Interview with Matthew Ritchie
Ben Sloat My first question is about artistic research. I teach here in Boston in a couple of graduate programs and I’m always interested in sharing the rubrics of research…
Author Ben Sloat
Ben Sloat
Ben Sloat is a Boston-based photographer, critic, and curator. He is a founding contributor of Big RED & Shiny.
Interview with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Ben Sloat One theme that has always struck me about your work (and seen most recently My Mother Told Me at the Tufts University Art Gallery) is that of impermanence:…
Interview with João Ribas
The MIT List Visual Arts Center has recently concluded the excellent exhibition, In the Holocene, which proposes fascinating parallels and conditions regarding artistic and scientific speculation. Using the rubric of…
WHAT’S GOING ON (IN TAIWAN): CONVERSATIONS WITH CHEN CHIEH-JEN, YAO JUI-CHUNG & CHIEN-CHI CHANG
By BENJAMIN R. SLOAT Taiwan is a small democratic island nation just off the coast of China. Considered a rogue province by China, Taiwan’s recent history has included 40 years…
DOG DAYS BOGOTA: A CONVERSATION WITH ALEC SOTH
By BEN SLOAT Alec Soth is a prominent contemporary photographer who first gained acclaim with his seminal book, Sleeping By The Mississippi. Since its publication in 2004, Soth has published…
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY By Ben Sloat William Christenberry is a multi-media artist whose themes relate to his Southern upbringing. Born in 1936 and raised in Hale County, Alabama, this…
A CONVERSATION WITH GREGORY CREWDSON
A CONVERSATION WITH GREGORY CREWDSON By Ben Sloat Gregory Crewdson is a photographer known best for his high production photographic projects, Hover, Twilight, and Beneath the Roses, open ended narratives that…
OLAFUR ELIASSON: WATERFALLS
OLAFUR ELIASSON: WATERFALLS By Ben Sloat I rode over the Manhattan Bridge today with a group of out of towners. As we looked eagerly into New York Harbor for the Eliasson…
SMFA GRADUATE THESIS EXHIBITION @ TUFTS UNIVERSITY
By BEN SLOAT Helping to close out the academic school year is a diverse MFA thesis show at Tufts University. With work ranging from painting and mixed media to film…
A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY SULTAN
By BEN SLOAT Larry Sultan has pushed the boundaries of photographic practice since the publication of Evidence in 1977, a collaboration with Boston based photographer Mike Mandel, of found institutional…
PHOTOGRAPHY, CHESS, AND DEATH: AN INTERVIEW WITH BEN SLOAT
By MATTHEW NASH & MATTHEW GAMBER Ben Sloat’s new exhibition “Death Is Just A Rumor Spread By Life” at Laconia Gallery is an intense and thoughtful exploration of methods and…
A CONVERSATION WITH ALBERT WATSON
By BEN SLOAT One of the world’s most prominent commercial photographers, Albert Watson’s images run the gamut from fashion to editorial work and self produced photographic projects. On occasion of…
JIM DOW @ THE HARVARD CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
By BEN SLOAT The medium of photography has been especially ravenous this past half century. The swelling of the photograph from its key mechanisms of description to include those of…
TSENG KWONG CHI @ BERNARD TOALE GALLERY
By BEN SLOAT At the Bernard Toale Gallery in the South End is a fascinating exhibition of photographic images, Ambiguous Ambassador, by the deceased photographer Tseng Kowng Chi. Each image…
EDWARD HOPPER @ MFA
By BEN SLOAT I’ve debated the merits of Edward Hopper over a number of years. Always I’ve thought of him as a Willy Loman figure, an unobtrusive traveler of New…
AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDRES SERRANO
By BEN SLOAT Andres Serrano is an artist who came to national acclaim in the early 1990s with his controversial photographs appropriating religious imagery. At the time he was famously…
BRIAN BURKHARDT @ JUDI ROTENBERG
By BEN SLOAT The famed Russian born novelist (and noted lepidopterist) Vladimir Nabokov once wrote to his mother of the creative process: “We are translators of God’s creation, his little…
AN UNCOMMON INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SHORE
By BEN SLOAT Stephen Shore is a prominent photographer and photographic educator. A pioneer in the field of color photography, Shore has published numerous books of photography, included his seminal…
ROGER BALLEN @ ROBERT KLEIN GALLERY
By BEN SLOAT In the tradition of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Roger Ballen uses the square format black and white photograph to display the provocative trappings of human theater in heightened…
AMERICAN BEACH @ SMFA
By BEN SLOAT Print this article Having been born and raised in New York’s Lower East Side, it is not without a certain affection that I came across the collaborative…