The Messy Truth – Conversations on Photography

In today's minisode, Gem Fletcher speaks to Brea Souders about her latest book Another Online Pervert, which charts her multi-year conversation with a female-programmed chatbot. The book published by Mack, combines excerpts from their conversation with images from her archive. It is highly charged, jumping between the playful and mundane to the dark and ruthless as she unpacks the complex relationship between humans and machines in a provocative publication that invites us to think about the future of our own humanity. 

The TMT minisodes are short, focused conversations with photographers on books, exhibitions, and special projects, focusing on not just how these endeavours came into being but also what they bring out in us in terms of growth and reflection.

Follow Brea on Instagram.  Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. It really helps like minded people find the podcast. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. 

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In this minisode, Gem Fletcher speaks to previous guest Micaiah Carter about his first monograph, What’s My Name. The book, published by Prestel, charts over a decade of Micaiah's work interlaced with images from his parent's archives dating back to the 1960s. His work, often celebratory in tone, is a true care practice for everyone he collaborates with. We dig into the emotional labour of making a book, what he discovered about himself and what he had to overcome to put himself out there to create a new American dream. 

The TMT minisodes are short, focused conversations with photographers on books, exhibitions, and special projects, focusing on not just how these endeavours came into being but also what they bring out in us in terms of growth and reflection.

Follow Micaiah on Instagram. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. It really helps like minded people find the podcast. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. 

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Gem Fletcher chats to Rene Matić about a moment of flux in their practice. They are looking differently at the world, their work and the relationships they hold close. There is a change of pace, intention and visual language brewing for the artist who has literally not stopped making since they picked up a camera five years ago. In the episode, they talk about their first solo show, Kiss them from me, at Chapter NY. They also dig into friendship, love, being with each other, tiredness, optimism, nationalism and patriotism and above all rudeness, which is a guiding principle of their practice. 

Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" - an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Matić draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival. 

Follow Rene on Instagram. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode please leave a review. It really helps like-minded people find the podcast. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. 

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Andi Galdi Vinko is an internationally acclaimed artist working in photography. Her work draws visual analogies between intensely personal and intimate experiences of motherhood and womanhood and universal human experiences of coming of age, ageing, loss, and the conflict between Western and Eastern European ideologies. In this episode, we talk about her award-winning book, Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back and everything that went into the project. We also talk about survival strategies and the experience of being a working parent and artist. 

Andi has been commissioned and published in magazines such as the FT Weekend, Apollo Magazine, Wallpaper, The Guardian, The Observer, Zeit Magazine, Volkstrant Magazine, M Le Monde, Die Zeit, El Pais, i-D, Dazed, Vice, The New Yorker, Tate etc, among others. Her recently published book (Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back, Trolleybooks, London) was launched at Unseen Amsterdam, at Paris Photo at Ruptures Associes, at TJ Boulting Gallery in London, and Bildband in Berlin with Felix Hoffman. She also won the 2023 Kraszna Krausz Book Award. 

Follow Andi @andigaldi & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Iranian-American photographer Sinna Nasseri describes his ability to catapult viewers into every scene he captures as a "gonzo journalism curiosity." He brings the audience along with him, always thinking about what they want to see. As a self-taught photographer, the path was in no way easy, and he continues to craft a life that enables him to work but with the necessary sacrifices. In a surprising turn of events, 2020 became the year that put Sinna on the map. On the show, we talk about the highs and lows of building a career in the photo industry, what makes a good photo, the pressure and discomfort that comes with figuring out your style and a rhythm of working, while also understanding the conditions in which you do your best work.

The photographer has spent the last three years working on assignments for The New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Departures, The Sunday Times and Interview Magazine and collaborating with clients like Thom Browne. He lives and works in LA.

Follow Sinna @strange.victory & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Since the 1990s, Vinca Petersen's work has remained an authentic voice of European counterculture, providing diaristic windows onto alternative spaces and lifestyles. A multidisciplinary artist who works in the area of social practice, Petersen's works emerge from a deep social and political engagement with underrepresented communities, giving them a voice and recognition. Her photographic oeuvre captures a period spanning 1990-2004, documenting the artist’s experiences as part of the free party and traveller community. The images juxtapose the sense of escapism and euphoria of this unique cultural moment with the oppressive political climate which outlawed the lifestyles of those responsible for Britain’s rave scene. As well as archiving thousands of photographic images, Petersen has attempted to document a way of life: its flyers, posters and clothes; her work constitutes an archive that records the techno-fuelled raves and lives of the travellers who organised them, but also a creative response to breaking barriers between individuals.

Vinca Petersen’s (b.1973) recent solo exhibitions include Make Social Honey - A Collective Search for Joy, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (2022); Raves and Riots, Edel Assanti, London, UK. Selected group exhibitions include Techno Worlds, Goethe-Institut, Los Angeles, USA (2022); Sweet Harmony: Out of the Underground, HetHEM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2022); It’s a Rave Dave, Giant Gallery, Bournemouth, UK (2021); Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, V&A Dundee, Dundee, UK (2021); Rave, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2019); Seaside Photographed, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2019); Diaristic Books, Turner Contemporary, London, UK (2019). Her work is in several public collections including The Arts Council Collection, London, UK; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; The Monsoon Collection, London, UK; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK. Vinca Petersen (b. 1973) lives on the Isle of Skye. 

You can support Vinca's work here: https://www.patreon.com/VincaPetersen

Follow Vinca @vincapetersen & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Balarama Heller's practice reimagines archetypal symbols found in the natural world. He explores primal symbols and patterns, both real and imagined, working towards a visual language of preverbal awareness. These symbols interact in a ceaseless cycle of creation and destruction, referencing the cosmological, mythological, and atomic scales. During our conversation, we talk about how his personal history informs his work, his research practice and how he is shifting away from direct observation to the most reduced and refined versions of his work. 

Balarama lives and works in New York City. Recent exhibitions include Sacred Place with Aperture Foundation / Artsy. Recent group shows include Maelstrom, at 303 Gallery,  New York, You Can't Win, Jack Black's America curated by Randy Kennedy at Fortnight Institute, What's Outside the Window at ReadingRoom, Melbourne AU, Agnes B New York, New Artists at Red Hook Labs and the 2015 Aperture Summer Open. In 2014, he published his first artist book, Into and Through. Zero at the Bone received 1st place for the 2017 Center Awards Editor’s Choice and runner-up for the 2017 Aperture Portfolio Prize. His 2019 project Sacred Place was featured in Aperture Magazine issue 241, with text by Pico Iyer. 

Follow Balarama @balaramaheller & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism. She melds sculpture, performance, film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking the complex power dynamics between the region and Western nations. 

Her work interrogates the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. In doing this, she’s rigorously 

interrogating the role of images in our lives and psychology, as well as the way they manifest as propaganda in geopolitics. During our conversation, we talk about process, practice, craft, care critique and the importance of spontaneity. 

Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990) received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include Ghostwriter, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2023); Negotiators, Kunsthaus Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, CH  (2022); Ghostwriter, Providence College Galleries, Providence, USA (2022); ILVA, Castello San Basilio, Basilicata, Italy (2022); Levers of Power, Silver Eye Centre for Photography, Pittsburgh, USA (2021); Hotbed, Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, USA (2020); Medium of Exchange, Southern Utah Museum of Art, Utah; CUE Art Foundation, New York; Cincinnati Contemporary Art, Cincinnati and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, all USA (2018-2019). Selected group exhibitions include Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain AmericaA Trillion Sunsets, ICP, New York, USA (2022); Immune Project, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland (2022); Denunciation!, ACC Gallery, Weimar, Germany (2021); deCordova Biennial, deCordova Museum of Art, Lincoln, USA (2019); Ecologies of Darkness, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (2019). Soleimani lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Follow Sheida @sheidajanam & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Alexandra Rose Howland's practice is invested in illustrating the difficult complexities of our existence. Through her work, she seeks to generate a more expansive understanding of how issues around conflict and the climate crisis are portrayed. She does this by resisting the historical notion of photography as a mode of direct representation created by a single author. Instead, she embraces image-making as a social practice, co-creating stories with her participants. 

Alexandra has lived in the Middle East over the last decade, creating work that aims to challenge and expand the ways that geopolitical events are communicated. Her background as an abstract painter informs her practice, resulting in multidimensional projects that use images, found objects, interviews and video. She has shown internationally with both solo and group exhibitions including Leave and Let Us Go (solo), FOAM Museum Amsterdam, Road to Mosul (solo), London, Textured to Only Us (solo), Los Angeles.  Leave and Let Us Go was published by GOST Books in 2021.

