about, you know, the best new Nikon lens and my eyes glaze over. It’s just like, the least of my photographic passions. Oh, no, I
Matthew Dols 26:18
was, every semester, I get a student, it’s always like, I shot this at F 22. And that’s the largest aperture should have the largest depth of field wise everything, not in focus and emotion. Because that’s not the prime aperture for that particular let like, and I have to keep up with all this stuff. Like, it’s really hard as a professor that, like, the students quite honestly know more about the newest equipment than I do. Like, I know the basic concepts of cameras, lenses, sensors, all that kind of stuff. But like, I have no idea, the newest technology, so like, I’m always happy to send them like, Hey, here’s a great YouTube video that goes through that issue. Like, go watch that. Because, like, yeah, time to keep up with all the new technologies that are out there. It’s insane.
Tom Griggs 27:07
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I feel like, you know, I’ll do a little push, where I’ll watch some YouTube videos, look at a few sites catch up on what’s new. And then I’ll have that student in class. And I’ll realize, you know, I feel like I’m up to date. now realize I did that five years ago, knew that an entire generation, I got to go and do that again.
Matthew Dols 27:29
The other thing I find is, is that in different areas, different equipment is available. It’s also named different things in like Europe versus America versus like, in Asia, they even named things differently as well. But, but also they have different brands are more popular, I’d say kind of like, like I noticed in in the United Arab Emirates, Nikon was like, far, far better publicity, like they ran advertisements and stuff in canon had a very low profile. Whereas when I went to school in San Francisco, it canon was everybody’s stuff. Nobody even talked about Nikon. So it’s very interesting how there’s very much a regional nature of like, which equipment is sort of I mean, of course, like is always the best. We know that but you know, beyond that,
Tom Griggs 28:18
yeah. Columbia is definitely has that with Fuji actually, Fuji has a program, I think it’s called, like x photographers, Fuji x photographers. And so they’ve invited in a handful of photographers who have an outsized weight in the art, photography community, and have a lot of kind of students that are interested in their work. And so I’m sure that generates a lot of sales for them. The Fuji is actually, I would say, the dominant presence in terms of at least promotion. I’m not sure about sales, but at least in terms of visibility in Colombia,
Matthew Dols 28:51
let’s say like, I got to a point about how long ago was it? Well, I mean, technically, I haven’t owned a camera in nine or 10 years now. Because the technologies keep upgrading so fast. And so and they’re so expensive to keep upgrading that I just finally said, fuck it, I’m just gonna rent when I want to do a shoot instead of own because it’s a waste of my money. Because I’ll go out and buy some really expensive equipment, it’ll sit in my studio for 20 days out of the month, maybe I’ll use it 10 days of the month. And that’s just not worth it. I could just as easily rent it. And quite honestly, when I rent I can just literally tack the receipt onto the bill for whoever’s hiring me for that thing and say, there you go. And I don’t even have to pay for that. Like I these days with digital photography, I feel I see no need to necessarily own your own equipment. Unless of course you have like a professional studio and you’re shooting six days a week, five days a week, whatever.
Tom Griggs 29:49
Yeah, I wouldn’t the same camera now for years. It’s a Nikon or at least digital camera, Nikon D 810, something like that. What’s up, there’s a couple generations old at this point, but sort of a similar strategy. It’s just it’s not worth my money to upgrade given that I don’t do a lot of editorial work. And it suits my needs, I’m not sure next time, I have to make a purchase a fall up for another body that expensive or maybe go a little bit more the route that you’re you’re saying kind
Matthew Dols 30:22
of pick and choose how I get cameras and from where based on what I need? Well, that’s the other beauty of doing the rental thing because like, if I have a client that says, hey, I want to do a billboard, don’t get me wrong. I’ve never had a client that says that. But theoretically, if I had a client that said I would do a billboard, I could go rent, you know, a Hasselblad or whatever, you know, highest megapixel thing on the market. versus if somebody says, Hey, I just want you to come to corporate headshots in our office for our newsletter, well, then I can just go get some, you know, mid grade Canon lens or Nikon lens and be per camera and be perfectly fine with that. So it actually allows me the freedom to sort of choose what equipment I want to rent, depending on the need of the client.
Tom Griggs 31:05
Makes a lot of sense.
