The long story behind the image.
Open Curtain gives photographers and art workers room to trace how their lives became their work. The conversations move through childhood ambitions, first darkrooms, books, commissions, politics, grief, architecture, and the practical strain of sustaining an art practice.
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Open Curtain is a measured interview series about photography, art, and the practical life around creative work. Its conversations rarely rush toward a thesis. They begin with origin stories: what a guest wanted to be as a child, when a camera first felt useful, or how an early darkroom, class, city, job, book, or family circumstance redirected a life. From there, the episodes widen. Carolyn Drake reflects on editorial work, living abroad, returning to the United States, and making images in Water Valley, Mississippi, where craft traditions shaped the making of Knit Club. Janet Delaney moves from childhood dreams of architecture to street photography, South of Market, gentrification, Central America, and politically engaged work. Mimi Plumb remembers moving from the frustration of poetry into the physical pleasure of black-and-white photography. Kim Holtermand connects architectural image-making, Instagram curation, black-and-white nostalgia, and his work as a fingerprint expert in the Danish police. Bryan Schutmaat talks about photography, books, print sales, assignments, poetry, and the detective-like act of finding something charged in the world. Efrem Zelony-Mindell brings a curator, writer, and artist’s view of the art world, jobs, relationships, and book editing. Rahim Fortune’s episode reaches into family illness, grief, therapy, magazine work, West Texas, the El Paso and Juarez border, and immigration. The show’s strength is its willingness to let guests think in real time. It listens for process, but also for pressure. Money matters here. So do place, politics, family, technology, and the strange emotional residue of making pictures from real life. Open Curtain is best for listeners who already care about images and want the human scaffolding behind them: the hesitations, detours, influences, and compromises that sit behind a finished body of work.
Made for: For photographers, visual artists, editors, curators, and patient listeners who care about how creative careers are actually formed. It especially suits people interested in process, bookmaking, documentary work, and the lived costs of sustaining art.
What sets it apart: Open Curtain stays close to the personal and practical texture of art-making instead of reducing guests to career highlights. Its interviews leave space for memory, uncertainty, politics, money, grief, and place to shape the conversation.
In this podcast, I will be speaking with rising and popular photographers about their process and journey of turning their art into a sustainable career.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Open Curtain shows how photographers build bodies of work while negotiating commissions, personal history, place, and the economics of an artistic career.
Open Curtain follows working photographers from early ambitions into the practical and personal decisions behind a sustained creative life. Carter Johnston keeps the interviews grounded in process, asking how commissions, print sales, personal projects, and other work shape what…
A contact sheet meets a balance sheet, and you get the honest mess of making photography pay.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded conversation about making photographs, making a living, and letting place shape the work.
Carolyn Drake's conversation follows the uneven reality of a photographic career with clarity, moving from editorial work and time in Istanbul to the harder business of making a living after returning to the United States.
A thoughtful look at how a photographer turns attention into a working life.
Open Curtain follows a photographer as the conversation traces how a photography practice can turn into a livelihood, moving from a college photo course to graduate school, a published book, print sales, and editorial and commercial assignments.
A quiet, detailed portrait of how Holtermand's eye was shaped by magazines, memory, and work.
Holtermand traces a familiar life in a way that still feels specific: the move outside Copenhagen in 2008, the architecture magazines left behind in the house, the first camera, and the early years spent working as a fingerprint expert for the Danish police.
A grounded talk that ties street photography to politics, place, and a project left on the shelf.
Janet Delaney's conversation on Open Curtain treats photography as something shaped by place, politics, and the practical limits of the world around her.
A patient portrait of how family, grief, and border work shape a photographer's eye.
Raheem Fortune's Open Curtain episode feels less like a career recap than a sketch of how family, grief, and place shape the way he photographs.
Art historian Tamar Avishai interviews critics, curators, and writers about single paintings and ideas.
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament interview artists about their materials, biography, and process.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins and James Deakins interview film crew about the craft behind specific shots.
Robert Bound interviews artists and reviews new film, book, and music releases with critics.
Sound art from places, recordings, and memory.
Janet Delaney starts with architecture.
Carolyn Drake begins with fluctuation.
Brian's route into photography is crooked in the useful way.
Host interviews photographer Mimi about her journey from poetry to photography and building a sustainable career.
Kim follows the slow turn toward architecture.
Interview with a photographer/director about their journey and career in photography.
An interview with curator and artist Ephraim Zaloni-Mendel about their journey in the art world and the making of their second book.
Rahim Fortune opens with music.
Interview with photographer Eli Durst about his journey from assisting to publishing a monograph and building a sustainable art career.
An interview with photographer Colby Diehl about his work, process, and recent success in fine art photography.