Contemporary artist Walid Raad joins Lucien Samaha in conversation on the occasion of Samaha’s exhibition A History of Digital Photography. Samaha and Raad are longtime friends who have, together, witnessed the nascent stages of digital photography and experienced its profound effect on art. They will reflect on this shared history as a way to contextualize the exhibition. This conversation will also take up Samaha’s personal relationship to photography, his early influences, social media, and the topic of friendship itself.

Walid Raad, in part, an artist and a Professor of Art in (in the still-charging-tuition, and the school should stop doing so now before yet more debt burdens more students who are not the ones who mismanaged the school’s finances—its Board of Trustees and administrators did so for decades [check out the lawsuit against the Board]) The Cooper Union. The list of exhibitions (good, bad, and mediocre ones); awards and grants (merited, not merited, grateful for, rejected and/or returned); education (some of it thought-provoking; some of it, less so); publications (I am fond of some of my books, but more so of the books of Jalal Toufic. You can find his here: jalaltoufic.com), can be found somewhere online.

Lucien Samaha (b. 1958, Beirut) is a New York-based photographer whose work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and at the Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland. He was a finalist for the 2004 Nam June Paik Award. After his time at TWA, Samaha worked for Eastman Kodak Company and then as a DJ on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, continuing to document his hours at work and his personal life.