# Discovering Forgotten Visual Histories, with Alan Govenar & Adam Forgash

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/b-h-photography-podcast-202942/discovering-forgotten-visual-histories-with-alan-govenar-adam-forgash.md
Podcast: [B&H Photography Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/b-h-photography-podcast-202942)
Published: 2025-12-04T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://bhphotopodcast.libsyn.com/discovering-forgotten-visual-histories-with-alan-govenar-adam-forgash
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/bhphotopodcast/BHPOD_GOVENAR-FORGASH_MIX-15LUFS_12032025.mp3?dest-id=480767
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/b-h-photography-podcast-202942/episodes/discovering-forgotten-visual-histories-with-alan-govenar-adam-forgash
Duration seconds: 3649

## Resource

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 de…

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