Matthew Dols 31:06
Which Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really do a lot of client work. I’m using this as a metaphor. So bad with that. As an example,
Tom Griggs 31:19
yeah, I mean, I’ve had the same equipment layout for years, and I’m not going to change it anytime soon. It suits my needs. I’m doing a lot of work on the computer at this point between writing and working with family archives and images that I produced years ago,
Matthew Dols 31:33
family archives. I’m fascinated. I had a death recently in my family. And so I’m very much into like family genealogy and looking through old photos and things like this. And I’m fascinated, because, Okay, I’m gonna say I’m fascinated, because I think it’s really amazing. Okay, I love looking at old family photos. And I know and I even have a collection of photos that I bought on like eBay and bought at yard sales and estate sales. I love old photos. And I keep thinking they’ll be a project I’ll do with it. And I never do it. Because I find them to be so precious, I don’t want to damage to them. And I’ve also seen a lot of projects where people do these things where they Oh, this is my family history, but and they’re generally not very good. Like, like, they just don’t push it far enough to make it really compelling, like and so like, and of course, there are so many people doing that these days that it’s like, what can I add new to that sort of vocabulary of working with, you know, old family photos? How do you feel about that?
Tom Griggs 32:41
Yeah, I mean, I was talking with my students the other day. And she doesn’t know that I’m currently working on a project family focused. And she’s said something like, Ah, you know, like, everyone around me is making the family projects, I can’t stand them. They’re all horrible. And it’s like, kind of what I’ve just invested the last year and going on. So sorry, if I insulted you.
Matthew Dols 33:05
I haven’t seen the project, it may be magnificent.
Tom Griggs 33:09
So that the last I guess not the last of the second, the last book that I published was called ghost guest. And it is the family story of a cousin of mine who disappeared in an airplane. And I think part of the way around, making it solid cystic and self indulgent. Not that I feel a need to defend that. I think that, you know, if you need to make a project like that you make it and whatever rationales you have for that have fun, but just in terms of connecting to a broader audience. I think two things. One is that that event, I think, serves as a conversation around freefall, a conversation around kind of losing yourself in the midst of your path, he flew into a store my cousin’s into a storm, and got spatially disoriented. And I think that idea of spatial disorientation is what the book is about and kind of losing yourself in the midst of your life in terms of path in terms of where you want to be how you want to get there. And so by trying to broaden the conversation, hopefully it moves out of squarely being a family conversation and into questions. I think a lot of people feel especially within the arts of like questioning your path, trying to see if like this is viable, and trying to give it a little bit more traction. It’s also an image text project. So the text also, I think, tries to forward conversations of culture, technology context, in place this specific event within those contexts. And then the project that I’m currently working on, similarly as image and text and tries to address questions of the overlap between living with mental illness, religion and identity and it’s the story of my father kind of played out through family archives and Congress. So yeah, that’s my attempt to try to short circuit, that line of critique is to use the familiar to talk to the general, and to talk to a broader kind of trends. And I think experiences of living that a lot of people have in today and kind of contemporary context.
Matthew Dols 35:22
Okay, sorry, I was laughing. I apologize that I was laughing. But I was laughing because my father’s a minister. And we have mental illness in our family. So that’s why I’m sort of like, hey, that sounds really familiar.
Tom Griggs 35:34
My father is a minister, and we have mental illness in our family.
Matthew Dols 35:38
My father was Episcopal what was yours?
Tom Griggs 35:40
congregational. But yeah, I mean, the project is called man is a creature that obeys a creature that wants and that’ll be hopefully the next project that that I publish. And it takes on that those questions. I mean, like, how do you construct yourself? How is yourself constructed, and it draws upon my father’s kind of upbringing in the south, the dynamics with his parents, his movement from a Marxist to a minister, and trying to kind of decouple those threads and understand them and how they’re woven together to create a sense of self. And also a sense of crisis that he arrived to, in terms of some episodes of diagnosis, massive depression is the official diagnosis. So what is it about our society that has these incredible rates of depression, that’s how I try to abstract my father’s story into a conversation and hopefully more generally interesting. It’s like, you know, in the West, where as wealthy as we’ve ever been, we have as much opportunity as we could want, and not everyone, but generally speaking, compared with the rest of the world. And so why do we have the highest rates of suicide, the highest rates of depression? That’s the question I want to kind of look at through the lens of my father’s story. That’s my way of speaking about it with any authority, because to try to take it on abstractly, I think I feel a little bit anchor less in terms of how to approach it. So.
