A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Nicole Tung is a freelance photojournalist. She graduated from New York University, double majoring in history and journalism, and freelances for international publications and NGOs, working primarily in the Middle East and Asia. After covering the conflicts in Libya and Syria extensively from 2011, focusing on the plight of civilians, she spent 2014 documenting the lives of Native American war veterans in the US, as well as former child soldiers in the DR Congo, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the refugee crisis in Europe. She is also a grantee of the IWMF Grant for Women’s Stories, and a fellow of the IWMF Great Lakes Reporting Initiative (D.R. Congo, Central African Republic). 

She has received multiple awards for her work from the International Photo Awards, Society of Professional Journalists, PX3, and was named PDN's 30 Under 30 Emerging Photographers (2013), among others. Nicole was given the honorable mention for the IWMF 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Awards, and awarded the 2018 James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting from the Online News Association. Her work has been exhibited + screened at the Annenberg Space for Photography, Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Visa Pour l'Image, and most recently at the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy award for war correspondents in France (2019), with Save the Children in Hong Kong (2019), and at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong (2020). Nicole has also given keynote speeches and contributed to panels on photojournalism and journalist safety, at events including the International Journalism Festival (Perugia, 2019), TEDx in Sweden, the Adobe Make It Conference in Sydney, and Creative Mornings at the National Geographic Auditorium in Washington D.C., among others. She served on the board of the Frontline Freelance Register (2015) and is has undergone HEFAT training with Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC) and Global Journalist Security. She is based in Istanbul, Turkey.

In episode 226, Nicole discusses, among other things:

• Notable differences between the war in Ukraine and previous conflicts she has covered
• The modern use of drones in warfare
• Stories she has covered in Ukraine
• The way she works with publications
• Managing and thinking about risk
• The question of whether journalists in conflict zones are more likely to be targeted now than in the past
• Reactions to her from ordinary people in conflicts
• The question of whether photojournalism is an ‘important’ job
• The impacts of social media both negative and positive
• Approaching photojournalistic stories in a different way
• Potential ways to earn a living other than from commissions

Referenced:

• Chris Hondros
• Tim Hetherington
• Marie Colvin
• Remi Ochlick
• James Foley

Website | Instagram

“If you don’t become trapped in this idea that what you do is so precious and be real about the impact and the degree to which images and photojournalism can go, especially if your intentions are good, you’re based in reality at least. Your grounded in a certain reality where you go “I know my images aren’t going to stop a war tomorrow but at least I can be a part of that documentation process.” And to me that is important. Why shouldn’t we be showing a reflection of our collective humanity that is both ugly and beautiful at the same time? There are so many grey areas. The world is not black and white.”

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Mitch Epstein helped pioneer fine-art color photography in the 1970s. His photographs are in numerous major museum collections, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art; The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Tate Modern in London.

In October 2024, Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, Italy will present a major multi-media exhibition of Mitch’s project, Old Growth; and in September 2024, Old Growth will be shown in NYC at Yancey Richardson Gallery. Mitch’s Indian photographs and films (Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret) were exhibited in 2022 at Les Rencontres d'Arles festival in France. Mitch has had numerous other major solo exhibitions in the USA and worldwide.

Mitch’s seventeen books, all published by Steidl Verlag, include Recreation (2022); Property Rights (2021); In India (2021); Rocks and Clouds (2017); New York Arbor (2013); Berlin (Steidl/The American Academy in Berlin 2011); American Power (2009); and Family Business (2003), which was winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.

In 2020, Mitch was inducted into the National Academy of Design. In 2011, he won the Prix Pictet for American Power. Among his other awards are the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).

Mitch has worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad, Mississippi Masala, and Salaam Bombay!. He lives with his family in New York City.

In episode 225, Mitch discusses, among other things:

• New York
• John Szarkowski at MOMA
• Editing
• India
• Garry Winogrand and his influence
• Going to LA in ‘74
• Working on the films of his then wife Mira Nair
• Trial and error
• Family Business
• American Power
• Old Growth

Referenced:

• John Szarkowski
• Eugene Atget
• Diane Arbus
• William Eggleston
• Todd Papageorge
• Raghubir Singh
• Jonas Mekas
• Hollis Frampton

Website | Instagram

“Through disorientation, through not knowing, through being uncomfortable, things happen. And I think some of the most important periods for me in my life as an artist have been those periods where I have ultimately not known what I was doing or where I was going next. Now I’m a little bit better at just listening to the signals that come along, even though they may not give me the full-fledged answer they’ll just point in a direction. And I’m a little bit more patient with the process.”

