Virtual Memories Show 617:
Benjamin Swett
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“You’re looking through a camera at the world and the camera is helping you to see outside yourself better.”
With The Picture Not Taken: On Life and Photography (NYRB), Benjamin Swett brings us a subtly beautiful series of essays that explore memory and identity and what we really see in the viewfinder. We talk about the role of photography in his life, how Musil, Sebald, and Knausgaard and taught him to trust digressions, the freedom to be found in the essay, how working in the NYC Parks Dept. led him into some strange career choices, and the challenge (& reward) of photographing trees. We get into our respective rebellions against our fathers and linearity, the loss of his daughter and how her shadow looms over the book, his idea for a negative-autobiography and my own photo-text project, how his family felt about being included in the essays, and the moment he felt comfortable moving from film to digital. We also discuss his 9/11 and what it revealed to him about himself, how the constraint of Instagram captions can lead to good storytelling, the ~30-year gap he took to finish his MFA, the benefits of leaning in to awkwardness and self-revelation, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read The Picture Not Taken!
“I have this feeling that when I combine photographs and text, it has to be autobiographical.”
“Reviewing the book, I think I found the self I was when I wrote the essays, but I also realized there was more, there were other ways of approaching things that I’d like to try again.
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Benjamin Swett is the author of Route 22 and New York City of Trees, which won the 2013 New York City Book Award for Photography. He teaches writing at the City College of New York and was named the Larry Lederman Photography Fellow at the New York Botanical Garden for 2024.
Follow Benjamin on Instagram.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Benjamin’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Nice photo of Benjamin by Harry Wilks; the one’s by me. It’s on my instagram.