Follow Alexandra @alexandrahowland & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Myriam Boulos’s practice is rooted in community and resistance, exploring the complex ways our bodies metabolise trauma, assert resistance, seek pleasure and express layers of identity. During our conversation, we talk about Myriam’s projects through the lens of intimacy, survival, political agency, resistance and revolution and perhaps most importantly, consent. 

Myriam Boulos was born in 1992 in Lebanon. At the age of 16 she started to use her camera to question Beirut, its people, and her place among them. She graduated with a master degree in photography from L’Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts in 2015. Myriam took part in both national and international collective exhibitions, including “Infinite Identities” (Amsterdam), 3ème biennale des photographes du monde arabe (Paris), and “C’est Beyrouth” (Paris). Today she uses photography to explore, defy and resist society. In 2021 she was awarded the Grand prix ISEM and she joined Magnum. She is the Photo Director of Al Hayya Magazine and is currently working on her first book, What’s Ours, in collaboration with Aperture.

Follow Myriam @myriamboulos & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Throughout her career, Photo Director Jacqueline Bates has harnessed the power of photography to give visual journalism new dimension. During our conversation, we talk about her new role at the New York Times Opinion section in which she’s publishing up to 90 stories a week. We discuss the blurring of art and editorial, how she works with emerging talent and we visit some of her most fascinating commissions. As you will hear throughout the episode, Jackie is deeply committed to her responsibility as a photo director, always in service of the story, while taking creative risks and expanding the notion of who can work editorially in meaningful ways. 

Prior to the NYT Opinion Section, Jacqueline was the founding photography director of The California Sunday Magazine, the Pulitzer Prize-winning print magazine, and “Pop-Up Magazine,” the acclaimed live-magazine show. Under her direction, California Sunday won the National Magazine Award for photography in 2016 and 2017, the first title in 25 years to win in consecutive years. Previously, she was the senior photo editor of W Magazine and worked in the photo departments of ELLE, Interview and Wired. She holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, and teaches at Parsons School of Design.  

Follow Jackie @jackiecbates & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher speaks to photographer and artist Rhiannon Adam. Her work is heavily influenced by her nomadic childhood spent at sea, sailing around the world with her parents. Little photographic evidence of this period in her life exists, igniting an interest in the influence of photography on recall, the notion of the photograph as a physical object, and the image as an intersection between fact and fiction – themes that continue throughout her work. 

In 2015, supported by the BBC/Royal Geographical Society, Adam travelled to the remote island community of Pitcairn in the South Pacific. Pitcairn measures just two miles by one mile and is home to just 42 British subjects, descendants from the Mutiny on the Bounty. A decade ago, the island’s romantic image was tarnished by a string of high profile sexual abuse trials. As a result, islanders are particularly reticent about accepting outsiders. With trip duration dictated by the quarterly supply vessel, there would be no way off for three arduous months. Adam’s project is the first in-depth photographic project to take place on the island, and made its debut at Francesca Maffeo Gallery in Spring 2018. The project won the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography in 2020. The resulting book, Big Fence / Pitcairn Island (Blow Up Press), was formally released in April 2022 on the anniversary of the Bounty Mutiny and appeared in the final 10 titles selected for the Photography Book Award at the 2022 Kraszna Krausz Foundation book awards. 

In the show, we have a roving conversation about how projects unravel, creative intentions, working in discomfort, and the challenges of working within a broken system, VIA conversations about bookmaking, multifaceted careers, beauty, and going to space - which Rhiannon actually is doing with Space X and Dear Moon. But at the heart of it are some interesting ideas about what photography is and can do. 

You can find our more about Dear Moon and Rhiannons trip to space here.

Follow Rhiannon @rhiannon_adam & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher speaks to London-based photographer Steph Wilson. For Steph, The body is such a vast universe of paradoxes that will never get old. Traversing the space between fine art and fashion, Steph cherishes humour and joy, while exploring the possibilities of our bodies. She is interested in the edges; the awkward, uncomfortable, ugly, shameful and challenging and takes these elements to assert new modes of beauty and being. Shooting commercial, editorial and personal work, her expansive practice has manifested into work for Gucci, Versace, Nike, Dazed & Confused and Vogue Italia.

Follow Steph @stephwilsonshoots & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher speaks to London-based photographer Harley Weir. In this episode we discuss how her approach to image making is one rooted in alchemy - creating space for the unexpected. She fuses materials together that challenge each other, evoking an immediate and arresting world, familiar to us and filled with emotion, yet suggestive of a darker and more compulsive set of psychic and material forces. Beyond her limitless talent, what's captivating about Harley is her honesty - about her process, the industry and what her practice enables her to do. 

Harley is a London based widely-acclaimed fashion photographer whose work has been commissioned by brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Isabel Marant, Marc Jacobs. She has published five books to date and exhibited in a number of institutions including Foam Amsterdam and MEP and Hannah Barry Gallery. What unites this work is a highly-attuned sense of colour and composition that disrupts notions of gaze, desire, sexuality and beauty while also speaking to a range of political and social issues including plastic waste, the rights of refugees and migrants, marine conservation. Her practice is nor interested in being one thing, instead it explores multiple avenues at any one time. 

Follow Harley @harleyweir & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher speaks to artist Audrey Blue (nee Gillespie) in the final episode of a three-part series in partnership with Seen Fifteen Gallery. The Troubles Generation - an ongoing curatorial project by Vivienne Gamble invites artists who grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles to shed new light on the impact of being brought up in an era of intense sectarian violence.

Audrey Blue is a fine artist from Derry, Northern Ireland. Currently based in Belfast, her media includes analogue photography, painting and printmaking. Blue’s themes explore queerness, mortality and conflict with youth and anxiety. This Hurts has been exhibited in Ireland at Photo Ireland Photography Festival (2022), Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery “Street View” (2022) and within the major group exhibition, Saturation, at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. Audrey Blue is a selected artist for New Irish Works (Photo Ireland) and the European photography platform, FUTURES. 

Looking ahead to a significant future moment in UK and Irish history with the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement in 2023, The Troubles Generation project seeks to examine the legacy of The Troubles from the viewpoint of artists born into its divided society and with lived experience of growing up with conflict as the backdrop to their lives. Taking a phased approach to developing photographic projects and new writing, the ultimate ambition is to create a large-scale touring exhibition in 2023. The project's first phase at Seen Fifteen has been generously supported by the Genesis Kickstart Fund, enabling three solo exhibitions with Martin Seeds, Gareth McConnell and Audrey Blue. 

Seen Fifteen is an independent emerging gallery and project space in Peckham, South East London. Seen Fifteen’s artistic programme champions contemporary photography with a focus on emerging, diverse and experimental artists who expand the boundaries of the medium. Founded in 2015 by curator Vivienne Gamble, the gallery has hosted a number of widely acclaimed first UK solo shows for breakthrough photographic artists such as Laura El-Tantawy, Jan McCullough, Maya Rochat and Martin Seeds. 

Follow Audrey @artdrey__ Seen Fifteen @seenfifteen & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher speaks to photographer Gareth McConnell in the second episode of a three-part series in partnership with Seen Fifteen Gallery. The Troubles Generation - an ongoing curatorial project by Vivienne Gamble invites artists who grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles to shed new light on the impact of being brought up in an era of intense sectarian violence. 

Gareth McConnell is a London-based photographer with diverse interests and many styles of approach. His work as a fine artist has been given recognition in monographs, cover features, and articles including from Steidl/Photoworks, Frieze, and Aperture. His fine art prints are widely collected. In the past, he has worked as a documentary photographer for the New York Times, and served high-end fashion – Vogue Homme, Pop, and AnOther, and clients like Dior, Gucci and Chloe. He has worked in the music industry with artists including Sia, Disclosure and Ivan Smagghe. McConnell has actively instigated non-commercial projects with other artists and writers, publishing them under his imprint Sorika, and has co-curated a show at London’s ICA, and talk events at the ICA and Tate Modern. McConnell has shown at many galleries and fairs, including Carl Freedman Gallery, Frieze Art Fair, Kasmin Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Photographers’ Gallery. He is represented in significant private and public collections. He increasingly values a direct relationship with audiences through his websites and social media platforms. 

Looking ahead to a significant future moment in UK and Irish history with the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement in 2023, The Troubles Generation project seeks to examine the legacy of The Troubles from the viewpoint of artists born into its divided society and with lived experience of growing up with conflict as the backdrop to their lives. Taking a phased approach to developing photographic projects and new writing, the ultimate ambition is to create a large-scale touring exhibition in 2023. The project's first phase at Seen Fifteen has been generously supported by the Genesis Kickstart Fund, enabling three solo exhibitions with Martin Seeds, Gareth McConnell and Audrey Blue. 

