Focal Point is a podcast exploring the artists, themes, and processes that define—and sometimes disrupt—the world of contemporary photography. Each episode engages two people in conversation around a photograph of their choice from the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s permanent collection. Join us as we explore contemporary photography in Chicago and beyond, through topics like the constructed image, portraiture and the human subject, the photographic archive, and more.
In this episode, MoCP Community Engagement Fellow Alayna N. Pernell is in conversation with artist and educator, Jen Everett. The two discuss Everett’s interdisciplinary practice spanning lens-based and time-based media, installation, collage, and writing, as well as her ongoing exploration of how Black knowledge is produced and transmitted through rupture, interiority, and embodied memory. They also reflect on a work by Patty Carroll in the MoCP permanent collection.
29 Oct 2025
What Does It Mean to Look at These Photographs?
On May 29, 2025, MoCP presented a series of conversations exploring authorship, representation, and the dissemination of information as they relate to the past, present, and future of photography. This special edition of Focal Point Extras captures a discussion between photographer Susan Meiselas and writer, critic, and photographer Teju Cole on the topic “What Does It Mean to Look at These Photographs?” The two consider three bodies of work by Meiselas spanning several decades to examine the politics of looking at photographs—especially when those images depict stories of human struggle, suffering, and conflict.
22 Sept 2025
The Living Archive
On May 29, 2025, MoCP presented a series of conversations that explored topics of authorship, representation, and the dissemination of information as they relate to the past, present, and future of photography.
This special edition of Focal Point Extras captures the conversation between scholar and educator Laura Wexler (Yale University) and artist, art historian, and educator Shawn Michelle Smith (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) on the topic of “The Living Archive.” The two discuss artists who work with archives to expand fixed notions of history, and people who call for a reassessment of ownership and control over photographed people within archives.
This symposium was in conjunction with the exhibition, Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography in Dialogue with the MoCP Collection curated by Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Laura wexler, and MoCP Curator of Academic Programs and Collections, Kristin Taylor.
Image credit:
Aaron Turner, Untitled, Self Extended, from Black Alchemy Vol. 3, 2020
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