“Be prepared to be broke—it’s a rite of passage. If you’re not doing it because you love it, you’re not gonna make it.” EG

Check out the interview HERE.

“Gregory Halpern and I met for the first time about five years ago. He’d brought an 8×10 black clamshell case to my apartment in Brooklyn, filled to the brim with full-bleed, dark and muddy prints. He’d made the photographs while traveling through some rough neighborhoods in Buffalo and Omaha. The lives and situations he recorded were bleak, but his pictures exuded a glow of emotion that somehow left you feeling like things were going to be OK. Nothing came of the meeting at the time, but his pictures stuck with me.”

Read more of the story and interview on VICE

Gregory Halpern

Jason Fulford

“There has been a lot of buzz around New York based photographer Michael Schmelling in the last year. His recent project Atlanta received a great amount of attention, being featured in a number of publications including Esquire, Turnstyle, Time magazine’s Lightbox among many others. And its easy to see why Atlanta has garnered so much attention; not only is it a detailed view into the Georgia city’s hip hop scene, the work transcends audiences, being simultaneously fine art, documentary, fashion and a testament to pop culture. The cultural abundance in Atlanta weaves together portraits of the people, the cars, tattoos, nightclubs, food, essays, interviews and many other intricate elements that make Atlanta one of the most visually powerful books to come out in the last year. Schmelling has several previous publications as well, Shut Up Truth, The Week of No Computer, The Planand was a main contributor for The Wilco Book. All of these titles showcase the artist’s deep understanding of both the photobook as a unique object and its importance in the visual communication of a complex project.”

Read the entire interview on the Photo-Eye blog.