Seen Fifteen is an independent emerging gallery and project space in Peckham, South East London. Seen Fifteen’s artistic programme champions contemporary photography with a focus on emerging, diverse and experimental artists who expand the boundaries of the medium. Founded in 2015 by curator Vivienne Gamble, the gallery has hosted a number of widely acclaimed first UK solo shows for breakthrough photographic artists such as Laura El-Tantawy, Jan McCullough, Maya Rochat and Martin Seeds. 

Follow Gareth @garethwmcconnell Seen Fifteen @seenfifteen & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher speaks to photographer and educator Martin Seeds as part of a three-part series in partnership with Seen Fifteen Gallery. The Troubles Generation - an ongoing curatorial project by Vivienne Gamble invites artists who grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles to shed new light on the impact of being brought up in an era of intense sectarian violence. 

Originally from Belfast, Martin Seed’s practice is shaped by his relationship with his Northern Irish homeland. Personal narratives, the relationship to place, politics, conflict, sameness and difference, diaspora and myth are underlying themes that recur and interconnect in his work. He experiments with combinations of analogue and digital imaging technologies as a way to draw attention to the conflicting experiences of identity, history and culture. Martin Seeds was nominated for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2020 for his solo exhibition, Violence Religion Injustice Death, at Seen Fifteen in 2019.

Looking ahead to a significant future moment in UK and Irish history with the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement in 2023, The Troubles Generation project seeks to examine the legacy of The Troubles from the viewpoint of artists born into its divided society and with lived experience of growing up with conflict as the backdrop to their lives. Taking a phased approach to developing photographic projects and new writing, the ultimate ambition is to create a large-scale touring exhibition in 2023. The project's first phase at Seen Fifteen has been generously supported by the Genesis Kickstart Fund, enabling three solo exhibitions with Martin Seeds, Gareth McConnell and Audrey Blue. 

Seen Fifteen is an independent emerging gallery and project space in Peckham, South East London. Seen Fifteen’s artistic programme champions contemporary photography with a focus on emerging, diverse and experimental artists who expand the boundaries of the medium. Founded in 2015 by curator Vivienne Gamble, the gallery has hosted a number of widely acclaimed first UK solo shows for breakthrough photographic artists such as Laura El-Tantawy, Jan McCullough, Maya Rochat and Martin Seeds. 

Follow Martin @martinseeds Seen Fifteen @seenfifteen & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats with photographer Tami Aftab. They dive into The Dog’s In The Car - a powerful and intimate collaboration between Tami Aftab and her father Tony, about his short-term memory loss and how it shapes his life and that of the wider family. Since graduating during the pandemic, Tami has worked tirelessly to cement herself as one to watch. During the conversation, we discuss how she works, the pressures of starting out, money, productivity, social media and grappling with the tension between ambition and patience.

Tami Aftab is an English-Pakistani photographer based in London. In addition to her personal work, she has shot for clients including Stella McCartney, Google, Hunter, Rapha and Sony Music. She has created editorials for the NYT, Family Portrait Magazine, Riposte, WeTransfer and Atmos, as well as exhibiting at Photoville and Format Festival. 

Follow Tami @tamiaftab - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats with artist and educator Zora J. Murff. They deep dive into Zora’s latest book True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis), a manual for coming to terms with the historical and contemporary realities of America’s divisive structures of privilege and caste. Since leaving social work to pursue photography over a decade ago, Zora’s work has consistently grappled with the complicit entanglement of the medium in the histories of spectacle, commodification, and race, often contextualizing his own photographs with found and appropriated images and commissioned texts. True Colors continues that work, expanding to address the act of remembering and the politics of self, which Murff identifies as “the duality of Black patriotism and the challenges of finding belonging in places not made for me—of creating an affirmation in a moment of crisis as I learn to remake myself in my own image.” The book open’s up discussion about education, collaboration, working with institutions, audience and liberation. 

Zora J Murff is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Arkansas. He received his MFA from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and holds a BS in Psychology from Iowa State University. Merging his educational experiences, Murff uses his practice to highlight intersections between various social systems and art. He has published books with Aint-Bad Editions and Kris Graves Projects. His monograph, At No Point In Between (Dais Books), was selected as the winner of the Independently Published category of the Lucie Foundation Photo Book Awards. In 2020 Murff was announced as the winner of the inaugural Next Step prize, awarded by Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. His work was presented at the 2021 Rencontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award.

Follow Zora’s work here - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats with artist Jess T. Dugan. They discuss what it takes to cultivate and maintain an artistic practice, what Jess learned from their own journey, and how the mantra "meet everyone, learn everything," fuelled their approach to both crafting a practice and a business. We cover so much from developing relationships, holding space for reflection, building a community around your work, and what true representation means. 

Jess is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. Their work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 45 museums throughout the United States. Jess’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015).

Follow Jess on Instagram @jesstdugan - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats with editor, writer and curator Elisa Medde. They discuss how an issue of Foam Magazine comes together in addition to a range of issues currently affecting the photo industry. They talk about systems, value, visual literacy, new talent, nurture and the importance of friction and criticism.

Elisa is Editor-in-Chief of Foam Magazine, Amsterdam, where she has based a large part of her activities since 2012. With a background in Art History, Iconology and Photographic Studies, Elisa’s research reflects on the relationship between image, communication and power structures. She has been a nominator for a number of prizes and chaired various juries. She loves collaborating with educational programs as a lecturer and jury member, such as KABK, ECAL, Brera Academy, Fotofilmic and many more. Next to curating paper and physical spaces, she regularly writes for Foam Magazine and various publications such as C4 Journal, Something We Africans Got, Vogue Italia / L'Uomo Vogue, YET Magazine and many artists’ books.

Follow Elisa on Instagram @elsmdd - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to artist and professor Elle Pérez. Elle generously lets us into their world from the early but formative days as a Bronx punk to the ways in which their art has shifted strategies and metaphors and now explores the subtle and visceral moments of emotion and power. We talk about the profound love and intimacy that is the lifeblood of their art and how threads and relationships between types of images and modes of working bring about new gestures.

Elle Pérez has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, 47 Canal and Commonwealth and Council. Their work has also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barbican and in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. They are also the Assistant Professor of Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Follow Elle on Instagram @elleperex - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to artist Anastasia Samoylova who moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. By utilizing tools and strategies related to digital media and commercial photography, her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque.

Her new book Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova & Walker Evans was published by Steidl in 2022. In 2020-2021 her ongoing project FloodZone was presented in solo exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art; HistoryMiami Museum; Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; and The Print Center Philadelphia. The book of the project was published by Steidl in 2019. In 2022 the project will be exhibited at the Eastman Museum. Samoylova is shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022.

In this conversation, we discuss Ana’s journey, and how her early work built to where she is today, united by the urgency of climate anxiety and questioning of the pictured world we occupy. We talk about publishing, process, artistic ecosystems, the artist as a cultural worker and much more. 

Follow Ana on Instagram @anasamoylova and follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to photographer and director Campbell Addy. They come together to discuss Cambell’s first monograph Feeling Seen published by Prestel. Much has happened since the pair recorded the first episode back in 2018. This is a truly special episode that speaks to what it means to be a young artist, how to navigate fashion and advertising and not lose yourself, what it means to meet the people who helped form you as an artist and how community shapes everything.

Campbell has worked with editorial outlets Vogue, Financial Times, Dazed, Luncheon Magazine, Double Magazine, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Garage Magazine. His work has been exhibited internationally including at the world-renowned Somerset House. Campbell is also the founder of Nii Journal, a biannual arts and culture publication, and of Nii Agency, a modelling and casting agency dedicated to representing and celebrating diversity.

In this conversation, we discuss Campbell’s journey since the first episode, what he has discovered about himself and making work along the way touching upon community, process, creative practice and the future.

Check out my first conversation with Campbell on episode 4 here. 

Follow Campbell on Instagram @campbelladdy - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to the artist Rory Hamovit. Rory uses his work as a site to interrogate and explore notions of masculinity, queerness, performance and history. Rory understands what it takes to really commit to a studio practice - to embrace introspection and humour - to cultivate a space that is unrestrained and playful. His work is about craftsmanship on multiple plains from the physicality of building and making, to always questioning and reframing. He inserts vulnerability as a strategy for world-building. Rory recently graduated with his MFA from Yale School of Art.

In this conversation, we discuss Rory’s journey, how he thinks about performance, process, vulnerability, collaboration and so much more. 

