Curran Hatleberg on Revisiting Past Work, Staying Present, and the Ethics of his Practice - Episode 106

Photographer and educator Curran Hatleberg returns to PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss his latest monograph, Blood Green (TBW Books). Hatleberg reflects on how the photobook emerged from images left out of his earlier publication, River’s Dream, and how revisiting those omissions opened a new way of thinking about editing, continuity, and the evolving life of a body of work. He speaks about the ethics at the center of his practice, an engagement with people grounded in mutual curiosity and respect, and the role of presence, both with and without the camera. Now balancing his life as an artist, partner, and father, Hatleberg considers how time reshapes practice. The episode concludes with a meditation on art making as a form of self-portraiture, a record of who we were at a given moment. https://curranhatleberg.com https://tbwbooks.com/products/blood-green?_pos=2&_psq=curran&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Curran Hatleberg is a photographer based in Baltimore, MD. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum, MASS MoCA, the International Center of Photography and Higher Pictures. In 2019, Hatleberg was featured in the Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His works are held in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art among others. Hatleberg is the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Maryland State Arts Council Grant, a 2015 Magnum Emergency Fund grant, and a 2014 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship grant. He has published five books, most recently Blood Green in 2025. Lost Coast, his first monograph, was released by TBW Books in fall 2016, and his second monograph, River’s Dream, was published by TBW Books in 2022. Hatleberg has taught photography at numerous institutions, including Cooper Union and Yale University where he is currently a visiting critic in photography. He holds a BA in painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MFA in photography from Yale University.