Reading the Pictures produces two video programs. Chatting the Pictures is a biweekly, highly-edited 10-minute webcast featuring publisher Michael Shaw and visual academic Cara Finnegan analyzing 3 key news photographs. The Reading the Pictures Salon is a panel discussion concerned with how the media and social media visually frame key social and cultural issues.
Latest Video
Chatting The Pictures: Eleven Neighbors with Phones vs. ICE: How One Image Spoke for a City
This photo by Leila Navidi for the Minneapolis Star Tribune captures St. Paul residents on February 11, 2026, using their phones to confront militarized immigration enforcement. Continue Reading
Chatting The Pictures: Trump Raising the Roof
Trump's showy, hands-on presence blurs the line between leader and developer, raising bigger questions about power, public trust, and just how far private ambition can reach in America’s most symbolic space.
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Chatting The Pictures: The Grand Climate Disconnect
The video explores how the calm tourists, vast canyon, and looming smoke capture both beauty and danger, echoing classic landscape art.
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Chatting the Pictures: When Immigration Raids Come to the Farm Fields
We examine the transformation of classic camp imagery into wreckage and evidence.
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Chatting the Pictures: Camp Mystic, the Texas Flood, and the Landscape of Loss
In our latest ‘Chatting the Pictures’ video, we highlight the juxtaposition between a ripped-open Harrison Hall and the eerily placid Guadalupe River.
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Chatting the Pictures is a lively, highly edited look at key news photographs. Co-hosts Michael Shaw, publisher of Reading the Pictures, and writer and historian, Cara Finnegan, meet to discuss three prominent photos in the recent news. You can find all the Chatting the Pictures replays here.
The Reading the Pictures Salon analyzes 8-9 carefully researched photos chosen for theme and depth of content. Each 90-minute panel is made up of leading photographers, photo editors, visual academics and other experts experienced in the subject.
Since 2008, we have produced 29 Salons working with sponsors such as Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Open Society Foundation. We have covered topics from social justice to political campaigns to foreign policy. For examples, take a look at: The Visual Representation of the US/Mexico Border Wall in the Media; How Science is Pictured in the Media and Public Culture; The Visual Framing of the Migrant Crisis; The Visual Framing of Surveillance; The Debate Over White House Photo Access; The Picture from Syria; or The War on Women. Each post contains a full replay of the broadcast, along with 2-3 minute highlight videos from each photo discussed. You can find all the full salons here.