Photo Midwest Festival organizer Andy Adams on Max Ink Radio

Let's talk about some photography here and Andy Adams, it's a pretty cool interview

we're about to play here.

Well, thank you.

That's, I really enjoy talking with Andy.

He is in charge of the Photo Midwest Festival, 2024.

It kicks off this coming weekend Friday night and it's at this fairly new space and he'll

tell us about this space too.

But it's the arts and literature laboratory at 1-11 South Livingston Street in Madison

bonus programs, though, not just this weekend.

They're going to be doing things photography easy for me to say today, wow, photography

related throughout the rest of the year, which is going to be so amazing for photographers

or if you want to be a photographer.

Well, let's check it out, Photo Midwest Festival, Terry Barr with the interview.

I'd love to welcome to the show now, Andy Adams of Flax Photo.

And Andy is part of this very cool Photo Midwest Festival that is launching in the next weekend.

He's here to tell us all about it.

Andy, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me, Terry.

How are you doing?

I am doing well, so happy to be able to talk with you about this.

But I guess for anybody that hasn't heard of it, what is the Photo Midwest Festival?

Photo Midwest is a Dean County-based photography organization that has been producing

photography activities in the area for more than 20 years.

Core program that they've been doing, a juried Biennial exhibition.

And the way that works is that they bring in a national juror to Madison,

to jury works into a big exhibition featuring photographers from across the American Midwest.

And I decided to partner with the Photo Midwest team as well as another local arts organization,

the Arts and Literature Laboratory, to not only stage this year's Biennial exhibition

here downtown in Madison at the Arts and Literature Laboratory,

but to expand on the program and to do two additional exhibits in addition to the jury show,

and then also a series of artist talks, a documentary film series, and a couple of other programs.

So yeah, it's very exciting.

It's happening here in Madison next weekend, Friday September 27th and Saturday September 28th,

and all of the activities are free and open to the public.

It sounds like it's going to be obviously an exhibition.

So this is good on both sides, is what I guess I'm asking.

People that can come in and can enjoy this beautiful art and photography,

but at the same time, photographers and artists are getting a chance to share their work.

What kind of feeling do you want people to get?

And what can they expect when they come to the festival?

Oftentimes one assumes it's only for people who identify as photographers,

and certainly that's the case.

You know, for example, on Saturday morning, we're going to start the day off with

a professional practices workshop for photographers and artists,

but we're actually thinking much broader than that,

and we're actually, we've designed a program that is for really anyone who appreciates looking at,

thinking about, talking about, experiencing photography.

And so really our goal is to bring as many people as possible downtown into the doors

of the arts and literature laboratory to look at printed photography on the walls,

and to hear artists talk about their work together,

and above all, to cultivate that community experience,

you know, the connections between the artists themselves,

and those in the public who simply want to learn more about the pictures

that these photographers are making.

And I know you mentioned it's free and open to all,

so that's another, I would say, highlight for anybody that might have interest

in coming by to see what is happening there.

Is there somebody particular that you think really needs to come to this?

Honestly, anyone who fancies themselves interested in the arts generally should come on down.

I mean, for one thing, we're hosting this event inside of a relatively new downtown art space.

The arts and literature laboratory shorthand we call it the art lit lab.

And the art lit lab is exciting because it's sort of under the radar opened up over the pandemic,

and has we've just been sort of steadily organizing exhibitions, programs.

The space itself is pretty fascinating because we do a lot more than just art exhibitions.

There are lectures, there are live music performances,

there are literary events, there are workshops, educational classes,

children's programming, all kinds of exciting things.

So at the high level, we just want folks to come downtown and come and experience

the breadth and depth of activities that can happen here in this new space,

and this very new, rapidly developing part of Madison,

the capital east corridor, just on East Washington Avenue,

just the slightly east of the capital.

But specifically, we're very excited for folks to come to town who might be

even moderately interested in photography, just to learn more about it.

We're really thinking about this festival weekend as the launch and the kickoff of a much bigger

program that we're going to continue to expand after fall of 2024.

And so what we're going to continue to do is to host events that will be for the public

that are focused on photography exhibitions and looking at prints, artists, talks.

And then we're also launching a documentary film series this fall.

So we've got three films screenings coming up in October, November,

and December, specifically focused on photography films.

Terrific. I am talking with Andy Adams.

