My interview with Brad Zellar.

Brad Zellar is a literary author with deep roots in the contemporary photobook world who also writes here on Substack about myriad things under the name Yo Ivanhoe.

Brad has worked on books such as Suburban World: The Norling Photos, where he met photographer Alec Soth, with whom he shares a creative relationship, and has released books including Conductors of the Moving World, House of Coates, and the legendary LBM Dispatch, all in collaboration with Alec and his press Little Brown Mushroom.

Zellar has also contributed collaborative text to many other photo projects, such as Driftless with Jason Vaughn and Township with Adrianna Ault, Tim Carpenter, and Raymond Meeks.

Nocturno Books is Brad’s publishing endeavour, which he shares with his partner and photographer, Ethan Aaro Jones. It aims to be an artist-friendly publishing project, with its debut monograph, Stone Soup, by Eric Ruby.

Brad often participates in workshops, reviews, and panels as a literary voice in the photobook world, and much of our conversation centers on how text and images work together in photobooks.

Till the Wheels Fall Off is Brad’s debut novel, published by Coffee House Press, which has also published a paperback version of House of Coates.

Alec and Brad are also selling some limited edition letter-pressed prints of text and image pairings from House Coates to raise money for the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, which you can purchase on the Little Brown Mushroom website to help Minnesotans who have been profoundly affected by the brutal I.C.E. occupation over the past two months, which is still ongoing.

I can’t thank Brad enough for trusting me to have this conversation with me, and I apologize for the edits and cuts in the conversation; Brad and I talked for well over an hour and a half about so many things, and I needed to edit the conversation down to something under an hour to keep it manageable for the viewer. I hope you forgive me for my poor editing skills!

Please enjoy our conversation, and I hope you find something useful in this series of conversations I am hosting.

With love, Matt.