Discovering Forgotten Visual Histories, with Alan Govenar & Adam Forgash

Photographs preserve what daily life cannot—moments that would otherwise fade into obscurity. In today’s show, we explore this topic through a nexus of American culture, popular folklore, and photographic archives in a chat with Alan Govenar and Adam Forgash, two photographers and visual historians who are passionate about unearthing and preserving forgotten stories.

Coming from different backgrounds, Alan’s formal training and experience with the non-profit Documentary Arts complements Adam’s hands-on skills hunting for treasures and selling vintage photographica at New York’s Chelsea Flea Market.

A few of the points they discuss include: the central role of the community photographer in twentieth-century life, the cultural significance of Route 66 as a favored connection point, the painstaking process of resurrecting century-old portraits from damaged glass plates, and much more.

As Adam notes about these rescued portraits now titled “Faces of the Mother Road,” “I've had these kinds of collections over the last 30 years and kind of let them go, but this one, I knew there was something special about it. So, as soon as I realized what I was looking at, I stopped. I put it in climate control storage. I got archival paper to put it in. I started a numbering system. 

“It feels pretty good,” he adds, “to get more serious about my craft, realizing that I am a photo historian, even though I don't have a degree.”

Guests: Alan Govenar & Adam Forgash

Episode Timeline:

• 3:07: Alan Govenar’s early connections to photography and his introduction to Stoney, the hunchbacked tattoo artist who jumpstarted his photo career.
• 8:33: The role various media has played in Alan’s work as an interdisciplinary artist and how changes to media has influenced his storytelling.
• 11:37: Adam Forgash describes New York’s Chelsea Flea Market and the treasure trove of 8,000 glass negatives he discovered there.
• 16:18: A peek into the Texas African American Photography Archive, and the era of the community photographer.
• 22:02: Storytelling within a historical context and a photographer’s accountability in reverse engineering a story from vestiges of the past.
• 27:01: Adam’s accidental discovery of a second half to SJ Tyler’s archive and tracking down information about the photographer.
• 30:49: Connecting the story of SJ Tyler’s portrait studio to an exhibit celebrating the centennial of Route 66.

32:28: Episode Break

• 33:47: Making distinctions between Alan’s formal education in folklore and Adam’s schooling at the hands of New York’s Chelsea flea market crowd. 
• 40:23: Adam’s approach to beginning this project, and how SJ Tyler’s collection differed from past archives he’s worked on.
• 42:52: Connections between Tyler’s photographs and the significance of travel on Route 66, plus Adam’s relationship to Tulsa.
• 44:26: Placing photographic stories in a wider historical context and their connection to the communities being served.
• 49:54: Funding and sponsorship for large photographic projects and the benefits to working with a registered non-profit as a pass-through organization.

Guest Bios:
Alan Govenar is an acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, writer and folklorist. A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than 40 books, Alan is also founder and president of the organization Documentary Arts, which he created to spotlight marginalized voices and cultures, through projects such as the Texas African American Photography Archive.

As a filmmaker, Alan has produced and directed documentaries in association with NOVA, ARTE, and PBS. And as a playwright, he has written and produced musicals that have been performed from New York City to major venues across Europe.

This year marks some major milestones in Alan’s career, with a photography retrospective at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, a new documentary film premiering at New York’s Cinema Village, and the publication of three new books, including Kinship & Community, released by Aperture. 

Adam Forgash is a photographer, filmmaker, photo history specialist, and proud former Oklahoman. In 2023, while foraging for visual treasures at New York’s famed Chelsea Flea Market, Adam happened upon the archive of the undiscovered portrait photographer Sidney J Tyler. From 1913 to 1943, Tyler operated a photo studio in Afton, Oklahoma, making portraits of everyday subjects as they passed through the region, during a break in their travels along Route 66, otherwise known as the “Mother Road”. This once-lost visual history of northeast Oklahoma features working-class people of all races and communities, including the famed Tuskegee airmen. 

After two years of intensive research into Tyler’s archive, Adam’s project, now titled Faces of the Mother Road: The Lost Portraits of S.J. Tyler - A Route 66 Story, is poised to make a lasting impact on Oklahoma’s visual and historical narrative, just in time for the centennial of Route 66 in 2026.

Stay Connected:

• Alan Govenar Documentary Arts Website: https://www.docarts.com/ 
• Adam Forgash Website: https://adamforgash.com/ 
• Adam Forgash Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamforgash/

Credits:

• Host: Derek Fahsbender
• Senior Creative Producer: Jill Waterman
• Senior Technical Producer: Mike Weinstein
• Executive Producer: Richard Stevens