Follow Rory on Instagram @roryhamovit Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to the artist Karla Hiraldo Voleau. Karla’s work revolves around identity, vulnerability, love, gender roles and the mechanisms in human relationships. Using a hybrid model of performance, photography and text, she blurs the lines between fiction and reality. Her practice is one that is constantly in community with strangers, grappling with aspects of humanity that we can all relate to, or struggle with. Karla graduated from ECAL (Switzerland), with an MA in Photography in 2018. Her work was featured at the Rencontres d’Arles 2017 & 2019, the Fotomuseum of Winterthur, or the BIP Photo festival of Liège (Belgium) in 2020. She is part of the Foam Talent 2020 edition, and of the Olympus Recommended Fellowship 2020. Her first photobook ‘Hola Mi Amol’ was part of the Aperture First Book Awards in Paris Photo 2019.

In this conversation, we discuss Karla’s journey, how she thinks about performance, process, vulnerability, collaboration and audience and so much more. 

Follow Karla on Instagram @karla.voleau Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to the curator, writer and creative consultant Charlotte Cotton. Charlotte has explored photographic culture for over twenty years and held positions including curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, head of programming at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and curator-in-residence at Katonah Museum of Art, NY; International Center of Photography, NY; and California Museum of Photography. Her book, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, is published in ten languages and has been a key text in charting the rise of photography as an undisputed art form in the 21st century. In Photography is Magic she surveys over eighty artists whose photographic practices shape the possibilities of our contemporary image environment and in Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self addresses the complex intersections of our rights to be seen and heard while claiming the privilege of privacy. She has contributed to many more books and essays exploring photography, art and fashion. 

In this conversation, we discuss Charlotte’s journey, how she thinks about the future, process, ethics, collaboration and audience and so much more. 

Follow Charlotte on Instagram @pimcharlottecotton Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to photographer and gallery director Ying Ang. Ying’s work is about active and conscious looking. She grapples with political and social issues that often alter the landscape of our mind in challenging, isolating and revelatory ways. Through unflinching exploration that traverses the boundaries of process, materiality and self, she crafts remarkable works fueled by the type of interior rage that we have seen harnessed as political fuel in so many social movements throughout history.

Her recent book, The Quickening: A memoir on matrescence, explores the transformation and lived experience of a woman in her motherhood and postpartum depression/anxiety. The work interrogates the under-represented transition of biological, psychological and social identity during a complex and yet ubiquitous phase of life.

In this conversation we discuss process, motivation, grappling with self-censorship, survival and reckoning with the complex reality of being an artist and parent. 

Follow Ying on Instagram @yingang Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to artist Donavon Smallwood who uses the camera as a means of exploring humankind. Through intimate images that transcend surface, he cultivates a deeper sense of consciousness. Despite only shooting for a few years, Donavon has crafted his own visual language, one rooted in a community and a connection with the divine. 

In Languor, his first book - an ode to NYC’s Central park - he accentuates the beauty and stillness of nature as well as creating some powerful encounters with strangers. With the pandemic and the history of Seneca Village in mind, the project explores hidden histories and how they impact belonging. The work is an examination of ideas about nature, home, tranquillity, and escape. 

In this conversation, we discuss Donavon’s creative process and journey in the industry so far. We talk about balancing commercial, personal and editorial work, influences and his hopes for the future. 

Follow Donavon on Instagram @xdonavon Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to artist Brea Souders. Brea is known for disrupting our assumptions of what photography is. She does this through a multifaceted practice that defies categorisation. She is constantly shifting tools, processes and strategies, creating images that are unfamiliar and unfixed. 

In Eleven Years, her first monograph published by Saint Lucy Books, six bodies of work evoke a sense of wonder while grappling with the enduring challenge of climate change, technology, trauma and belonging. Here, we experience the decisions that form her distinct visual language from fleeting materiality, a seductive use of colour and how she allows chance to infiltrate her rigorous process.

In this conversation, we discuss Brea’s creative process and how chance plays a critical part in everything she does. We discuss performance, experimentation, how practice evolves over time and how life and art intertwine. 

Follow Brea on Instagram @breasouders Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to Emily Keegin, Freelance Photo Director. She has created images for The Fader, No Man’s Land, Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, IBM and many more. As a prominent editor, she understands how the physical, human and cognitive need to blend to make a great photograph.

Emily is constantly thinking about how images come into being and how they influence what we see, think and believe. During the pandemic, she began to share her research and reflections on Instagram  - an enlightening experience for anyone fascinated by photography's omnipresent role in our lives. In this kind of casual visual anthropology, she invites us into her particular way of seeing the world with care, humour, joy and endless curiosity.

In this conversation, we discuss Emily's relationship to photography and how she thinks about commissioning and working with photographers to support them in doing their best work. We talk about the impact of photography and its relationship to culture and power. We talk about money, the challenges facing editors and photographers in the current climate and much more.

Follow Emily on Instagram @emily_elsie Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher chats to Rose Marie Cromwell. The Miami-based artist whose work is rooted in the language of documentary photography but subverts many of its tropes by creating tension between the real and the fabricated, the autobiographical and the political to convey lyrical stories about contemporary life, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. While her photographs critically address issues of politics, economic injustice, and environmentalism, she takes a sidelong approach, revealing how these powerful forces subtly manifest in the built environment or the human body. Though they depict everyday objects and commonplace scenes, her photographs often verge on abstraction to express dreamlike states and a sense of disorientation in the face of globalization.

Throughout the episode we traverse three bodies of work including El Libro Supremo de la Suerte - a portrayal of Cuba created over eight years that continues defying expectations and interpretations. King of Fish, a ten-year project about a community living alongside the Panama canal and Eclipse, a study of the physical, psychological, and spiritual changes of motherhood.

In the episode we talk about everything from visual strategies, the role of place and time, building long term collaborations, authorship and the role of photobooks in her practice.

Follow Rose on Instagram @rorosiemarie on Instagram and website. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher chats to Coco Capitán, known for her genre-defying work that straddles fashion and fine art. Coco is known for her hybrid practice that is constantly evolving. She has crafted an incredible career across fashion and art in which she uses photography, painting, writing, design to animate her ideas which are often rooted in personal experiences. She is a committed exhibition and bookmaker and has shown her work around the world. Her practice is one that is truly intuitive and lives free from the boundaries of genre and expectations. 

In this episode, we discuss how writing and language is the foundation of her practice, her approach to making commercial and fine artwork, her love of creating spaces to display her work and the genesis of her latest work Naïvy. 

Coco Capitán was born in Seville (Spain) in 1992. Based in London, she completed her MA Master of Fine Arts with honours in the field of photography at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2016. Her art practice straddles the fine art and commercial art worlds and includes photography, painting, and prose. She has produced editorial and commercial collaborations with Gucci, Paco Rabanne, Maison Margiela and her work has appeared in magazines including the New York Times Magazine, Dazed, M Le Monde, Document Journal, and Vogue. She has been a guest speaker for Cambridge University Photographic Society (2016), a member of the Jury for Hyères Fashion & Photography Festival (2016), and was awarded the Photographers Gallery FF+WE Prize (2015).

Most recently Capitán was the subject of a solo museum show entitled Is It Tomorrow Yet? at the Daelim Museum in Seoul, South Korea 2018 and participated in a group exhibition alongside Ren Hang at La Maison européenne de la photographie (Paris, 2019).

Follow Coco on Instagram @cococapitan on Instagram and website. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher chats to Catherine Opie. Known for her powerfully dynamic photography that examines the ideals and norms surrounding the culturally constructed American dream and American identity. She first gained recognition in the 1990s for her series of studio portraits titled Being and Having, in which she photographed gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals drawn from her circle of friends and artists. Opie has travelled extensively across the country exploring the diversity of America’s communities and landscapes, documenting quintessential American subjects—high school football players and the 2008 presidential inauguration—while also continuing to display America’s subcultures through formal portraits. Using dramatic staging, Opie presents cross-dressers, same-sex couples, and tattooed, scarred, and pierced bodies in intimate photographs that evoke traditional Renaissance portraiture—images of power and respect. In her portraits and landscapes, Opie establishes a level of ambiguity of both identity and place by exaggerating masculine or feminine characteristics, or by exaggerating distance, cropping, or blurring her landscapes.

Catherine has just released a new monograph – published by Phaidon, the book is organised in three themes: people, politics and place – the core tenants of her artistic investigation. It’s presented non-chronologically, a curatorial strategy she has been experimenting with for the last decade., which teases out connections between seemingly incongruent bodies of work. The result is a book with such a dynamic visual narrative, you can return to it again and again and see something new.

In the episode we talk about everything from visual strategies, audiences in the digital age, self-doubt, road trips, bearing witness, empathy, belonging and so much more. What is remarkable about Catherine is the ways in which she has the ability to shapeshift as an artist, to show a multiplicity of inquiry, queering the medium over and over again.