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Edward Burtynsky is regarded as one of the world's most accomplished contemporary photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes represent over 40 years of his dedication to bearing witness to the impact of human industry on the planet. Edward's photographs are included in the collections of over 80 major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; the Tate Modern in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.

Edward was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharines, Ontario. He received his BAA in Photography/Media Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in 1982, and has since received both an Alumni Achievement Award (2004) and an Honorary Doctorate (2007) from his alma mater. He is still actively involved in the university community, and sits on the board of directors for The Image Centre (formerly Ryerson Image Centre).

In 1985, Edward founded Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory, digital imaging, and new media computer-training centre catering to all levels of Toronto's art community.

Early exposure to the General Motors plant and watching ships go by in the Welland Canal in Edward’s hometown helped capture his imagination for the scale of human creation, and to formulate the development of his photographic work. His imagery explores the collective impact we as a species are having on the surface of the planet — an inspection of the human systems we've imposed onto natural landscapes.

Exhibitions include: Anthropocene (2018) at the Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada (international touring exhibition); Water (2013) at the New Orleans Museum of Art and Contemporary Art Center in Louisiana (international touring exhibition); Oil (2009) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (five-year international touring show), China (toured internationally from 2005 - 2008); Manufactured Landscapes at the National Gallery of Canada (toured from 2003 - 2005); and Breaking Ground produced by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (toured from 1988 - 1992). Edward's visually compelling works are currently being exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the globe, including at London’s Saatchi Gallery where his largest solo exhibition to-date, entitled Extraction/Abstraction, is currently on show until 6th May 2024.

Edward’s distinctions include the inaugural TED Prize (which he shared with Bono and Robert Fischell), the title of Officer of the Order of Canada, and the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for Art. In 2018 Edward was named Photo London's Master of Photography and the Mosaic Institute's Peace Patron. In 2019 he was the recipient of the Arts & Letters Award at the Canadian Association of New York’s annual Maple Leaf Ball and the 2019 Lucie Award for Achievement in Documentary Photography. In 2020 he was awarded a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship and in 2022 was honoured with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award by the World Photography Organization. Most recently he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and was named the 2022 recipient for the annual Pollution Probe Award. Edward currently holds eight honorary doctorate degrees and is represented by numerous international galleries all over the world.

In episode 224, Edward discusses, among other things:

• His transition from film to digital
• Staying positive by ‘moving through grief to land on meaning’
• Making compelling images and how scale creates ambiguity
• Defining the over-riding theme of his work early on
• The environmental impact of farming
• Whether he planned his career
• Why he started a lab to finance his photography
• And how being an entrepreneur feeds into his work as an artist
• Vertical Integration
• Examples of challenging situations he has faced
• The necessity for his work to be commoditised
• His relative hope and optimism for the future through positive technology
• The importance of having a hopeful component to the work
• How he offsets his own carbon footprint

Referenced:

• Joel Sternfeld
• Eliiot Porter
• Stephen Shore
• Jennifer Baichwal
• Nicholas de Pencier

Website | Instagram

“The evocation of the sense of wonder and the sense of the surreal, or the improbable, or ‘what am I looking at?’, to me is interesting in a time where images are so consumed; that these are not for quick consumption they’re for… slow. And I think that when things reveal themselves slowly and in a more challenging way, they become more interesting as objects to leave in the world. That they don’t just reveal themselves immediately, you can’t just get it in one quick glance and you’re done, no, these things ask you to look at them and spend time with them. And I discover things in them sometimes that I never saw before. They’re loaded with information.”

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Italian photographer Lorenzo Castore’s work is characterised by long term projects focusing on his personal experience, memory and the relationship between individual stories, history and the present time.

In 1992 at the age of 19 Lorenzo moved from Rome to New York where he began to photograph in the streets. After a formative trip to India in 1997, he had a brief foray into photojournalism, covering the conflicts in Albania and Kosovo in 1999, afte which he decided to quit photojournalism and deepen his personal research.

Since then has worked extensively in Poland, Cuba and Sardinia among other places and has produced several photobooks and a short film entitled No Peace Without War.

