Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton

2026 Chico Attendees Series

Photographer Katerina Kouzmitcheva joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her work, Butter Melts at 36.6°C, which weaves together political, social, and psychological ideas that create a portrait of her life and the lives of the people she encounters.

https://katerinakouzmitcheva.com
https://www.instagram.com/katerina_kouzmitcheva/

Katerina Kouzmitcheva is a Polish photographer of Belarusian origin based in Wrocław, Poland. Working at the intersection of documentary and art photography, she explores how visible and invisible boundaries—geographical, ideological, and psychological—shape individual lives and collective attitudes. Her work focuses on migration, systems of control, memory, gender, and identity, while also turning inward—to vulnerability, femininity, and the emotional experience of loss—moving between the personal and the political.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Law, graduated from the Academy of Documentary and Art Photography “Fotografika” in St. Petersburg, and earned both her Master’s and PhD degrees in Fine Arts from the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. She is currently continuing her studies at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic.

She is a winner of international photography competitions including TIFA, BIFA, and the Urbanautica Institute Awards, and a recipient of the Gaude Polonia scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Katerina is a member of the international photojournalist collective Women Photograph. Her work has been exhibited in Arles, as well as in Brazil, Japan, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland. Her photography has been featured in publications including British Journal of Photography, Bird in Flight, Monovisions, and Dodho, among others.

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, educator, and editor, Andrea Birnbaum joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about her work and limited edition book, Spilt Milk.

"Spilt Milk is about family, memory, and what is handed down through generations. I am using family photographs and other items to construct images, exploring how certain behaviors have affected the family dynamic. Through this project, I am re-evaluating my personal history and altering my perspective with the newly acquired knowledge."

https://www.andreabirnbaum.com
https://www.andreabirnbaum.com/books/spilt-milk-limited-edition
https://www.instagram.com/andreabirnbaumphoto

Andrea Birnbaum is a social documentary photographer and educator. Her work as a freelance photographer spans many genres, including editorial, corporate, non-profit and portraiture for more than twenty years. She holds an MFA in Media Arts from Maine Media College in Rockport, Maine.

Recent exhibitions include:
2025 Family, Community and Belonging, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
2024 Re-examining the Family Tree, Photographic Nights of Selma, Selma, Alabama
2021 Once Upon a Time, Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA
2021 Memory, juried by Fran Forman, SE Center for Photography, Greenville, SC
2021 A Woman’s View, juried by Elinor Carucci, SE Center for Photography, Greenville, SC
2021 Julia Margaret Cameron and Pollux Exhibitio, FotoNostrum, Barcelona, Spain
2020 You Can Always See The Sun, Photographic Nights of Selma, Selma, Alabama

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

Book arts artist, teacher, and photographer, Alexander Mouton joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to talk about his work from the former East Germany and his research in the German National Archives in Berlin. They will also discuss his imprint, Unseen Press.

http://www.unseenproductions.net
https://www.instagram.com/theunseenpress/

Alexander Mouton has an MFA in photography from Indiana University, where he studied photography, film, literature, book arts, and digital media. For four years Alexander lived in Berlin directly following the fall of the Berlin Wall, during which time he was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. In the early 2000's he developed his photographic processes to include net art, interactive video installations, and hypermedia performances. With a primary interest in sequencing images, Alexander's Unseen Press has been producing limited-edition photo books and zines since the nineties, many of which are in collections internationally including MoMA, NYC; the Getty Research Institute, LA; the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin; and most recently Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka, Riga, Latvia. Alexander's time-based media is included in Rhizome.org's ArtBase and has been exhibited at SFcamerawork, the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, the Walker Art Center and online at chico.art.net, Fylkingen Hz Journal #9, and SpringgunPress issue 5.

As Associate Professor of Art at Seattle University, during the spring quarter of 2023, Alexander took a sabbatical to travel through the former East Germany with his camera conducting an ethnographic study of the GDR's 15 largest socialist housing settlements. Further research in the summer of 2024 included time in the German National Archives in Berlin, as well as at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space and the Hellersdorf District Museum Archives. Subsequent exhibition and publication is being pursued for 2025-26.

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

Visual storyteller and photojournalist, Ann Hermes, joins Michael Chovan-Dalton from the 2026 Chico Review to discuss her advocacy for visual storytelling and her photographic exploration of the loss of local newsrooms.

https://www.annhermesphoto.com
https://www.instagram.com/hermesphoto/

I am a Brooklyn and Boston-based photojournalist and visual storyteller with a flair for the nostalgic. I create documentary tableaus that explore the roles that often overlooked, and sometimes outdated, institutions and people play in our history, culture and future.

I’ve worked in a variety of logistically challenging situations on national and international assignments over my 15 years as a staff photographer for The Christian Science Monitor and other national and regional news outlets. This work ranged from breaking visual news coverage of the Arab Spring in Egypt to in-depth stories following Syrian refugees in Eastern Europe. My stories have also been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and AARP.

After years of experience in news photography, I am using my documentary expertise to create a visual exploration of the current critical era in journalism and explore the potential harm that the loss of local newsrooms would bring to our democracy.

My Local Newsrooms project was recently exhibited at Photoville and profiled in Lenscratch.

I hold an MA in Journalism from the University of Missouri.

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

Archipelago is a book about connection and isolation as described in the essays by Vicki Goldberg and Jean Dykstra. Chovan-Dalton and Del Amo discuss Del Amo's influence from the worlds of theater and dance, they also talk about teaching and the changes to their practices through the fall and rise of film photography.
Photo of Yolanda del Amo credit: Ignacio Evangelista

https://www.yolandadelamo.com
https://www.instagram.com/yolanda.delamo/

Yolanda del Amo is a Spanish-born, New York-based artist who works in photography. She questions how social constructs such as class, gender and family influence community, interpersonal psychology, and identity. Her work looks at individuals through a sociological and psychological lens, exploring how we live and connect with ourselves and others, and how we shape the world around us.

Solo exhibitions have been held at the Centro Cultural de la Torriente Brau in Havana, Hudson Franklin Gallery in New York City, and Light Work in Syracuse, New York, among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at venues such as Julie Saul Gallery in New York City, the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

She has been the recipient of multiple awards, such as a commendation at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition organized by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and the second prize at the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales in Buenos Aires. Institutions and Foundations that have supported her work through production grants include the Jerome Foundation, the John Anson Kittredge Fund and the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

Del Amo has been a resident artist at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France, the Spanish Academy in Rome, Light Work in Syracuse, New York, the Lower Manhattan Culture Council in New York City (LMCC) and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

She is currently Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

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