Matthew Dols 37:07
Okay, well, you brought up a really interesting thing that I have a interest in text and image, you mentioned that you’re sort of working to get me wrong. I’ve seen some amazing series of works done with text and image. I mean, I grew up with Fuck, what’s his name? Jim Goldberg, well, I’m raised with Wolves are raised by wolves. That kind of work, Dwayne Michaels, a bunch of the other sort of people that that genre in that time period. So I do appreciate it. But I find sometimes it’s a bit difficult. But also along with that, like you say that you do writing so that you are sort of an author of some sort. So the whole nature of sort of working text and image I find is a very difficult thing to do. Because a lot of people will say, Well, why didn’t you put the text in the photos? or Why did you even add the photos? If you could just say it all in text? So it’s a very difficult balance to find that right amount of quality images with quality text, that doesn’t make it so that you could have put one into the other?
Tom Griggs 38:16
Yeah, that’s that’s the case. I think I feel I mean, photography, for me, is a poetic way of speaking. I don’t think it speaks to concrete issues very well. I mean, I think that’s a long, long standing conversation photography, going back to szarkowski. He’s kind of denial that Margaret Bork, white could create some photo essay at the end of World War Two that would have any coherence or meaning. Because revolving also, another project around a Spanish village. I think those were kind of projects that he just kind of dismissed as having any documentary authority. And I think there’s been a long kind of understanding that more long conversation around the limits of photography to speak concretely. And I think the questions that I’m interested in, have brought text into the process, because that’s the way I think I can get them answered. So unlike maybe a lot of photographers, I don’t have a way of making images and I have my own way of making work. I think I begin with questions and curiosities, that lead themselves to an aesthetic response. And so each of my books is fairly distinct. In terms of the superficial kind of glance at the book like they’re, they’re just very different. I think there may be some more commonalities at a deeper level between them. But they end up looking quite different because for me, it’s a logic that stems from the the initial questions behind the work, so the text allows a more direct line assault on those curiosities and questions and the photographs for me, at least within the last couple of projects, create atmosphere and texture and To kind of circle back to your very first question besides my name, my dad is one of the most avid readers I’ve ever met. Like, he’s that guy in the supermarket line with like a dog eared paperback in his back pocket. And he pulls it out when he’s got five minutes. And he’s also written a couple memoirs about his experience living with mental illness. And then on the other side, my mom was an amateur photographer is an amateur photographer, amateur in the sense of being serious about it, and showing works in like coffee shops, hospital hallways, her brother was also quite interested in photography and their father, my grandfather, you know, that guy always taking pictures on family trips, and always making family videos and every picture of him from the 70s 80s and 90s. He’s got a video camera in his hand. And I hated it. I remember being a kid and barreling down the stairs for my Christmas presents and my grandpa making us walk all the way back upstairs and redoing it and recreating it. So he can take his video. And there’s that side also. And so the tech side for my dad and the the photo side from my mom, I think makes sense for me like it feels like I’m this is actually a recent insight of mine into my own practice, like understanding that there’s a connection to that. And I’m also actually going through this period of really being interested in family photographs really be interested in genealogy, they kept getting to that age. And part of that experience, I think, is realizing that some of the things in my life that felt that they’d grown out of my own personal experiences, apart from my family are actually deeply embedded in the roots of family and in the place I grew up in. And that idea of combining writing and text as part of it. To go back to the original question. I think that for me, there’s a balance there, that’s hard to strike. I think it’s hard to let the photographs not just be illustrative because the text draws attention so strongly, I think the response of a lot of people is to cut text down. You know, if you look at the winners of the photo, text all award, they tend to be books with incredible the short amount of text, I think in part just because of the nature of jury systems, if you want to go back to juries, we can talk a little bit more about this, but you give jurors 200, photo, text books to review in two days, they’re not going to get deeply involved in your novella with some photographs, they’re going to tend to choose books that have 20 words total, in 60 photographs, and that is the book that they’ll actually, you know, give some attention to just by the nature of these of the spaces of time they’re given to review on a lot of material. Don’t get me wrong,
Matthew Dols 42:53
I am no way being critical of your work. I just want to be clear, I’m just being like, okay, let’s give me out. Let me give you a backstory shot. When I was at the Corcoran in my undergrad, I remember putting up a set of work. And I put up these images and they were these like ethereal, like universal images like oh, everybody will understand. And then I put some text with it. And my teacher, just chastise me to no end say, using text in that way is a crutch, because I didn’t put the work into putting the story in the photo. Now, don’t get me wrong. In hindsight, he was completely right at the time, I was furious. But he was completely right in hindsight. And I had the chance to apologize to him to about a decade later when I saw him again. And then I also had an even in my own master’s thesis, I did text and images. So like I understand this process and I pained over the balance of like, trying to find the right. Quality is a visceral emotive expression of an image to combine with a piece of text. And it’s incredibly difficult to do that. Well, I have seen many people do it mediocre. I’ve seen a few people do it phenomenally. But I don’t know what that trick is that makes it so that it really works. Well. Do you know?
