In this episode, Immaterial Voices host and Immaterial Books curator Brian O’Neill sites down with Central Illinois based photographer Lyndsey Groth. Lyndsey released her first book, titled August, through Immaterial Books in 2025.

Lyndsey talks about constructing her August project out of accumulated experiences, emotions, and inspirations, but finally just from one day of image-making with her family and relatives. Through the images for this project, Lyndsey discusses exploring what it means to grow up and grow older in a familiar landscape—a place that feels at once comforting and alienating, expansive and constraining.

Lyndsey and Brian also discuss a number of other authors and artists in the fields of cinema and literature that provide inspirations and insights into photographic practice.

August, by Lyndey Groth - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/august

Lyndsey Groth - https://www.lyndseygrothphoto.com

David Foster Wallace - https://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/david-foster-wallace

Pete Souza - https://www.petesouza.com

Gone Girl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Girl_(film)

Celeste Sloman - https://www.celestesloman.com

Black Elvis - https://www.ugapress.org/9780820342191/black-elvis/

W Scott Olson - https://www.concordiacollege.edu/directories/faculty-staff/details/w-scott-olsen/

Terra Fondriest - https://terrafondriest.com

Devin Lunsford - https://www.devinlunsford.com

Mads Rasmussen - https://www.instagram.com/madsjoakim/

What stories are, and are not, ours to tell? And, how do archives work through, and speak across, multiple generations, informing memories and identities? In this conversation with artist and photographer Brooke C. White, we tackle these and many other questions.

With work exhibited internationally, White utilizes an approach to image-making that incorporates analog, digital, and historical photographic strategies. For more than twenty years, she has made work about the landscape, nature, and human relationships to place. In this conversation, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill discusses White’s most recent book, published with Immaterial Books, titled What She Saw. The project interweaves slides, photographs, drawings, journal entries, and travel logs inherited from the women in White’s family, which together, coalesce into a multi-generational familial collaboration. Throughout the book, the complexities of queerness, womanhood, and motherhood are made visible through small acts of resistance in the form of travel and photography. Part historical, part speculative, What She Saw reclaims the archive as a site of feminist inquiry, where familial ephemera is not merely received but actively re-imagined solidifying transient histories into newly re-imagined ones.

Notes:

Brooke C. White - https://www.brookecwhite.net/books

What She Saw - https://www.immaterialbooks.com/store/p/what-she-saw-brooke-white

Allison Grant - https://www.allisongrant.com/within-the-bittersweet

Immaterial Books - https://www.immaterialbooks.com

Wyoming Toad - https://wyomingtoad.bandcamp.com/album/light-rail

How does our “eye” develop, or even change through time? Along what dimensions do changes, both proximate and seemingly distant, inform our vision of the world? In this conversation with photographer, walker, and artist Bryan Formhals, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill discusses these and many other questions. Growing up in the Midwest, Bryan eventually found himself in major metropolitan areas and art hubs: Los Angeles and New York City. Eventually ditching the car, Bryan began to find his voice amidst the intersections of walking arts, photography and photobooks. An early pioneer of the photography podcast with the LPV show, and mobilizing digital platforms like Flickr, Bryan’s career has spanned multiple different locales, but also moments in the recent history of photography and photobooks.

The discussion focuses on the practice of photography and photobooks, wherein Bryan draws upon insights from his New York City Public Realm project, which spans more than a decade of work. Throughout, the conversation offers insights into strategies and maneuvers surrounding book-making and the pursuit of one’s vocation.

Notes:

LPV show - https://photography.bryanformhals.com/lpv-show/

Photographers sketchbooks - https://slate.com/culture/2015/02/the-book-photographers-sketchbooks-shows-the-creative-process-of-photographers-from-around-the-world.html

Peter Van Agtmael - https://www.petervanagtmael.net

Richard Long - https://www.richardlong.org

Akasegawa Genpei and Thomasson - https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/01/18/the-inexplicably-fascinating-secret-world-of-thomassons/

Alex Wolfe, “Pedestrian” - https://atwolfe.com

Joshua Dudley Greer – The Makeshift City - https://gostbooks.com/en-us/products/makeshift-city