250 - Joseph Michael Lopez

A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Joseph Michael Lopez - JML, (b. 1973) is an independent photographer born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a mother who escaped the Cuban Revolution in 1967. He earned his MFA in 2011 at Columbia University. Lopez began his career as an analog cinematographer on the critically acclaimed Bruce Weber film, Chop Suey (2001). Currently, Joseph divides his time between long-form projects, teaching, and commercial work. His photographs have appeared on the covers of M, The Magazine for Leica M Photography, Leica Fotografie International, The Sunday Review of The New York Times, New York magazine and The New Yorker, among others.

Joseph’s photographs were on exhibit in “Cuban Photography after 1980: Selections from the Museum’s Collection”, at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2016, a commissioned series of his photographs of New York neighborhoods, “New York at Its Core: Future City Lab”, was installed at The Museum of the City of New York. Photographs from JML NYC, the series from which this commission originated, have also been published in the book Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz. JML’s first book JML NYC 02-23 was published by GOST in the fall of 2024.

In episode 250, Joseph discusses, among other things:

• Relocating to Rome from NYC
• His intro to NYC via assisting Bruce Weber
• His early career as a professional assistant
• Shooting with his Leica as a ‘coping mechanism’
• The challenge of creating a cohesive narrative from 20 years of single images
• His Dear New Yorker project
• Why B&W is where his heart is at
• How what we see is who we are
• His approach towards light and sun
• Using digital vs. film
• Assisting Mitch Epstein
• How his opinion on grad school has changed
• Controversy surrounding Columbia University prof. Thomas Roma
• His plans for working in Rome and going forward

Referenced:

• Bruce Weber
• Danny Lyon, Knave of Hearts
• Tod Papageorge
• Chuck Kelton’s darkroom
• Mitch Epstein
• Thomas Roma
• Mohammad Rasoulof

Website | Instagram

“Essentially, it’s about saying something and having a voice and having a perception of the world that is, like singing a loud song you know, your pictures have to say something. And how do you separate yourself from all the noise that’s out there already? You have to have an obsessive, emphatic way to perceive things. I think to a certain extent what we see is who we are in a way.”

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