Tom Griggs 44:26
So first, I didn’t. I didn’t take it as criticism or just, I don’t want to be led by the question to deny some parts of my work or you know, just be upfront that it’s it is what it is about. And these are questions I’m interested in. And no, I don’t know what it’s about, in part because I don’t think there’s a formulaic answer I could provide I wish I could for all this news, just kind of lay out the five steps for making great image text projects, but
Matthew Dols 44:52
I’m looking for an Excel spreadsheet with a step by step process. That’s what I want. like nobody seems to be able to give it to me
Tom Griggs 45:00
I can tell you that magic in a bottle for $100, you want to send it over
Matthew Dols 45:05
to people online that try to sell those things. Yes.
Tom Griggs 45:09
Yeah. I think again, the structure of the project kind of demands a balance between text and image, I think there’s some that just by the story they want to tell, need to be a little more tech savvy. And there are others that need just a little bit of guidance from text. And that the image is really what dominates. I mean, I see it a little bit, maybe like two sides have reins of a horse or something where it’s like you pull too hard on the text, and you kind of go off in a direction, you don’t want to pull it too hard on the image, it goes another way. And so there’s a balancing point. But the harder question is like the balancing point changes based on the project and what it needs to be. And understanding that I think is baked into the process of making the work and spending a lot of time with it. My last couple projects have been fairly text heavy, because they’re quite narrative in their scope. And so images are there, but they try to be a second line a parallel, not duplicating information, but kind of reinforcing mood, reinforcing a sense of space where the book is happening with him. But trying not to just simply illustrate or simply duplicate material that’s already in the text itself. And for me, I think that balancing point generally has to do with that question of resonance between image and text, and trying not to illustrator duplicate content.
Matthew Dols 46:43
Okay. Now, I’m also interested, how do you come up with your projects,
Tom Griggs 46:48
I have a Word document, which I put ideas in. And I’ve got enough project ideas for two lifetimes. 90% of them are horrible ideas, but they’re all there. Every once in a while I go through and edit it down. I mean, one of the things about photography, going back to my origins in painting is painting, just by the time required from making every individual object, it’s hard to juggle between different projects at once. Whereas with photography, you can have a number of things bubbling up at once. And I tend to work on like a front burner, back burner project system where I’ve got like one or two that are front burner, and that I’m actively like, putting time and effort into but a couple in the back burner, too that are there. I mean, if I kind of run into a place where I need to step away from a project and come back to it with fresh eyes to be able to see what else it needs, I’ll move it to the backburner and pull something up to the front burner. And that’s helpful. Also, because there are a lot of things that’s the I’m looking through old photographs for a project. If I have a couple of things going at once I can look for photographs for two or three projects at once. And I think it’s a more efficient process then doing that every time I sit down and work on something new, to bring back probably an overused idea of how photographers work, I kind of think of ourselves as as fishermen and architect, architects that like to have a full blueprint before they’re gonna make a project they want to know they investigate, they do the reading, I’m not that type of photographer, I’m much more of the fisherman that makes a lot of images, and afterwards looks at what I catch, and where the threads where the connections, how do you make something from those materials, and I’ve moved farther along in my career, I cast that net more widely. So not only is it my own archives and photographs I make, but it also includes family photographs, media, images, things I find online, and now text, it’s all part of what gets cotton at that net, and then seeing how it combines is really what I do is a an artist and I think maybe what a lot of people are doing now, which has a lot more to do with the photographer’s editor and less of the photographers photographer.
Matthew Dols 49:04
Well that’s the sort of ask is like, I feel like with the amount of exposure that I have to the sheer volume of photography in the world right now I feel like to a certain extent like I don’t know what I can add new to it so that it’s a really like the social media, Instagram, all these kinds of Facebook, all these things has made it so like I don’t know what else I can offer in that specific finite realm of creating images for whatever reason. So like, I kind of walked away from it. As I said, I don’t own a camera and I do different styles of work because I it’s I feel bad saying like it’s too easy, but it’s not it’s too easy. It’s too prevalent. There’s there are so many photographers in the world, already making beautiful images. I don’t know what I can ask. Add to that.