Follow Catherine on Instagram @csopie on Instagram. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem Fletcher chats to Charlie Engman. Charlie originally trained as a movement artist as well as studying Japanese and Korean Studies before arriving at photography as a form of visual notation. Now working between commercial and fine art, he is focused on pushing the scope and visual possibility of the world around him. His first monograph, MOM, a collection of images of his mother made over the course of a decade, was recently published and explores ideas of categories, roles, power dynamics, performativity, the expectations and codes of society as well as the relationship they share as collaborators and mother and son. 

In this episode we talk about the dynamics in photography, the role of context and positionality, performativity and so much more. 

Charlie’s commissioned work has appeared in publications such as AnOther Magazine, Dazed, Garage, POP, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Unemployed, and American Vogue and has been used by clients such as Prada, Marni, Adidas, Hermès, Kenzo, Nike, Opening Ceremony, Pucci, Sonia Rykiel, Stella McCartney, and Vivienne Westwood. Charlie has expanded his talents to both styling and design, most recently collaborating with Collina Strada Resort on the design for the 2020 collection. His first monograph, MOM, a collection of images of his mother made over the course of more than a decade, will be published by Edition Patrick Frey in Spring 2020. This body of work was also exhibited as a solo show at Scrap Metal, Toronto. Charlie is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Follow Charlie on Instagram @charlieengman on Instagram and visit www.charlieengman.com to see his work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to Lesley A. Martin, creative director of Aperture. She has edited over one hundred books including collaborations with Zanele Muholi, La Toya Ruby Frazier, Richard Mosse, Hank Willis Thomas, Rinko Kawauchi, Antwaun Sargent, and Sara Cwynar to name just a few. She is also the publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture, Ojo de Pez, FOAM, and IMA magazine, among other publications, and in 2012, she co-founded the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. She is currently a visiting critic at the Yale University School of Art.

In this conversation, we discuss Lesley’s personal relationship to the platform of the book and the wider community. We reflect on the current state of photobook publishing and what it can offer a body of work. We talk about audience, the impact of self-publishing, how to decipher the most compelling pathway through a body of work and how to shepherd a project through a constantly shifting context. We talk about methodology, commitment as well as the rich history of the photobook. 

Follow Lesley on Instagram @la.martin_ Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to writer and curator Ekow Eshun. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Granta, Wired and Aperture. He is Chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing London’s most significant public art programme, and the former director of the ICA. 

In this conversation, we discuss how his upbringing in London informed his creative work. We discuss what he is looking for in emerging artists and his devotion to Black culture. We unpack his latest book Africa State of Mind that gathers together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across Africa, including both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of ‘Africanness’ to reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory – a state of mind as much as a geographical place. Dispensing with the western colonial-era view of Africa in purely geographic or topographic terms. The book is presented in four thematic parts: Hybrid Cities; Inner Landscapes; Zones of Freedom; and Myth and Memory. We move on to talk about his role as a guest curator in the Barbican’s Masculinities: Liberation through Photography exhibition. We talk about the camera as an ally or enabler in addition to a tool of violence and oppression. We talk about motivation, unlearning and the constant commitment to the work. 

Africa State of Mind By Ekow Eshun is published by Thames & Hudson and is available now.

Follow Ekow on Instagram @ekoweshun. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem chats to Laia Abril. Laia is a research-based artist working with photography, text, video and sound. She began her career at the iconic Colors Magazine, which left an indelible mark on how she thinks about process, authorship and collaboration. Now, her art practice is centred on creating a dialogue about hidden realities related to sexuality and gender inequality.

In this episode, we talk about her long term project, A History of Misogyny. Chapter 1 - On Abortion is a gut-wrenching exploration of the repercussions of not having access to abortion and her latest chapter On Rape, aims to call out institutional rape culture. She looks at why structures of justice, law and policy are not only failing survivors but actually encouraging perpetrators by preserving power dynamics which normalise sexual violence.

In this episode, we talk about her methodology and how it evolves over time, how she thinks about audience and how she navigates the emotional weight of the subject matter. For me, Laia is one of the most important artists working today, her work is about starting conversations around urgent issues to play her role in creating a more empathetic and safe world.

Laia Abril (1986) is currently based in Barcelona and represented by the Parisian gallery Les Filles du Calvaire. After graduating from college with a degree in Journalism she moved to New York to focus on photography where she decided to start telling intimate stories that raise uneasy and hidden realities related with sexuality, eating disorders and gender equality. In 2009, she enrolled in the artist residency at FABRICA, the Benetton Research Centre in Treviso, where she worked as a researcher, photo editor and staff photographer at Colors Magazine for 5 years.

Abril’s projects are produced across platforms such as installations, books, web docs, and films. Her work has been shown widely and published internationally and is held in private collections and museums, such as Musée de l’Elysée and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, FRAC in France and MNAC or FotoColectania in Barcelona.

Follow Laia on Instagram @laia_abril on Instagram and visit www.laiaabril.com to see her work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

The content of this podcast could be triggering for some listeners. We discuss topics including eating disorders, sexual violence, abortion, child abuse and trauma. Do take care and if this episode could be harmful to you. Thanks for listening. 

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Gem chats to Quil Lemons, a New York-based artist who has really crafted a distinct visual language which interrogates ideas around masculinity, queerness, race and beauty. His first body of work ‘GlitterBoy’, a tender portrait series of Black men and boys adorned in glitter, examined the shifting notions of gender and beauty as they relate to masculinity in the black community. The project laid the foundation for his bold and daring work that straddles art and fashion.

“I got into photography to preserve my existence, to document my family and what it means to be a black American. I think we are going through a really special moment in America when it comes to image-making when you get to see so many black photographers and creators get to rectify the lack of documentation and cement our existence in American history. It's wild to see history be written in real-time. I think about The New Black Vanguard and how my grandmother is pictured in the same book as Beyonce, celebrating a new form of black beauty.”

In this conversation we talk about everything from family, community, personal style, art making, speaking out, shooting in a pandemic and how he blurs the lines between art and fashion. 

Follow Quil on Instagram @quillemons on Instagram and visit https://quillemons.com to see her work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem chats to Farah Al Qasimi. While her primary line of inquiry examines postcolonial structures of power, gender and taste in the Gulf Arab states, what galvanises the work is her unique ability to embed meaning into visual aesthetics. Farah describes her aesthetic approach as 'so muchness'. Her frames overflow with a heady mix of print, objects and domestic interiors amplified by the tension between harsh lighting and an acidic colour palette. Together they transport us into her psyche, an intimate imagining of her world.

In this conversation, we talk about her journey, her process and what photography means to her. We talk about her recent exhibition Funhouse at Helena Anrather in New York, it’s genesis and how it speaks to key themes within her practice. We talk about performativity, paying attention to your own sensitivity’s and how they can be guiding principles in making work. We discuss how she uses the world as raw material, rather than a direct subject. In doing this she builds worlds in which geography does not matter in order to access a psychic space that defies language.

Farah Al Qasimi (b.1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; lives and works in Brooklyn and Dubai) works in photography, video, and performance. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco; the CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Helena Anrather, New York; The Third Line, Dubai; The List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; and the Houston Center for Photography, Houston.

Follow Farah on Instagram @frequentlyaskedquestion on Instagram and visit https://farahalqasimi.com/ to see her work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this special episode, Gem Fletcher celebrates some of the personal projects, assignments and exhibitions that have been her highlights from the year. Despite the tough reality of 2020, some incredible work has been made, published and exhibited, some of which Gem has already talked about this season and many more which will be discussed in Season 4 that kicks off in January 2021. 

In this episode, she is in conversation with Alona Pardo, Silvia Rosi, Maggie Shannon, Camila Falquez and Sarah Allen about the research, ideas and development that went into their projects. The work in this episode rethinks what photography can do and the more progressive ways it can operate.

Projects covered:

‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography’ curated by Alona Pardo for The Barbican

Exhibition and Guided Tour with Alona Pardo

‘Visions of Black Style’ by artist Silvia Rosi for The New Yorker

‘Extreme Pain, but also, Extreme Joy’ photographed by Maggie Shannon published by The New York Times.

‘Zanele Muholi’ curated by Sarah Allen for Tate Modern.

Exhibition, Zanele Muholi Interview and From a Place of Love Film in collaboration with Tate Exchange.

Being in History by Camila Falquez

Follow today's guests: 

Alona Pardo @alona_pardo

Silvia Rosi @slyrosi

Maggie Shannon @maggiehshannon

Sarah Allen @sarah___allen

Camila Falquez @camilafalquez

Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Gem chats to Sara Urbaez, a photo editor with extensive experience in both brand and editorial spaces. Sara extensive career has seen her work in photo departments at Apple, Airbnb, Wired, Art+ Auction and Modern Painters.

Motivated by photography’s long history of preventing cultures from representing themselves and the dire lack of diverse storytelling in the industry, Sara founded Listo – a platform devoted to dismantling colonial tendencies in photography. Listo is profoundly celebratory and thoughtful in its approach building curiosity through interviews, group shows and industry talks.

In this conversation we talk about her journey into Photo Editing, her process and what she looks for in a pitch. We also discuss how she navigated the industry and was a fierce advocate for diversity in storytelling. We talk about the importance of speaking out and the liberation that comes from building your own world. We talk about her new curatorial platform Listo, its genesis, mission and plans for the future.

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Gem chats to Diana Markosian, known for her intimate approach to storytelling using photography and film. Her projects have taken her to some of the most remote corners of the world, where she has created work that is both conceptual and documentary. Her images can be found in publications like National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times. She holds a Masters of Science from Columbia University in New York.

In this conversation we talk about her journey, her process, what photography means to her and her first monograph Santa Barbara recently published by Aperture which she describes as a time machine. The project is deeply personal, recreating the story of her family’s journey from post-Soviet Russia to the U.S. in the 1990s. We also discuss the dynamic participatory aspect to her approach and how the camera is in many ways a therapeutic tool for her – using it to navigate emotion, trauma, and growth - both her own and that of strangers that she encounters on assignments. Diana is a master of connecting deeply with a story – For her, to be a photographer is to be vulnerable

Diana is fundraising for the Armenia Fund. You can support them at www.armeniafund.org

Follow Diana on Instagram @markosian on Instagram and visit www.dianamarkosian.com to see her work.Her work is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris, France and Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 16th October 2020, Gem chats to photographer Annie Collinge who moves between the world of art and fashion, creativity and commerce in a way that stays true to her ethos and intentions as a photographer. Based in London, she uses photography as a tool for transformation, for imagining a kind of illusion in the everyday. Encountering her work is to happen upon something miraculous unexpectedly - often a playful fantasy that is joyful yet carries a dark undertone.

In this conversation Annie talks about the stories, objects and events in her life that inform her work and creative process. We talk about the idea being central to her photographs and her meticulous and almost obsessive dedication to bringing her vision to life. We discuss collaboration, creative life and motherhood, the importance of knowing yourself and how you work best and what it takes to make a fantasy seem real.

Follow Annie on Instagram @anniecollinge on Instagram and visit www.anniecollinge.org to see her work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 5th September 2020, Gem chats to photographer Philip Montgomery. Renown for his urgent documentary work that focuses on the American experience, his work examines the social issues of our time, utilising observational strategies of documentary and aesthetic approaches of fine art. Based in New York City, he is a graduate of the Photojournalism and Documentary Program at the International Center of Photography. His work been exhibited around the world and is included in the 2020 Foam Talent Exhibition in Berlin.

In this Conversation, Philip shares his journey into the industry and how his ideas and approach to documentary work have evolved throughout his career. We talk about how he connects with the people he photographs, how he works in moments of crisis or unrest and how he seeks to serve the reader. We discuss his approach to lighting, which brings a celestial quality, activating the audience and drawing attention to pervasive details, which might otherwise go unseen. We talk about his upcoming book and the experience of documenting the Covid-19 Pandemic in New York earlier this year.

As the pandemic took hold, Philip was asked to be on an open-ended assignment for the New York Times Magazine, working on their Covid-19 coverage in New York, which was quickly becoming an epicentre of the outbreak. Philip spent two months visually mapping a city deeply affected, from restaurant owners forced into uncertainty, to makeshift testing centres. Yet, the critical story lay behind the doors of the public hospital system. The scenes he captured are urgent, overwhelming and bear witness to the enormity of the situation. What unites these photographs is Philip's unique ability to find moments of stillness in chaos.

Follow Philip on Instagram @philipmontgomery on Instagram and visit philipmontgomery.com to see his work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 4th September 2020, Gem chats to photographer David Brandon Geeting, a photographer renown for his disruptive approach to still life and visual aesthetics. Masterfully playing with ideas of taste, worth, reality and truth, David challenges our expectations of photography, especially those within the commercial and editorial space. David's 2019 monograph Neighbourhood Stroll is a collection of photographs taken outside in his neighbourhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Void of humans, the work dissects what they’ve left behind, and feels more post-apocalyptic than it does present-day. His work has been published in two other monographs including Infinite Power (2015), a whimsical compilation of imagery that he describes as ‘a collection of nothing’, and 2016’s S.K.N.P (South Korean Nature Photography), which sees him investigating relationships between the natural and urban.

In this Conversation, David shares his journey in the industry so far, from how he got started and discovered an interest in objects to how he protects his authorship while working commercially. We talk about the space between intention and intuition and how he navigates both external and personal pressure. We reflect upon his monograph Neighbourhood Stroll and how the work channels new ideas in the light of the events of 2020. David reflects upon the epic shifts of 2020 and how they have impacted how he wants to create work in the future.

Follow David on Instagram @davidbrandongeeting on Instagram and visit dbg.nyc to see his work. David is represented by East. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 7th September 2020, Gem Fletcher chats to Dr Jennifer Good, writer, researcher and educator. Known for her fascinating research on the relationship between photography and trauma. She has written several books and writes for a variety of photography magazines and journals. As the Joint Course Leader on the BA & MA Photojournalism and Documentary course at the London College of Communication, Jen works closely with students on discovering and honing personal ethics through deeply interrogating their own views, politics and experiences, both conscious and subconscious which then in turn informs the work they make.

In this conversation, Jennifer talks about her reflections on what photography is and how it functions in the modern world. We talk about her career path, her research practice and how her study of photography and trauma has evolved. We explore her role as an educator and the work she is doing with student to support a decolonisation of their practice. We talk about visual literacy, ethics, the falsehood of objectivity, and how we all inherit the history of the violence of the camera.

Follow Jennifer on Instagram @jenjgood on Instagram. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected].

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Recorded remotely on 26th July 2020, Gem Fletcher chats with renowned artist, writer and educator Carmen Winant. Her expansive art practice uses text and image to question the patriarchal framework that surrounds women’s bodies. She confronts, unveils and reimagines within her practice to empower agency and liberation. Through the collection and aggregation of found imagery, she examines the limitations of photography to transmute the human experience in all its complexity. My birth, her renowned work that constitutes 2000 images from books, pamphlets and magazines about birth was selected for MOMA's New Photography exhibition in 2018. Carmen also published an evolution of the project in book form with SPBH.

In this conversation, Carmen shares the evolution of her art practice and the challenges she faced defining her work methodologies outside the expectations and traditions of the art world. We talk about how she pivoted away from taking photographs to building worlds using specific and nuanced found imagery. We discuss ways of working and how Carmen seeks to collapse the space between the process and the final product. She takes us behind the scenes on her latest book ‘Notes on Fundamental Joy; seeking the elimination of oppression through the social and political transformation of the patriarchy that otherwise threatens to bury us’. The project is an experimental work that sits at the cross-section of an artists' project and historical document, drawing from archival images borne out of the Ovulars, a series of darkroom/photography workshops held in various feminist & lesbian separatist communes of the early 80s across the Pacific Northwest. We talk about radical optimism, feminism and the psychological and physical act of art-making.

Follow Carmen on Instagram @carmen.winant on Instagram and visit carmenwinant.com to see her work. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected].

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Recorded remotely on 24th April 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to renowned photographer Christopher Anderson, who continues to have a fascinating journey through the industry. He’s created world-renowned photojournalism, some of the most disarming magazine covers of the last two decades as well as a series of fascinating photo books about a range of different subjects from his children to documenting the NYPD in the wake of 9/11. He first gained recognition for his pictures in 1999 when he boarded a handmade, wooden boat with Haitian refugees trying to sail to America. The boat named the Believe In God, sank in the Caribbean. In 2000 the images from that journey would receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

In this conversation, Christopher shares his unexpected and organic journey into photography and his constant search for meaning. We talk about how his career evolved and how he crafts and refines his visual language. We discuss how he approaches portraiture, and it's complex power dynamics. He shares personal insight into sittings with Barack Obama and Donald Trump. We learn about his ethos about picture-making and how he uses photography as a tool to understand the world better. We discuss how he doesn't describe a scene, but instead tries to capture emotional energy exploring what it felt like to be there in that moment. We talk about his new book Pia published by Stanley Barker about his daughter and the process of creating and editing such profoundly personal work. We talk about social media, what it means to him and the highs and lows of the tool itself. We talk about slow photography and the importance of photographers building a body of work.

Follow Christopher on Instagram @christopherandersonphoto on Instagram and visit christopherandersonphoto.com to see his work. Christopher is a member of Magnum Photos. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 9th April 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to renowned photographer Alec Soth, best known for his iconic work Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004). A series of 47 images of people and places which evolved from road trips along the Mississippi River. The project brings together Alec’s documentary style and poetic sensibility capturing the spirit of the community he encountered. 16 years on and he is one of the most celebrated image-makers of our time. He went on to publish over twenty-five books including NIAGARA (2006), Broken Manual (2010), Songbook (2015) and I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating (2019). He has had over fifty solo exhibitions including survey shows organized by Jeu de Paume in Paris (2008), the Walker Art Center in Minnesota (2010) and Media Space in London (2015). He also created Little Brown Mushroom, a multi-media enterprise focused on visual storytelling.

In this conversation, Alec shares his thoughts on his recent body of work I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating (2019), and how his approach to these photographs was a dramatic shift away from the narrative based work he is known for. He shares the motivations behind this work, how he worked and how he feels about it now. We discuss character; working with subjects and the complicated power dynamics at play in portraiture. We learn about his experience creating editorial work and how that sits within his wider practice. We talk about experimentation, the influence of language and why hotel rooms are such profound spaces in his creative process.

Follow Alec on Instagram @littlebrownmushroom on Instagram and visit alecsoth.com to see his work. Alec is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Hammons Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, Loock Galerie in Berlin, and is a member of Magnum Photos. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Recorded remotely on 31st May 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to leading photographer and artist Shaniqwa Jarvis, best known for her fusion of modern fashion aesthetics with sensitive and emotional portraiture. Her approach captures vivid reality across a wide range of subjects, each frame imbued with profound optimism. 

In this conversation, we explore how Shaniqwa found photography, how she entered the creative industry at the turn of the century and all she had to overcome to be the iconic artist she is today. She pressed on through an industry that still to this day is rife with systemic racism and sexism, creating space, not only for herself but for the next generation. She brings focus to the institutional changes urgently needed to ensure the value and worth of new Black and Brown photographers remains intact. She asks, "If there is no worth put on black lives, so how in turn is there suppose to be worth on black art?” We learn about Social Studies, the mentoring program she co-founded for Black and Brown photographers that connects youth communities to creators through curated programming. We explore her collaborations with brands like Adidas, SNS, The Standard Hotels Group and Supreme and what this aspect of her practice means to her. We find out about her sold out self-titled monograph, which documents two decades of her practice and how it shifted the perception and awareness of her work on a global scale. We discuss her joy of collaboration, why portraiture is such a deeply personal endeavour for her and hear about her recent shoot with Erykah Badu.

Follow @sheekswinsalways on Instagram and visit shaniqwajarvis.com to see her wider portfolio. Shaniqwa is represented by IMG Lens. Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram and Twitter. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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Georgie Wileman is a portrait and Documentary photographer focusing on social injustice. Her work highlights our internalised lives, the struggles we live with mentally, physically and emotionally.

What may appear dark at first glance is more about enlightenment. Georgie’s photography seeks to educate audiences on urgent human struggles that often go unseen, while in turn enabling her subjects to feel validated in their suffering.

Gem Fletcher talks to Georgie Wileman about her process and what it takes to capture such vivid emotions.

@georgiewileman

georgiewileman.com

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Micaiah Carter's stylised photographs have graced magazines, screens and billboards capturing icons, past and present with his unique blend of 90’s maximalism and 70’s hues.

He is clear about his intentions as an image-maker – wanting the work to be a quality platform for the representation of people of colour that hasn’t been seen before. What I love about his photographs is how they emanate a powerful hybrid of joy and resilience.

Gem Fletcher chats to Micaiah Carter about collaboration, identity and popular culture.

This conversation was recorded in November 2019.

https://micaiahcarter.com/

@micaiahcarter

Micaiah is also part of See In Black, a collective of Black photographers who uplift and invest in Black visibility. Through the sale of highly-curated prints from Black photographers, we raise funds that support five key pillars of Black advancement: civil rights, education/arts, intersectionality, community building, and criminal justice reform.

https://seeinblack.com/

@seeinblackproject

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Leonard Suryajaya uses his work to speak profoundly to the challenges of being an outsider, and the deep complexity of navigating identities. He embeds his life experiences into every facet of his work, testing the boundaries of intimacy, community and identity. His subjects, often family, friends and lovers, work in a kind of absurd theatre within the frame.

Viewing Suryajaya’s work is an emotional experience. The photographs are disarming, intense and even over stimulating at times. The chaos he conjures feels entirely appropriate for our times. As our world continues to be in flux, his images provide a strange comfort in their authenticity.

Gem Fletcher talks to Leonard Suryajaya about resilience, collaboration and how the act of creating gives him joy and freedom.

@leonardsuryajaya

http://www.leonardsuryajaya.com/

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Born and raised in New York City, with pit stops in South Carolina and New Orleans, photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis has been using the camera for nearly a decade as a tool of empowerment. Battling with depression from an early age, Bobb-Willis found solace behind the lens and has developed a visual language that speaks to the complexities of life: the beautiful, the strange, belonging, isolation, and connection. Inspired by masters like Jacob Lawrence and Benny Andrews, Bobb-Willis applies a ‘painterly’ touch to her photography by documenting people in compromising and disjointed positions as to highlight these complexities.

Toting the line between fashion and contemporary art, her use of is therapeutic and speaks to a desire to claim power and joy in moments of sadness, confusion or confinement. Her photographs are all captured in urban and rural cities, from the South to North, East to West. Bobb-Willis travels throughout the US as a way of finding ‘home’ in any grassy knoll, or city sidewalk, reminding us to stay connected and grounded during life’s transitional moments.

Gem Fletcher talks to Arielle Bobb-Willis about her relationship to the medium, facing adversity and the realities of being a young image-maker working today.

https://ariellebobbwillis.com/

@ariellebobbwillis

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Eva O’Leary has been producing photographs in and around her hometown of Central Pennsylvania, ironically nicknamed Happy Valley. Gaining access to college parties, dorm rooms, and proms and other social spaces of those in the midst of pivotal coming of age moments, O’Leary examines individual vulnerability in these transitional times. Her work explores intimate moments to deftly confront power dynamics as it falls along gendered lines, especially within the lives of adolescents.

Eva’s work navigates structural and social systems that perpetuate ideologies of fantasy, power and control within American society, specifically focused on the impact on young women and their experience in the world. Her work is deeply personal, using her own experiences, memories and journals as the foundation of her practise.

We recorded this episode in early April 2020 during the Covid 19 pandemic, which was bringing up many questions about the role and purpose of art and creative work for both of us. This inevitably ended up being a core part of our conversation because how could it not be.

Gem Fletcher talks to Eva O’Leary about process, growth and how art can be both therapy and liberation.

evaoleary.com

@evaoleary

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Chris Maggio is a photographer living in NYC with 8.6 million of his closest friends. Often exploring the quotidian details of American cities and their tourism, his documentary practice sits at the intersection of both observational and staged photography.

He examines the humanity and hidden complexities of humour in everyday life. His hybrid practice crosses documentary, fashion, portraiture all laced with his signature intervention. While his work feels loose and organic, every inch of the frame is deeply considered. He’s interested in challenging truth in a playful yet profound way.

Gem Fletcher talks to Chris Maggio about his process, storytelling, and what it takes to shoot candidly on the street.

@chrismaggio

https://cargocollective.com/chrismaggio

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Devyn Galindo is fearlessly nomadic, honest and observant, with an eye toward the gently radical. Having grown up between California and Texas, she between Los Angeles and New York, keeping time to explore and the South.

Devyn documents the lives of her friends emerging from the Chicanx scene in Los Angeles. Exploring her own identity as a queer artist during the current political climate has become an obsession that led to their first publication, We Are Still Here, which launched in November 2016.

Devyn Galindo talks to Gem Fletcher about representation, activism, motivation and the responsibilities that come with image making.

http://devyngalindo.com/

@devyngalindo

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Antuwan Sargent is an art critic, writer and curator. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more, as well as essays to multiple museum publications. His first book, “The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion” (Aperture) is out now. In the book, Antwaun addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The presentation of black figures and black runway and cover models in the media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities. More critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around and the body has been with new vitality and substance thanks to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community of black photographers.

Antuwan Sargent talks to Gem Fletcher about representation, the shifting photographic landscape and how young artists are rejecting broken systems to create exciting new modalities for photography.

