The MOOD Podcast

In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you'll learn the 4 questions curators, juries, and publishers silently ask about every photography project, and how to answer them in 100 words so your work actually gets seen.
I take apart the idea that photography speaks for itself, starting with the Vivian Maier story everyone gets backwards, and share what Shana Lopes, photography curator at SFMOMA, told me she actually needs to hear from an artist: why she has to defend every acquisition in front of a committee, her test of whether she can write about a project, and why "I just thought it looked good" ends the conversation. Then I get into the difference between explaining an image and articulating a body of work, and why keeping the mystery in your pictures means taking it out of your artist statement.
Watch my full conversation with Shana Lopes here:
https://youtu.be/XCSvy5AIGsA
Watch part one of this commentary here:
https://youtu.be/bURDv2Jps4M
Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!
Support the show
_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

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Learn exactly what an SFMOMA photography curator looks for, what she passes over, and how to get your work seen without an MFA, a gallery, or a 6-paragraph artist statement.
I sat down with Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to find out how photography actually enters a museum collection. Shana has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography, holds a PhD in the history of photography, and has spent over 7 years at SFMOMA curating exhibitions, acquiring work, and reviewing portfolios.
We talked about how a curator decides which photographs get remembered, why she needs to be able to write about your work before she can acquire it, the one question every photography project has to answer, and the practical advice she gives emerging photographers trying to get exhibited, published, or noticed.

Other things we discussed:
What a curator actually does day to day, from wall texts to installation choreography
Why she thinks about exhibition layouts musically
Curating photobooks versus curating walls, and why she reads books from the back
Trends in museum photography, and whether documentary is disappearing
How to write an artist statement a jury will actually read
Portfolio reviews: what to bring, what not to say, and when to come back
Why an MFA isn't necessary but a community is
AI, analog revival, and the art schools closing in San Francisco

Find Shana on the SFMOMA website and Instagram:
https://www.sfmoma.org/about/eteam-curatorial-staff/
https://www.instagram.com/lopesshana/
Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!
Support the show
_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders
The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=3&aff_id=99
Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com
Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

In this Moments of Mood episode, I get into the question of whether we as photographers should explain our images or let them try and ‘speak for themselves’, why the readings you want to correct are actually a map to your photographic voice, and the two gaps every photograph has to cross, from Garry Winogrand's famous riddle to a passage in 'Art & Fear' by David Bayles and Ted Orland that reframes the distance between what you intended, what you made, and what people see.

Other things I mention:
The moment someone misreads your photo and the correction rises up in your chest
Why you're the one person who can't see your own work cold
Repeated "wrong" readings as a pattern, not noise
What happens if both gaps close completely, and whether a perfect photograph would be worth looking at
Explaining an image versus articulating a body of work, and why timing is the difference
Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!
Support the show
_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders
The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=3&aff_id=99
Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com
Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

On this episode, I sat down with David Chancellor, the award-winning documentary photographer behind ‘Hunters’, ‘Handle Like Eggs’, and the Taylor Wessing Prize-winning portrait ‘Huntress with Buck’, for a conversation about the moral grey areas of documentary photography, trophy hunting, wildlife conservation. David has spent decades photographing human-wildlife coexistence across Africa, sleeping beside trophy hunters for weeks at a time, documenting leopard hunting in Namibia that was later stopped, and turning the personal cost of that work, including the collapse of his marriage, into his most intimate project. 
We talked about how beauty gets people to look at what they'd rather turn away from, why access matters more than gear, how a photographer builds trust over years instead of parachuting in, and his current project rewilding the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the National Center for Wildlife.
Watch this conversation and you'll understand how just one photograph can open a dialogue that could end an questionable pastime, and what it costs the person holding the camera.
Other things we discussed:
Getting fired from foreign exchange dealing and talking his way into photography school with "below average" work
The lion breeder who learned to see light and made the phone call behind the Taylor Wessing photo
If it pays, it stays: the brutal economics of wildlife conservation
The gamekeeper in Scotland whose hands kill deer and delivered his own son
Whether he has gone numb after decades of watching animals die
Photographing the birth, death, and compensation politics of community conservation in Kenya
David Attenborough, his front door key, and the cost of a legendary life
Film versus digital, the Mamiya 7, and why he shoots one consistent format
AI, authenticity, and what photography loses when everything becomes content
Find David and his work online:
https://www.davidchancellor.com/
https://www.instagram.com/chancellordavid/
Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!
Support the show
_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders
The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=3&aff_id=99
Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com
Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

Attention has collapsed, and every photographer feels it. In this Moments of Mood episode, I make the case that this might be the best thing to happen to serious photography in a generation. You'll learn why the photographers who matter from here on won't be the ones who make the most, they'll be the ones who compress the best: one photograph dense enough to stop a stranger mid-scroll and earn the second look. I break down what has actually broken in visual culture (the capacity to stay, not the capacity to look), why posting more is a hiding place, and how a single ambassador image is the doorway that gets your photobook, sequence, and body of work found.
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Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!
Support the show
_________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more.

Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features
https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders
The App That Transformed My Art & Mind
https://wakingup.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=3&aff_id=99
Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com
Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay