The Generosity of Persistence, with Amy Touchette and Larry Fink: The B&H Photography Podcast

03/03/2022

On today’s episode of the B&H Photography Podcast, we talk to an old friend about a new book―two-time past guest Amy Touchette joins us to discuss her book of street portraits. She also brings a friend with her, none other than photographer Larry Fink. Is it fair to call Fink a photo legend? We think so, and clearly the people at the Center for Creative Photography seem to think so, because they just acquired his complete archive of work, including images from the 1950s to the present, from his acclaimed series “The Beats,” “Social Graces,” “The Vanities,” and others.

While this is a roundtable conversation, we start with a few questions about Touchette’s book Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, which she shot over the course of summer strolls through her New York neighborhood. We learn why she started photography in 2001, about her working process with a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex film camera, and why her personal interaction with her subjects/collaborators is paramount to her photography practice. We also talk about crowdsourcing, editorial collaboration, and why Fink wrote the foreword for Touchette’s book.

Larry Fink’s sixty years of photography work is well-recognized, but his harmonica playing, less so. We hope to remedy that with this episode, but while at it, we learn how he created an extensive archive of vintage prints and “hustled” to find a home for his life’s work. We learn of his Mamiya medium format camera with bellows, his preferred photo paper, and mull on the difference between our two guests’ aesthetic style. We also talk about insider vs. outsider perspective, about the nature of portraiture, and the “revelatory excitement that defies the logic of what a frame could be.”

Join us for this playful yet insightful conversation and have a look at this link for portraiture and WPPI-related specials.

Guests: Amy Touchette and Larry Fink

Above photograph © Amy Touchette