Episode Summary: Reality bites in this week’s gallery chat as Haddy talks about the aesthetics of information visualization in graphs and charts and Yassi talks about the ways in which surveillance culture blur art and reality. Documentary filmmaker Andy Sarjahani, this week’s interview guest, joins in the conversation sharing his experiences in how visual storytelling works to convey deep truths and tackles existential questions.

Andy Sarjahani (b. 1983, Richland, WA) is an American-Iranian documentary filmmaker and photographer raised in the Ozarks of Arkansas and currently based in East Tennessee. He is interested in people, our relationship to place and how that shapes our worldview.

He has a Masters of Science in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems from Montana State University and left his career in academia in 2012 to tell stories with a camera.

He worked on the critically acclaimed documentary Tower (Keith Maitland, 2016) and his work has been featured in Vice, Outside, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and numerous other festivals and universities.

Find Andy Online

WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA

www.andysarjahani.com

www.instagram.com/andysarjahani

WORK SAMPLES

LAST DAYS OF TOYS R US (photo essay): https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/438awm/depressing-photos-from-the-last-days-of-toys-r-us

HORNS OUT (short doc): https://rockandice.com/videos/climbing/horns-out-maurice-horn-reflects-lifetime-climbing/

DOWNSTREAM PEOPLE (short doc): https://vimeo.com/173096029

Provocation (#ArtIfPodcast)

Take photos of anyone who see wearing Red and Black Plaid (“the shared fabric of humanity”) and tag us and Andy’s other instagram account: www.instagram.com/peoplewearingredandblackplaid

Mentioned in the Show

Tangled Up in Blue

NYTimes Corona Virus Article

Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards

Light Map

Into Eternity (Swedish documentary about nuclear waste)

The Truman Show

Deepfakes

We Live in Public

You are Watching Me (Link to film no longer works)

Errol Morris

Cinema Verité

Maysles Brothers

1619 Podcast