Ep. 26 | Photography
In today's episode of the podcast, Kendra Winchester talks to photographers Raymond Thompson Jr and Julie Rae Powers.
Books Mentioned
Appalachian Ghost by Raymond Thompson Jr
The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser
The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster by Martin Cherniack
The Hawk’s Nest Tunnel: An Unabridged History by Patricia Spangler
Elegy by Dawoud Bey
The Afronauts by Cristina De Middel
Test of Faith: Signs, Serpents, Salvation by Lauren Pond
Guest Info
(c) Raymond Thompson Jr
Raymond Thompson Jr., assistant professor of photojournalism at University of Texas at Austin, is an artist, educator, and visual journalist. He holds an MFA in photography from West Virginia University and an MA in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, the Intercept, NBC News, NPR, Politico, ProPublica, the Nature Conservancy, the ACLU, WBEZ, Google, Merrell, and the Associated Press.
(c) Megan Leigh Barnard
Julie Rae Powers received their MFA in Photography from The Ohio State University and their BFA in Photography from James Madison University. Their photographic and written work has focused on family history, coal, Appalachia, the queer “female” gaze, the butch body, and queer chosen families. Their work is collected by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, have been awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2016 and 2020 and was selected in Critical Mass’ Top 200 for 2021. Julie Rae is a part of Y’all Means All: Queering Appalachian Voices edited by Z. Zane McNeil. Soft Lightning Studio, an inclusive photo book publisher created and ran by Julie Rae published The Home We Know by Ben Willis which was featured in the Washington Post and is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. Additionally, they are the author and editor of a forthcoming collection of Queer Appalachian photographers. For their day job they work as an Instructional Designer.
