(Courtesy Interview)

Ryan Trecartin and Elad Lassry sat down recently for a chat about art, dogs and other animals (e.g. sheep) for Interview magazine.

Mr. Lassry is hot off a billboard at the High Line and the two have good banter. An excerpt follows:

LASSRY: When I was starting out, conceptual photography had become something that had to be amateur—like, that had to be black-and-white, or photocopied, or really not an object in order to be taken seriously. It had to work against technical mastery, and so on. So I think that my work is full of obstacles in the sense that it does look highly familiar and accessible. It does look like it's already "solved at first sight." It does look like it's part of a larger industry. There are all these clues in the initial interaction with the work that offer a safe space, and of course, they collapse very quickly, depending on how much you engage with the work. I used to refer to my photos as free radicals—and maybe that has to do with this idea of navigating history.

Read more here.