Tom Griggs 50:00
I agree with that. And I think a lot of photographers are coming around to that idea that, you know, if you think of images, like a word or like a phrase, there’s so many words and phrases out there that we can put together to tell a story. And the need isn’t, for more new words, the need is for somebody to go in and work with these materials and give them form and insignificance and structure. I think I mean, I make new images, I like the act actually went out last night on my bike and went back to this place I’d seen the other day and made some photographs. But it’s less and less a part of the practice that I show, maybe beyond Instagram, just for fun, like I don’t have any new project ideas that revolve around the idea of creating new photographs, I have a long standing body of work of medium format photographs and meta gene that we’ll see the light of day as a book later this year. And I’ll continue to shoot for that when I go back there next month. But I think once that project is closed, that might be the last that I do in that mode of making work, again, to return to the idea that questions lead to decisions about technique and cameras and aesthetics, maybe there’ll be some things that I get interested in the future that need new images made. But generally, that’s not where I’m at. And part of that idea of as you’re saying, I think there’s it is an era where there’s an incredible amount of good photography being made a lot of incredible photo books. And so I don’t think that what I need to do is to be creating more images in that style right now. It’s just not where my interest is. I think what I’m interested in is more the editing side of, of making, okay, you
Matthew Dols 51:48
brought it up a couple times, book publishing. I mean, you have books, I don’t have books. So right off the bat, I’m envious. You have a book, I want to book me, every photographer wants to have a book of their work. So how did that come about? Did you pitch it? I mean, I saw that you won some awards for it at one point like the dummy awards. So like, Did that help? Do that introduce you to people like So what was the process for you of like? Did you make a book and then submit it to somebody? Or did somebody come to you and say, Hey, would you like to make a book? And then you came up with something like, how did that work for you?
Tom Griggs 52:24
So the way that it happened for me is that I’m worked with a press on the first several books that I did is the same press. So it’s all revolving around the same people. This later this year, I’ll be publishing with a new press. And it’s been a different experience. But the back story is, I started working on ghost guests with my collaborator poliquin toski. And we started shopping it like a lot of people do. By sending it to friends of friends contacts in the publishing world. This is going back to the idea of social capital and just having somebody that’s willing to pass your PDF along. We had an agreement to publish it with the European press. And the guy essentially ghosted us and disappeared at certain point. So we went back to the drawing board, and I was at a book, fair and metazine, and started talking with the guy, one web as of a press called Mesa standard, which is a magazine based press that focus mostly mostly on architectural and graphic design books, and one that he is a graphic designer and his partner, Miguel Mesa has an architectural background. And they were interested in beginning a line of photo books. And so we had a meeting, you know, I’ve met them at this book fair, we had a meeting where I showed them the work that became ghost guest. And I also showed them some other work of mine for context. It’s give them a sense of myself as an artist. And I came back a week later, and they said, you know, we’d like to do ghost guests. And actually looking at your other work that you showed us for context, we have a second book we want to put together which is called add flinty from this work. And so those two initial books came out of a book, fair introduction, and a little bit right place right time after having sent the book out to a lot of European and us presses and having it be selected, as you’re saying, as an award winner is a book dummy, but still is, you know, not getting published. And so we went with this press in Colombia, and it had a lot of advantages on the financial side, it was relatively cheap to produce, I think it’s probably 90% of the quality for 20% of the price, something like that friends that have put 10s of 1000s of dollars in the photo books and video went out and put any money in those guests, Paul and I put in a little bit of money and we’re given a large cut of the run to sell them. Get the money back, which we’ve essentially done. So I think in terms of publishing, people should look beyond the first string of ideas you have, which would tend to be the bigger name, US and European presses, there are a lot of presses out there in the world that will reduce your financial burden, or eliminate it completely. And so I then did a third book with them called punto de vista, which is a little bit less my book a little bit more collaboration in the sense that they use my photographs and metazine as a departure to invite I think there’s about 45 writers. And they are everyone from Hector ladva Chilean, say, who’s a well known Colombian writer to poets who graduated from the University yesterday to biologists to a little bit of everybody from the city of metazine, to select one of the photograph to respond to and talk about the city through my work. So I didn’t do much beyond just kind of handing them the files. And that is the kind of story of getting those books published. And then the book I have coming out later this year, which I don’t think it’s been announced, I probably shouldn’t talk too much on the specifics is with a New York based press
Matthew Dols 56:10
exclusive here.
