Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer, pilot, and podcaster Matt Jacob joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about making work that explores personal challenges and his love of meeting people and always learning through his very popular MOOD Podcast.

https://www.mattjacob.co/
https://www.mattjacob.co/the-mood-podcast
https://www.instagram.com/mattyj_ay/
https://www.instagram.com/the_moodpodcast/

Matt Jacob is a photographer, filmmaker, and podcast host whose work explores the fragile relationship between the natural world, human presence, and the cultural systems that bind the two. He explores the intersection of culture, identity and the inner life of humans through long-form post-documentary photography, thoughtful conversations on ‘The MOOD Podcast’, and immersive creative photography experiences. His work champions depth, ethical storytelling and slow creativity in a world increasingly driven by speed and performance.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club
Begin Building your dream photobook library today at
https://charcoalbookclub.com

https://chicoreview.com
https://www.charcoalworkshops.com

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Lisa Jayne Cramer joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about some very personal work involving relationship, grief, and reconciliation.

This work has recently been recognized through the inaugural Ephemere Photobook Grant in 2026 and is scheduled to be published by Ephemere Tokyo in October 2026.

https://www.lisajaynecramer.com
https://www.instagram.com/lisajaynecramer/

Lisa Jayne Cramer is an Australian photographer based in Melbourne/Naarm.

For as long as she can remember, she has felt most at peace holding a camera. Drawn to analogue photography and performative self-portraiture, she found a way to express how she experiences and understands the world.

Cramer’s photographic practice is a deeply personal enquiry into love, longing, grief and beauty. Drawing upon qualities of abstract expressionism, she explores the constant presence of absence through collage, performative imagery and metaphor. Flowers, particularly roses and lilies, recur throughout her work as symbols of fertility, decay, femininity and resilience, becoming vessels for both beauty and sorrow.

Her photographs have been exhibited throughout Australia and internationally, including in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, the United States and Japan. Her work is held in private collections across Australia, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Mexico. She has been published in FotoNostrum Magazine (Barcelona, 2024) and Eyes on the World (Kamira Institute, Paris, 2025).

Cramer is a proud alumna of the 2025 Long Term Program: The Photobook at Penumbra Foundation, New York, through which she developed her first photobook, FLOWER under ether. The artist-produced edition was completed in December 2025 and is held in the permanent collection of State Library Victoria.

In 2026, FLOWER under ether was awarded the inaugural Ephemere Photobook Grant. A new Japan-produced edition is currently being developed in collaboration with Ephemere Tokyo, with publication planned for October 2026. Cramer was also selected to participate in Chico Review in Montana, USA, in 2026.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club
Begin Building your dream photobook library today at
https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com
https://www.charcoalworkshops.com

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Bill Ellis joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his series, Tiger Has Loved.

Bill Ellis is a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY and attended school at Ringling College of Art and Design. His series, Tiger Has Loved is centered on his relationships, particularly with his then fiancé and now spouse.

https://billellisii.com
https://www.instagram.com/billellisii/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club
Begin Building your dream photobook library today at
https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com
https://www.charcoalworkshops.com

No Invite: Ten Years of Capturing Fashion Week by Any Means Necessary
A Retrospective by Dan Bassini
Recorded live at the JKC Gallery.

No Invite is a series focused on capturing Fashion Week by any means necessary. With a lifelong interest in fashion, and no connection to the industry, Bassini set out to shoot the beauty and chaos the only way he knew how. Sneaking into parties, subverting security, and hitting the streets. Shot entirely on 35mm compact cameras, No Invite is a unique look into the fashion world, even when your name isn’t on the guest list.

https://www.danbassini.com/no-invite
https://www.instagram.com/danbassini

Dan Bassini is a photographer based in Jersey City, NJ specializing in digital and analog photography.
He is an alum of Mercer County Community College.

He has released thirteen books within the “No Invite” series, as well as four non-portraiture books: Highway Hypnosis, Cruel Summer, I STILL FEEL IT, and most recently When I Kill God I Will Find The Spigot From Which He Meters Out Grace And Smash It Permanently Open.
His work has been featured in many solo and group shows in the New York City area.

Dan Bassini’s work builds builds upon the legacy of the photographer, Bill Cunningham, the former fashion street photographer for the New York Times, but Bassini’s work comes from a different perspective, not from the invited insider as Cunningham was, but from the not-invited outsider. There’s a sense of chance meeting and serendipitous encounters to his work because his approach to accessing these places and encountering the invited guests is also filled with chance and serendipity.

Recently, Bassini’s work has been featured in Vogue Türkiye and on CNN.

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - Begin Building your dream photobook library today at:
https://charcoalbookclub.com

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Writer and artist Donna Gordon joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her series that reimagines Eve in the Garden.

Donna Gordon is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based writer and artist. She graduated from Brown, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and a Ploughshares Discovery. Her debut novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, Regal House 2022, received a starred review from Kirkus Review and was named among the 100 best Indie novels of 2023, having been described as, “A soulful journey that offers surprises and unforeseen victories.” The novel also received the 2022 Whirling Prose Prize from Etchings Press, and was the November pick for the Brown Book Club of Boston. It was named by the Independent Book Review as one of the top 45 they’re excited about for 2022. Nina McLaughlin wrote in a Boston Globe review: “Gordon’s prose is lively; it rushes along with verve, humor, and heart…[She has] achieved the rare thing, a stirring, poignant story of death and love and a page-turning adventure.” She received the 2018 New Letters Publication Award for her short story, “Primates,” and has published fiction, poetry, and essays nationally.

Gordon is also a visual artist, with a focus on photography and printmaking. She received the 2024 LensCulture Jurors’ Choice award for a portrait, and was finalist for portrait series. She received the 2024 and 2023 Julia Margaret Cameron Award, winner in portrait series and alternative process, and honorable mention for women seen by women and landscape series. Her work has been featured in both Shots Magazine and The Hand and has been shown in both solo and group shows at the Danforth Art Museum, Soho Photo Gallery, Fitchburg Art Museum, Cape Cod Museum, ArtsWorcester, Providence Art Gallery, Bromfield Gallery, Galatea Fine Art, Concord Art Association, George Marshall Store Gallery, Site:Brooklyn, Featherstone Gallery, Union of Maine Visual Artists, Attleboro Art Museum, and Cambridge Art Association. Her work with former political prisoners culminated in “Putting Faces on the Unimaginable: Portraits and Interviews with Former Prisoners of Conscience,” exhibited at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. She’s represented by Bromfield Gallery, Boston.

https://donnasgordon.com
https://www.instagram.com/donnagordon8994/

This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club
Begin Building your dream photobook library today at
https://charcoalbookclub.com

The Chico Review is the country’s premier Photobook Retreat. Organized by Charcoal Book Club, The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort, near Livingston Montana. Applicants will spend the week with over twenty of the most influential and creative photographers, book makers, gallerists, museum curators, and photobook publishers in the industry.

https://chicoreview.com
https://www.charcoalworkshops.com