How do we learn how to see? How is that images take us over time and space? What modes of practice, and of travel, introduce new ways of seeing?

In November of 2024, Immaterial Voices host Brian O’Neill had the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee in Illinois with photographer, writer, and scholar Bill Cope. Initially, the plan was to cover just Bill’s four titles with Immaterial Books, all collected in the series, The Rail Way. However, as tends to happen when curious minds get together, the conversation took numerous turns into other territory. Bill recounts some of his early photographic history and memories of when he got his first cameras, heading off to India as a young man with two medium format bodies and film in tow (which has now led to the books in The Rail Way series of books), and how he continues to be f ...