Tom Griggs 56:13
Yeah,
Matthew Dols 56:13
it’s, it’s hard to,
Tom Griggs 56:15
yeah, I know, it sounds, I know how that sounds, and then try not to sign away. But I just don’t know if if the police should be interested in that information to hear yet. But that just came from when I left graduate school had a show in a as part of a group show in Brooklyn, and the publisher, has been somebody I’ve had as a contact since then. And I started just kind of showing him the work, you need to ask for seeing more work, and eventually got the invitation to publish with him. So I think like a lot of I’m trying to like move back a little bit from specifics on the questions now to see if I can incorporate some of my broader ideas before we end. One of them would be that, you know, see if you can find a side door and not necessarily stand in line at the front door with a lot of these questions about portfolio reviews and career decisions. I think most of the things that have happened to me in my so called photography career have been genuine friendships, people that I’ve met, keeping in contact with people looking for, I think one of the better friendships and connections I have in photography happened because I started talking with the wife of a well known photographer at a gallery opening. And at a certain point, she was like, Oh, yeah, you should come and have coffee tomorrow. And that became a friendship, which I really value. And so rather than standing in line with 50, people waiting for the photographer’s autograph, I just ended up talking with his wife on the side, and it became a friendship. And, you know, I think that’s the way things happen. I think people will see very transparently your your motives with things if you approach people trying to figure out what you can get from them. It’s not or like trying to get yourself ahead, that’s not necessarily going to end where you want it. And I think one point of mine, I think, generally would be, yeah, look, look for the side door, instead of standing in line in front door. And another one would be maybe a little bit, the reverse of what you would think which would be, rather than trying to figure out how you can get things from people see what you can offer them. And I think that was part of I backed into that idea a little bit with photo tazo, where I started as an NGO and for trying to help some students out with some gear. But by I think, kind of opening a space for photographers to be interviewed a little bit like we’re doing now and kind of providing the space for community and for things to happen. It ended up creating a lot of context. And a lot of things that have happened to me subsequently have been because, you know, I interviewed photographer, and they happen to live in a city where I am a lot and so get to meet people or sit down in real life for coffee or a beer. And then the next time you’re in town, the friendship grows. And so by kind of offering the initial space to like, showcase other people’s work, it’s actually provided friendships that have eventually offered me opportunities as well. That’s my
Matthew Dols 59:19
hope through this podcast. Friends,
Tom Griggs 59:23
I don’t know why he invited me I’m not sure what I can offer you, but I’m happy to do so if I can.
Matthew Dols 59:28
I don’t have a lot of friends. So
Tom Griggs 59:32
we’re just gonna tack on one of my other. My third and last big idea here is that it’s connected to this last point I was making. The art scene is complicated. It’s fairly cliquish. It’s fairly built in words. You go to these events, it feels like a big High School. There’s a popular group, the not popular group, that people are invited to after party that people that aren’t and I think what I want to say along those lines is like not to turn people away. From the art scene, I think there are great people, it’s just the scene that is complicated. Rather than trying to push people away from the art scene, I think I want to push people back towards their art and like, make the work solid, make it really good, you know, stay out of the spotlight earlier in your career as long as you can. So you can fully kind of develop your work. I think one of the worst things I see happen to my students is them getting attention earlier in their career. And all of a sudden, they’re trying to placate dealers, curators, they feel like you know, you get a pat on the back, what do you do, you start trying to get that pat on the back again. So you start making the same work the same work, the same work. And so trying to go back to your work and like, make that as strong as you can before you take that step out. And start developing those kind of side door friendships and connections, offering a space maybe to a community contributing to the community and letting that lead you forwards is kind of my summation of how I would advise younger photographers to move forwards.
Matthew Dols 1:01:04
I love that you offered advice before me even asking the question of advice, which is what I do. It’s great.
Tom Griggs 1:01:10
I’ve listened to a few of your podcasts. So I might see love reading. I
Matthew Dols 1:01:12
appreciate this. Fabulous. Okay, but there’s one last question, we put a pin in like the whole jurying process. Was there anything more you wanted to sort of say about that process?
