A Photographic Life - 271: 'Photobook Special' With Mary V Swanson and Darius Himes

In this 'Photobook Special' episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his she connecting with Mary V Swanson in Arizona and Darius Himes in New York to discuss their book Publish Your Photography Book and all things 'photobook' related. You can find out more about the book mentioned in this episode here www.publishyourphotographybook.com and here on Instagram @publishyourphotographybook Mary V Swanson is an educator, author, entrepreneur and a respected advisor to artists and arts organisations. She received her MFA in Photography from Arizona State University in 1979 and throughout graduate school she served as a research assistant for the Curator of Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She began her career at The Friends of Photography in Carmel, California, managing the education offerings including the Ansel Adams Workshop and then moved to New York to head Special Projects at Magnum Photos, before relocating to Tucson, Arizona in 1990 to launch Swanstock, an agency managing licensing rights for fine art photographers. She currently works independently, offering consulting services to artists and arts organisations, and offering her own classes and educational seminars, serving as an advisor for multiple not-for-profit industry organisations, and other community-minded activities. Swanson coauthored with Darius Himes Publish Your Photography Book: Revised & Updated in 2014. Among the recent awards she has received are the 2015 Honoured Educator from the Society for Photographic Education, the 2014 Susan Carr Award for Education from the American Society for Media Photographers (ASMP) and the FOCUS Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photography from the Griffin Museum. She frequently serves as a judge on contemporary photography and photobook competitions, as a portfolio reviewer for industry events, and she presents group learning through interactive lectures, workshops and Master Class Retreats. Swanson is based in Tucson, Arizona. @maryvirginiaswanson. Darius Himes completed his Master of Arts in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in 2000, and received a BFA in Photography from Arizona State University, having studied under William Jenkins and Bill Jay. Based in New York City, Himes has overseen a global team producing auctions and exhibition as the International Head of Photographs for the auction house Christie’s since 2014. Prior to joining Christie’s, Himes was the director of the Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco from 2011–2014. In 2007 he co-founded Radius Books, a non-profit publisher of books on photography and the visual arts, where he continues to serve on the Board. While working with artists such as John McCracken and Lee Friedlander, he has published first monographs for over a dozen emerging artists, including Renate Aller, Colleen Plumb, Aaron Huey, Janelle Lynch, Michael Lundgren, Alison Rossiter, and Meghan Riepenhoff. Himes was also the founding editor of the photo-eye Booklist, a quarterly journal devoted to photography books, which was published from 2002–2007. A lecturer and writer, he has contributed to Aperture, The Photobook Review, Blind Spot, Bookforum, FOAM and BOMB. @dariushimes Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts. © Grant Scott 2023