In 2019 his lifelong work Time Maze began to be published by L’artiere in progressive chronological volumes. The first entitled A Beginning, 1994-2001 and the second Lack and Locking, 2001-2007. The next two volumes are already in the works or planned.

Lorenzo’s is represented by Galerie S. in Paris, Galerie Anne Clergue in Arles, Alessia Paladini Gallery in Milan, Spot Home Gallery in Naples and Guido Costa Projects in Turin.

In episode 223, Lorenzo discusses, among other things:

• His formative years
• His journey into photography
• His time in New York…
• …and the photograph that changed everything
• The importance of finding stories and making life an adventure
• His project Time Maze - first book A Beginning
• His brief foray into photojournalism in Kosovo
• Why he went to shoot in Poland
• HIs interest in miners
• The forthcoming sequels to A Beginning

Referenced:

• Michael Ackerman
• Anders Petersen
• Ramon Pez
• Josef Koudelka
• Saverio Costanzo
• Henri Cartier Bresson
• Georgio Mortari
• Eloi Gimeno
• Christain Cajoule

Website | Instagram

“I was postponing because of this embarrassment that I have when we say you talk about your personal life. It’s a really strange feeling, I really want to do it and at the same time I feel I have to do it very carefully.”

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Natalie Keyssar is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on the personal effects of political turmoil and conflict, youth culture, and migration.  She has a BFA in Painting and Illustration from The Pratt Institute. Natalie has contributed to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Time, Bloomberg Business Week, National Geographic and The New Yorker, and been awarded by organizations including the Philip Jones Griffith Award, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, PDN 30, Magenta Flash Forward, and American Photography. She has taught New Media at the International Center of Photography in New York, and  has instructed at various workshops across the US and Latin America with organizations such as Foundry, Women Photograph, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the IWMF. Her work has been supported by The Pulitzer Center, The Magnum Foundation, The National Geographic Society, and the IWMF among many others, and she is the winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Emerging Photographer Award, the 2019 PH Museum Women Photographer's Grant, and is a winner of the 2023 Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund. She is a Canon Explorer of Light and Co-Founder of the NDA Workshops series with Daniella Zalcman. She speaks fluent Spanish and is available for assignments internationally, as well as teaching and speaking engagements. 

In episode 222, Natalie discusses, among other things:

• The conflict in Gaza
• How the internet and social media is clumsily creating a hive mind
• Her Jewish identity and how it shapes her perspective
• Her Ukrainian roots and covering the war in Ukraine
• Wanting her work to tell you what it feels like
• Her first trip to Venezuela and how it was love at first sight

Referenced:

• Daniella Zalcman
• Anastasia Taylor Lind
• Yelena Yemchuk
• Ben Makuch
• Stephanie Sinclair
• Christina Piaia
• Scout Tufankjian
• Katie Orlinsky
• Amie Ferris-Rotman
• Carlos Rawlins
• Ana Maria Arevalo
• Andrea Hernandez Briceño
• Lexi Grace Parra
• IWMF

Website | Instagram

“There’s this psychological cocktail of rage and grief and desire to act, and since I don’t have any actual useful skills, I’m not a doctor or psychologist or aid worker or fighter, or any of the things I sometimes wish I was, I felt the need to do something. And then there is also a totally selfish need to see it for myself. It feels compulsive. And not like in ‘this is my calling and I’m gonna save the world’, but like it’s compulsive enough to make you get on a plane to go to a country that’s quite dangerous and in horrific turmoil. ”

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Ambiguity is at the forefront of Richard Kalvar’s photography. Richard, who describes context as the “enemy”, seeks mystery and multiple meanings through surprising framing and meticulous timing. He describes his approach as “more like poetry than photojournalism – it attacks on the emotional level.”

Richard has done extensive personal, assignment and commercial work in the United States, France, Italy, England, and Japan, among others, has published a number of solo books including Earthlings (Terriens) in 2007 and his most recent title, Selected Writings, published in 2023 by Damiani, and he has had important exhibitions in the US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

His work has appeared in Geo, The Paris Review, Creative Camera, Aperture, Zoom, Newsweek, and Photo, among many others. Editorial assignments and even commercial work have given Richard an additional opportunity to do personal photography. He did many documentary stories that allowed him to disengage from documentary mode when the occasion arose.