Tom Griggs 1:01:24
Yeah, I mean, we talked a little bit, I guess, how I got involved, but not so much in the nuts and bolts of applying. So let’s get into that. Maybe you give some specific advice to your listeners. I think that statements are good. Very short, I think especially, you know, even for photo lucid, I’m looking at 200 portfolios. And I think, you know, the recommended time for reviewing is something like, I don’t know, it’s something like six hours, maybe or even less, maybe four hours. And so if you write an essay, I’m just not able to wait,
Matthew Dols 1:02:00
wait, you’re to look through 200 portfolios in four hours,
Tom Griggs 1:02:06
something like that, then there’s no time that they I mean, there’s not a clock on that they put but in the instructions for jurors, they give that guideline, at least I used to I haven’t looked at it for a few years now. But I think what they’re doing there is trying to be respectful of the jurors time and give some sort of a guideline for how they’re going to get through 200 portfolios without taking up two weeks of their professional life. And so they kind of make a loose recommendation. And so if there’s an essay for artist statement, it’s just, I mean, you open it, you click on it, just like, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of reading that I need to do. And so I think the To be honest, I think general processes, look at the work. First, the first images should be solid, probably the best images you have tried to shuffle in the less strong images towards the middle to the latter part and then end strong as well. Because I think what happens if you’re looking at hundreds of portfolios, you click on three images, if they’re not good, you just you’re not gonna look at the next seven, you already, your mind starts to form conclusions. I would move away from the sort of kind of sophisticated build ups that you might find in your photo book MACAT, the kind of subtle gestures at the beginning to get to some crescendo? No, hit them up at the beginning with the strongest stuff, visually impactful subtlety and grace tends to get lost. And then a short statement. I think that’s kind of what I see do well in these competitions. What about titles, titles for specific images? Yes, close to useless in terms of like, I mean, again, there’s levels. So I think that’s in a broader sense. And then I think as you start to get to your portfolio that you’re really considering making the cut for next round, then yeah, you’re gonna maybe read some for longer statements, look at titles. But that only comes in for I would say, a smaller percentage, it’s just too much material, jurors are generally asked for way too much to 200 is actually not a lot compared. There’s another one that I was on that I think they gave us 400 portfolios to go through. And the general expectation was to give them enough time to understand them and judge them and that’s a long time. And so, you start making shortcuts, even if you don’t want to, and the shortcuts are, yeah, look at the first few images, they’re not great. You move on, you open a statement it seven paragraphs, you’re not gonna read the whole thing. You read the first few sentences, titles and images not necessary. And I hate to be cynical about things but that’s how it works.
Matthew Dols 1:04:45
Okay. Photographers, I find that they fall into one of two realms, oftentimes they’re very pompous with their artist statements like you know like Friday and Conti and mythology, Greek whatever bullshit or they fall Or I shouldn’t say there’s three. The second one would be the very technical, they’re like this was shot with a Hasselblad, in the late afternoon during the sunset, I would like you just like super super technically, at this aperture on the shutter speed with this ISO like Who the fuck cares, or they’re actually really good at it. And the problem is that like, there’s no quantifiable again, like no Excel spreadsheet that can give me a step by step thing of how to write a good artist statement because every project is unique and every project needs its own thing, but like, you want to be engaged. But that’s the hardest thing to do is to because I mean, everybody’s attention span is so short, I mean, when it comes to like jurying, like you’re trying to go through so many things so quickly, you need something to capture their their attention, which is really hard to do these days.
Tom Griggs 1:05:53
As far as artists statements, I think the recipe is actually kind of simple, they should be short. And they should leave the reader with more excitement to see the work after they’ve read it than they had it before. Which is to say, Don’t explain the work. Don’t say everything, it’s about, you know, charge the air a little bit with some ideas, a little bit of electricity there. Don’t tell me about your lenses. Don’t tell me about Kant. lay it out from a personal perspective, and lead me in like a little bit of a kind of prologue or a foreshadowing and get me excited about the work. And I think heavy handed syncs the ship real quick. And on the other hand, I think really flipping doesn’t work either. I remember looking at portfolios, actually a photographer that I know. And she’s a great photographer, but as I got the work as a juror just kind of looked at the statement is trying to be cute and funny and just kind of undercut everything and it didn’t. It didn’t resonate well. And although she’s a really good photographer actually didn’t make the cut. And I think actually the the statement in that case may have had something to do with it. I find that humor almost never translates because you’re also talking cross culturally cross generationally cross gender, there’s so many ways that any attempt at humor can easily miss the mark. Yeah, I mean, most viewers are pretty tone deaf to the humor, I think, in part because it’s just written on a page. And you, you know, this person I’m mentioning is quirky and fun and great. But it doesn’t translate as an art artist statement. It just wasn’t a good step for the work or a good introduction. It just made it feel like the artist wasn’t taking themselves or the work seriously. And so why should the juror take it seriously? So yeah, I would agree with that, for sure. The humor is not, doesn’t work.