@sirsargent

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Michelle Groskopf is a street and editorial photographer based in Los Angeles. Her street photography has been exhibited around the world, including Korea, London, NY and LA, and has been featured in the New Yorker’s photo booth, Creative Review, Lenscratch, The British Journal of Photography, Ain’t Bad and more.

Her client list includes The NY Times, Apple, New York Magazine, California Sunday, Wired, GQ, Bloomberg Businessweek and Refinery29.

Michelle Groskopf talks to Gem Fletcher about vulnerability, taking risks, the new wave of street photographers and how she navigates the challenges of editorial work.

https://mgroskopf.com/

@michellegroskopf

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Kimberly Drew is a writer, curator, and activist. She received her B.A. Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies. She first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, W, Teen Vogue, and Lenny Letter and she has executed Instagram takeovers for Prada, The White House, and Instagram. Drew recently left her role as the Social Media Manager at The Met after growing their audience by six million followers. In 2020 she is launching her much anticipated book Black Futures, created in collaboration with Jenna Wortham. Black Futures a collection of work - art, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more that tells the story of the radical, imaginative, bold, and beautiful world that black artists, high and low, are producing today.

Kimberly Drew talks to Gem Fletcher about social media, the art world and how accessibility should be a priority for everyone.

@museummammy

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Prarthna Singh's work explores female identity in contemporary India, within the intersection of gender and nation. Particularly drawn to stories that stand at the conflux of radical vulnerability and power; her images highlight India’s transition and contrast while exploring a dual dichotomy between feminine identity and strength. These female narratives are constructed within India’s own traditions, poised between fragility and abundance. After completing her BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, Prarthna lived and worked in New York. Returning to India was a deliberate decision; she is currently based out of Bombay.

Prarthna Singh's talks to Gem Fletcher about the significance of location and it’s direct impact on opportunity. They discuss how to thrive outside the main commissioning hubs. 

www.prarthnasingh.com

@peeezers

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Charlotte Jansen is a British Sri Lankan author and arts and culture journalist. Since 2015, she has held the position of Editor-at-Large at Elephant magazine. She has written for The Guardian, The Financial Times, ELLE UK, Vice, The British Journal of Photography and Wallpaper*, among others. In 2017, she published her first book, Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze. The critically-acclaimed publication will be released as a paperback edition in Autumn 2019. She is also a contributing author on the painter Lucy Jones (Elephant Publishing, May 2019) and the artist Mary McCartney (Paris Nude, Heni, February 2019).

Charlotte Jansen talks to Gem Fletcher about the rise of female led visual culture, gaze and how photographers engage and document communities.

https://elephant.art/author/charlotte-jansen/

@omfgnoway 

References

Girl Girl Book

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Special thanks to Siddall

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

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Alys Tomlinson grew up in Brighton, UK and studied photography at Central Saint Martins. She recently completed an MA in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. Her projects are often research-led and she is most interested in the relationship between people and place, exploring themes of environment, belonging and identity.

Her major body of work ‘Ex-Voto’ (2016-2018) explores Christian pilgrimage sites in Lourdes (France), Ballyvourney (Ireland) and Grabarka (Poland). Often placed anonymously and hidden from view, ex-voto are left by pilgrims as expressions of hope and gratitude, creating a tangible narrative between faith, person and the landscape.The project images encompass formal portraiture, large format landscape and small, detailed still-life shots of the objects and markers left behind. Shot on 5×4, large format film, the images evoke a distinct stillness and reflect the mysterious, timeless quality present at these sites of great spiritual contemplation.

Gem Fletcher chats to Alys Tomlinson about Ex Voto, the project that was a catalyst for growth, visibility and success for the photographer in last two years. They also discuss the complex subject of industry awards exploring their value and strategies on how to best approach them.

“The Sony award changed my life. It gave me a platform for global exposure, accelerating my career for the foreseeable future.”

www.alystomlinson.co.uk

@alystomlinson

References

Lourdes Film

Ex Voto book

Gost

HackelBury Fine Art Gallery

Sony Awards

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After eight years in London including a five-year stint at M&C Saatchi and time with Anomaly, Lydia Pang moved to New York and now works as a Creative Director for Refinery29. She defines herself as a Frankenstein Creative, born out of an international outlook and the changing industry - the job she has created for herself is made up of many roles. She has made it her mission to support new voices and given many photographers their first big job. She’s an advocate for constant learning, discovery and evolution no matter where you are in your career and she lives and breathes this ethos herself.

“It’s privilege to make work. Holding ourselves, and the community more responsible is really important. Don’t fear the change. There’s never been a more exciting time to make creative work. Images are a platform for real world change and business know that. This is our time.”

Lydia Pang and Gem Fletcher explore the crucial role commissioner’s play in how the future of the industry and visual culture is being shaped. They discuss the importance of responsibility in image making, telling authentic stories and how to survive and thrive in this ever-changing industry.

www.lydiapang.com

@lydia_pang_

References

Refinery29

@refinery29

#THISDOESNTMEANYES

#MOREWOMEN

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Jack Davison studied English Literature at Warwick University but spent most of the time experimenting with cameras. Since the age of 14 he has continuously photographed those around him. He lives in London and works for numerous publications including New York Times Magazine, M Le Monde, Luncheon, Double & British Vogue, but spends most of his time shooting for his on-going personal work. He had his first solo exhibition, Revisiting Pictures, at the Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam in 2016.

Agnes Lloyd-Platt is a fashion and beauty photographer and her work is characterised by positivity, colour, character and a graphic sensibility. Touching on these inspirations, Agnes embraces playfulness in her work and believes fashion photography should be uplifting and inclusive - “There are enough terrible things in the world for us to see. If you look at fashion imagery, it should be good to look at, and make you feel good.” Agnes applies her singular aesthetic to assignments for titles such as British Vogue, Modern Weekly China, Time Magazine, Twin Magazine & W Magazine. 

Jack and Aggy talk to Gem Fletcher about feedback, support systems, social media and how they make, shape and share their work.

www.jackdavison.co.uk

@jackdavisonphoto

www.agneslloydplatt.com

@agnesvita

References

Photographs by Jack Davison

Double Take for Twin Magazine by Agnes Lloyd Platt

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Campbell Addy is a London based photographer & filmmaker. His work is narrative and emotional in nature, with a focus on a unique casting and under-represented faces. In addition to his photographic and directorial career Campbell has launched Nii Journal, a biannual arts and culture publication as well as Nii Agency, a modelling agency dedicated to representing interesting faces and celebrating diversity.

"I think my generation struggles because no one posts their fails. It’s vital to keep your head in the game, keep your blinders on and stay focused."

Campbell Addy talks to Gem Fletcher about his creative output, vision and mental health.

campbelladdy.com

@campbelladdy

Nii Agency

Nii Journal

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 American Photographer Alexander Coggin has an extraordinary eye for the unusual, the unexpected and the unlikely. A trained actor, his theatrical education influences his image-making – championing character and blurring the space between perception and reality. 

“We all have within us the capability to make work that is very specific to our value systems, our upbringing, our visual references, our interests and desires, and if you really pay attention to yourself, you will make work that looks like nobody else’s.”

Alexander Coggin talks to Gem Fletcher about his autodidactic pathway to photography and the importance of authorship.

alexandercoggin.com

@alexandercoggin

References

Charlie Kwai

Michelle Groskopf

Alice Mann

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1991, Alice Mann is a South African photographic artist based in London who’s intimate portraiture essays explore notions of picture making as an act of collaboration. She aims to create images that empower her subjects and creates projects over extended periods, which enables her to create images that allow for engaged and nuanced representations.

“I’m interested in working more to collaborate with my subjects than narrate their stories.”

Alice Mann talks to Gem Fletcher about her powerful project 'Drummies' and how she navigates her responsibility as an image maker.

www.alicemann.co.za

@alicemannn

References

Drummies

Southern Suburbs

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Special thanks to Liv Siddall

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Catherine Hyland is a photographer living and working in London. Her photography centres around people and their connection to the land they inhabit. Primarily landscape based, her work is rooted in notions of fabricated memory, grids, enclosures and national identity. Her work highlights humanity’s attempts to tame and transform nature, both past and present.

“Even now I much prefer to be the student than the teacher. I have such a thirst to learn”

Cat talks to Gem Fletcher about her development as an artist and how she fed her constant desire to learn and develop through assisting.

Projects/References

Universal Experience

Lithium Mining

Wait And See Pudding with Patience Sauce

Dean Maccannell – The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class

Website: catherinehyland.co.uk

IG: @CATHYLAND

Recorded in London, UK

Edited by John Webb

Special thanks to Liv Siddall

Music by Judd Greenstein – Change from Awake

Design by Ruby Wight

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.