Andy has Flax Photo, but he right now is organizing the Photo Midwest Festival.

Now when we say Midwest, I saw a list of some of the people involved.

They're coming from all over.

Yeah, you know, it's a good question because depending who you ask,

I think that the Midwest is composed of, I don't know, either 12 or 13 states.

I think there might be some, there might be some, some disagreement on whether or not you're

supposed to include Kentucky in the Midwest. Right.

But but but the Photo Midwest, 13th Biennial exhibition in particular is very much focused on

showcasing talent from across this part of the country.

And this is something that I think is really important because for those of us that are involved

in and followed up photography scene nationally and internationally, you know,

the cities that get the most attention are in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London,

right. These these major global centers and too often I think that the American Midwest gets

overlooked. And in fact, there's just an enormous amount of talent and you know,

this is a wonderful place to live and to be creative and to make a life.

And and and what this is about is really showcasing and shining a light on on those those

image makers and artists who are who are practicing photography here.

That'll be exciting. And then in addition to that, we're also bringing two photographers in

Simaticin from the region. The Anadakman is coming up from Kansas City to talk about some black

and white family photography work of hers and and Kelly Connell is coming in from Chicago.

Kelly teaches at Columbia College and she has recently released a book with aperture foundation.

And so the other kind of exciting angle about all of our artists talks that we're doing on Saturday

September 28th is that each of those lectures is peg to recently published photography book.

So those artists will be yeah, those artists will be specifically talking about their photography

generally their personal work, but then also the work that they published in these books and

each of these artists will be bringing books with them. So we're going to be having

signings after each of the lectures on on the 28th. So that's very exciting to them.

Very, very good. Congratulations. This is really like an amazing opportunity both for the artists

and for anyone with interest in photography, as you had mentioned. Is there anything about

photography that still surprises you? That's a good question. You know, something I find myself

thinking about a lot. I think photography is probably more popular in 2024 than it's ever been in

a history of the medium. You know, the thing about it though is that most of us I think don't really

think about the fact that for the most part we experience photography on our screens and most

of us experience photography on a very small screen, our smartphone screen, right? With Instagram

and social media and news feeds and things like this. And what I'm particularly excited about

and one of the animating factors behind this festival program is to bring people offline together,

right? To look at photography in person, but specifically really to celebrate the art and

craft of printed photography. So for example, another exhibition that we're that we're opening

for the festival is something called the black photo Midwest black file. And what that is is the

inaugural launch of a new program that we're developing with our live lab, a fly file collection.

So that's a show I've curated. There are 10 photographers from around the Midwest. And it's a

print show focused on various kinds of photography printed techniques. And then in addition to that,

we're launching a collector program. And we're going to have, I think, 50, we'll have 50 prints

for people to come in and browse when they come down for the festival weekend. They'll be

available for purchase. And so a really a really core component of this is taking photography off

flying and really like celebrating, you know, the thickness of photography, the physical

artisanal quality in photographic print making. And not to mention just looking at it and talking

about it together, which I think is kind of a rare thing these days, you know, coming off the

internet and looking at things in the same room together. It's it shouldn't be as rare as it is,

but that's something that we're really hoping to build down here with this program.

So often you do see people looking at other people's photos on their phone because, you know,

you don't print as often as you used to and it was so exciting when somebody would get their

photos back from wherever and you'd gather around the table and look at everybody's photos.

I have a feeling that that's what this is going to bring out and why I think it might get people

excited about seeing photos as you're saying offline. Our goal has been to flood the city with

photography this fall. And I'm very happy to say that we've done that. The exhibitions opened

last week and they will be on view through November 9th. In addition to the festival weekend,

we have a lot of other programming lineup. We've got a day of photography lectures coming up

in collaboration with the Wisconsin Book Festival on October 19th. And then I also mentioned that we're

launching a documentary film series and we'll have those screenings downtown at Art Lit Lab in

October, November and December. So there's just lots of activities going on. You can see the full

schedule on the Art Lit Lab website at artlitlab.org. And then I'll be actually writing about it in

my photography newsletter, which you can find at quadproto.news. Lots of exciting things happening

here in Madison. And we're very, very excited for people to hear about them. I'm so excited for you.

Congratulations. And again, and with Flax Photo telling us all about the photo Midwest festivals of

September 27th and 28th is the kickoff at arts and literature laboratory downtown Madison. And

thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Terry.