Matthew Dols 1:07:51
Can you give me three artists that are out in the world right now that you admire or respect that you think that maybe people should pay a little bit more attention to?
Tom Griggs 1:08:01
So the first thing I would say is kind of a response is to steal a line from Paul quite hausky, my collaborator and ghost guests, somebody asked him, you know, given that he’s a photographer and writer, like I’m a photographer and writer, so which is your first love photography, your writing, and his response was reading. And so I think that’s kind of my take on this. I’m going to give you one photographer, but also to writers. I’m not a guy that watches a lot of YouTube lectures by other photographers. I’m not a guy who reads, you know, old art history essays from pulled from 70s apertures, I’m more kind of the person that’s interested in movies and literature and whatever else I can get my hands on music. So there’s a Colombian photographer named Juanita Escalade. And she’s fantastic. She’s a photographer that works a lot in those journals from in eastern Colombia, and has lived out there for a very long time and photographs. The life there, which is a very particular culture. It’s a little bit like the cowboy world. And she’s a very strong photographer. I’m bad with book titles. She has a new book out that I can’t remember the title of. And then her book before that was called general. And it was published by a press in Peru. And I’m actually not sure if it’s pronounced Kay wy or quiet, like if you actually pronounce the letters, but both books are great. And she’s amazing photographer. The second recommendation, I’m gonna go with two Colombian writers. The first is Hector Abad Fletcher lien, say that I mentioned earlier and he has a book that’s translated into English as oblivion. And it is a book about a father son relationship, but it’s also just the look into kind of the devastation of a society through narco wars in the culture of metazine in the 70s and 80s. And it is a fantastic ride. And I think for somebody interested in doing family type projects and looking how texts can illuminate relationships within a family, I mean, it’s one of the best books I know. And the last is just a writer who tells great stories that you can read in 1000 page book and wish there was more. And that is a little booties and he has a book. Again, I’m bad with titles, but it’s, I believe the adventures and misadventures of mackerel, in English. And it’s a very long book, but it’s fantastic. When I have conversations with friends in Colombia, they asked me about favorite Colombian writers. I always say I like movies more than I like Garcia Marquez, which always raises eyebrows or, you know, gets the gloves thrown on the ground in a challenge to a duel based on what depending on who I’m talking about. But booties is my favorite Colombian writer. That book in particular, has a lot of laugh out loud moments. It’s a profound insight into Colombian culture. And it’s the type of book you just fall into and wish that there was more after 1000 pages.
Matthew Dols 1:11:07
Marvelous. Well, thank you very much for your time.
Tom Griggs 1:11:09
Thanks for the invitation.
Matthew Dols 1:11:14
I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. If you enjoy this podcast, we would appreciate a five star rating and a nice comment would be greatly appreciated. Please also tell your friends to listen and subscribe. You can listen and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there’s a professional in the art world that you admire or respect and that you’d like to hear me have a conversation with please send me a message through Instagram and I will do everything in my power to get them as a guest on the podcast. Additionally, if you have any specific questions for future guests, like you want to know more about certificates of authenticity art fairs or how the social media algorithm works. Send me those questions and I will ask the appropriate future guests for
Tom Griggs 1:12:01
you.
Matthew Dols 1:12:03
Please be sure to follow us on Instagram and tell your friends as well. In the near future, we will be starting a newsletter that we will be sending out not sure how frequently but we will simply sign up for that on our website wise for pod.com. And no matter what you’re doing right now. Try to have fun doing it.
The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14. I am your host Matthew Dols – http://www.matthewdols.com And the audio for this episode was edited by Jakub Černý. The Wise Fool is supported in part by an EEA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in an effort to work together for a green competitive and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners Hunt Kastner – http://huntkastner.com in Prague, Czech Republic and Kunstsentrene i Norge – https://www.kunstsentrene.no in Norway. Links to EEA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes or on our website https://wisefoolpod.com