193: Eric Gottesman Asks: Whose Questions Get Asked -Whose Story is Told?

What happens an artist realizes that they can never be the only one with questions?From that reckoning, artist Eric Gottesman spent the next twenty-five years rethinking what an artist with a camera, or a big idea is actually for. In this conversation with Bill Cleveland, Gottesman traces his path from documentary photographer to collaborative image-maker in Addis Ababa's AIDS-affected communities, and eventually to co-founding For Freedoms, the artist-led initiative that has turned billboards, town halls, and even a Super PAC into tools for civic discourse.

This is a conversation about authorship, collectivity, and the culture of inquiry at the heart of both artmaking and a thriving democracy.

In this episode we explore:

How asking the right question often matters more than delivering the right answer.Why Eric Gottesman says he has never made art alone. And why he thinks that's true for everyone.A “composite nation:” Drawing on Frederick Douglass, Gottesman is now developing projects that imagine an American identity built from multiplicity and complexity rather than a single official story.

Notable MentionsPeople

Eric Gottesman — Artist, educator, writer, and organizer whose collaborative work addresses nationalism, migration, structural violence, history, and civic life. He is a co-founder of For Freedoms.

Wendy Ewald — Photographer and one of Gottesman’s mentors. Her decades of co-authored photography projects challenge conventional divisions between photographer, subject, observer, and author.

Hank Willis Thomas — Conceptual artist and For Freedoms co-founder whose work examines identity, history, media, popular culture, and representation.

Claudia L. Peña — Executive director of For Freedoms, UCLA law lecturer, and practitioner of transformative and restorative justice. She appears with Gottesman and Thomas in the episode’s Skoll World Forum excerpt.

Baalu Girma — Influential Ethiopian journalist and novelist who disappeared after publishing Oromay, his critique of the Derg regime and its military campaign in Eritrea.

Emily Shur — Photographer who worked with Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, and Wyatt Gallery to create contemporary photographic versions of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms.

Wyatt Gallery — Photographer, For Freedoms co-founder, and producer of the contemporary Four Freedoms project.