Aperture

Her images, especially of Manzanar, were withheld from the public until after the war and were accessible to the public through the National Archives.

After the war, she taught at San Francisco's Art Institute and co-founded the magazine Aperture.

She has been heralded as an innovator and has influenced generations of documentary photography.

Like what you hear? Check out more at laborhistoryin2.com.

Her images, especially of Manzanar, were withheld from the public until after the war and were accessible to the public through the National Archives.

After the war, she taught at San Francisco's Art Institute and co-founded the magazine Aperture.

She has been heralded as an innovator and has influenced generations of documentary photography.

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I'm reminded of that every day, the privilege my parents and my grandmother gave me, but What was cool years later, no one really ever knew my dad in the photo world that I interacted with.

But when Kathy Ryan published her book with Aperture, The Best Images from the New York Times Magazine, Anthony Barboza was in it.

And meeting Anthony, we connected that.

He had a studio at 10 West 18th Street, and he knew my dad.

The Unseen Truth, which won an American Book Award, examines the visual fictions that helped shape racist ideas in the United States.

[camera clicking] And her landmark Vision and Justice Initiative began as a special issue of Aperture magazine, and grew into a Harvard course, a civic curriculum, a convening, and an ongoing community and platform devoted to understanding the foundational role of culture in our democracy.

In our conversation, we talk about her new expansive project, asking the question: What if Emmett Till lived? The book and exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago imagines a future that Till was denied, and proposes a new kind of creative monument.

Sarah always brings her community into her work and any discussion of it.

This is such a clear example of the need to, to really deal with what we've inaugurated, authorized, and, uh, and created as a pattern, uh, that exists till today with Breonna Taylor and, uh, so many others.

So the subtitle really speaks to the legal framework and the work of artistic practices that engage with, uh, the work of justice in the United States.

You know, I think about the questions you ask and of course the Vision and Justice Project, which, you know, started out as this special edition of Aperture magazine, became a, a class at Harvard, a, a civic curriculum, a convening and ongoing project and community.

And I know because you do talk about it sometimes, and we talked about it a bit in Cambridge, that-

And they can be found in museum collections everywhere.

She is a professor of photography at Cal State University, Sacramento, and the author of the San Quentin Project, published by Aperture, and she's co-author of This Is Ear Hustle, Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life.

Well, our conversation between these two will continue for about 35 minutes or so.

And we'll leave time for a few audience questions.

Maureen holds an MFA from Pacific University.

Her nonfiction is an editor's pick for Solstice Journal's 2026 contest, and she has read her work for APHR, Aperture?

Yep,

Aperture, great.

Carney Street Workshops Festival for AAPI writers.

Her writing has also appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, The Pinch, Bellingham Review, and Joyland Magazine.