193: Eric Gottesman Asks: Whose Questions Get Asked -Whose Story is Told?

What happens an artist realizes that they can never be the only one with questions?From that reckoning, artist Eric Gottesman spent the next twenty-five years rethinking what an artist with a camera, or a big idea is actually for. In this conversation with Bill Cleveland, Gottesman traces his path from documentary photographer to collaborative image-maker in Addis Ababa's AIDS-affected communities, and eventually to co-founding For Freedoms, the artist-led initiative that has turned billboards, town halls, and even a Super PAC into tools for civic discourse.This is a conversation about authorship, collectivity, and the culture of inquiry at the heart of both artmaking and a thriving democracy.In this episode we explore:How asking the right question often matters more than delivering the right answer.Why Eric Gottesman says he has never made art alone. And why he thinks that's true for everyone.A “composite nation:” Drawing on Frederick Douglass, Gottesman is now developing projects that imagine an American identity built from multiplicity and complexity rather than a single official story.Notable MentionsPeopleEric Gottesman — Artist, educator, writer, and organizer whose collaborative work addresses nationalism, migration, structural violence, history, and civic life. He is a co-founder of For Freedoms.Wendy Ewald — Photographer and one of Gottesman’s mentors. Her decades of co-authored photography projects challenge conventional divisions between photographer, subject, observer, and author.Hank Willis Thomas — Conceptual artist and For Freedoms co-founder whose work examines identity, history, media, popular culture, and representation.Claudia L. Peña — Executive director of For Freedoms, UCLA law lecturer, and practitioner of transformative and restorative justice. She appears with Gottesman and Thomas in the episode’s Skoll World Forum excerpt.Baalu Girma — Influential Ethiopian journalist and novelist who disappeared after publishing Oromay, his critique of the Derg regime and its military campaign in Eritrea.Emily Shur — Photographer who worked with Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, and Wyatt Gallery to create contemporary photographic versions of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms.Wyatt Gallery — Photographer, For Freedoms co-founder, and producer of the contemporary Four Freedoms project.Marc Bamuthi Joseph — Spoken-word artist, writer, librettist, and cultural strategist who developed the six questions at the heart of America, the Beautiful.aja monet — Poet, recording artist, storyteller, and organizer appearing in the October 3, 2026, America(!) the Beautiful(?) performance, which is part of For Freedom’s America, the Beautiful project.Derek Goldman — Director, playwright, educator, and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. Gottesman and Cleveland cite his emphasis on care in cultural work.Ariel Fristoe — Founder and artistic director of Out of Hand Theater, whose work brings theater, social justice, and civic engagement together.Organizations, Institutions, and PlacesFor Freedoms — Artist-led civic organization founded in 2016. It uses public art, billboards, exhibitions, town halls, and artist commissions to encourage listening, inquiry, belonging, and civic participation.Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University — The center at Duke University where Gottesman began his work in Ethiopia in partnership with Save the Children.Save the Children — International humanitarian organization that sent Gottesman to photograph the effects of drought in Ethiopia shortly after his graduation from Duke.The Charles F. Kettering Foundation — The Charles F. Kettering Foundation, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation with a mission to advance inclusive democracies worldwide by fostering citizen engagement, promoting government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.Democracy and the Arts — The Kettering Foundation’s focus area for integrating the power of the arts into democratic life locally, nationally, and globally.Corcoran School of the Arts & Design — George Washington University school where Gottesman serves as the W.W. Corcoran Visiting Professor in Community Engagement and where For Freedoms has been in residence.Future Currents — Organization that helps movement leaders prepare for uncertain conditions and collaboratively imagine more inclusive, just, and democratic futures.U.S. Agency for International Development — Federal agency to which evidence of the Ethiopian drought was submitted to help prompt an international aid response. The episode conversation takes note of the agency’s dismantling and changed status.Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — The city in which Gottesman began collaborating with people living with HIV and with children whose parents had died of AIDS.Somali Region, Ethiopia — The drought-affected eastern region where Gottesman first confronted the power imbalances and ethical contradictions of humanitarian photography.Sheshatshiu, Labrador, Canada — Innu community where Gottesman later collaborated with Wendy Ewald and young residents on a cross-generational photographic and community-curated project.Projects, Artworks, and EventsFor Freedoms at the 2024 Skoll World Forum — The episode includes an excerpt from this presentation by Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Claudia Peña about art, interdependence, democracy, and social change. The forum took place in Oxford (not London as stated in the podcast).Contemporary Four Freedoms — For Freedoms’ expansive reimagining of Rockwell’s four paintings. More than 100 participants created 82 images representing a broader range of American identities; its Freedom of Worship appeared on the cover of TIME.Question Bridge: Black Males — Collaborative project...