Richard joined Magnum Photos as an associate member in 1975, and became a full member two years later. He subsequently served several times as vice president, and once as president of the agency.

In episode 221, Richard discusses, among other things:

• How he ended up settling in Paris
• His introduction to photography
• How humour is an intrinsic element of his photographs
• how he is playing with things he has trouble dealing with
• Why he called up Robert Delpire
• VU agency becoming Viva
• How he ended up in Magnum
• His favourite cities to shoot in
• The legal restrictions on shooting in public in different places
• Public attitudes towards taking photographs of strangers in public
• His new book, Selected Writings
• Why his interest is in single images that stand alone

Referenced:

• Jérôme Ducrot
• André Kertesz
• HCB
• Robert Frank
• Lee Friedlander
• Elliott Erwitt
• Robert Delpire
• Viva Agency
• Guy LeQuerec
• Gilles Peress
• Mary Ellen Mark
• Alex Majoli
• Jonas Bendiksen
• Paolo Pellegrin
• Olivia Arthur

Website | Instagram

“I’m most interested in having pictures stand alone, and each one is something you can get into and is a story in itself and is also an imaginary story. I’m working with reality, that’s what’s really interesting to me and it’s also what’s interesting about photography in general, that you’re doing something that looks like real life but obviously isn’t. that’s the edge I like to work on. Where you have the impression that things are going on and not necessarily going on. If I have to tell a story, I feel a certain moral obligation to respect the truth or respect the feelings of the people that are in it. I think that’s a noble thing but for my kind of work it’s a break.”

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Featuring:

• Aaron Schumann
• Eugene Richards
• Martin Parr
• Gregory Crewdson
• Nick Brandt
• Emma Hardy
• Antoine D’Agata
• Igor Posner
• Stacy Kranitz
• Ivor Prickett
• Bertrand Meunier
• Curran Hatleberg
• Trish Morrissey
• Moises Saman
• Yelena Yemchuk
• Benjamin Rassmussen
• Ian Berry
• Luca Locatelli
• Corinne Dufka
• Max Pam
• Leonard Pongo

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Leonard Pongo is a Belgian-Congolese photographer and visual artist. His long-term project The Uncanny, shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has earned him several international awards and world-wide recognition and was published as a book by GOST earlier this year (2023) as a result of Leonard receiving the ICP GOST First Photo Book Award in 2020.

Leonard’s work has been published worldwide and featured in numerous exhibitions including the recent IncarNations at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts and the The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial at CAFA Art Museum. He was chosen as one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2016, is a recipient of the Visura Grant 2017, the Getty Reportage Grant 2018 and was shortlisted for the Leica Oskar Barnack award in 2022.

Leonard’s latest project, Primordial Earth, was shown at the Lubumbashi Biennial and at the Rencontres de Bamako where it was awarded the “Prix de l’OIF”. It was exhibited at the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts for Leonard’s first institutional solo show in Belgium in 2021, at the Oostende Museum of Modern Art and is currently feartured as part of a group show entitled A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern until January 14th 2024.

Leonard divides his time between pursuing long term projects in Congo DR, teaching and assignment work and is also a member of The Photographic Collective. His work is part of institutional and private collections.

In episode 219 Leornard discusses, among other things:

• Early creativity encouraged by his architect father
• His first experience with photography
• His early desire to go to the DRC
• His first trip in 2011 against the backdrop of an election
• Sensory overwhelm
• Playing with mood and ambiguity
• Winning the Unseen-Gost Books Publishing Award
• Editing down from 70,000 images
• His Primordial Earth project
• His short film The Necessary Evil

Website | Instagram

“I think behind all the constructions and expectations, right or wrong, that I might have had, there was behind it at the core a very intense need for experience... the only way I could create relations to the land and the environment itself - not the people because that was easy, that was natural - but to the rest, the context, was through experiencing it. It felt to me that was the only way I could ever have anything to say about it.”

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Featuring:

• Andrea Modica
• Jesse Lenz
• Melissa DeWitt
• Todd Hido
• Kristen Joy Emack
• Anastasia Samoylova
• Mimi Mollica
• Mimi Plumb
• Jane Evelyn Atwood
• Christopher Anderson
• Tim Carpenter
• Sofia Krysiak
• Nelson Chan
• Tom Booth Woodger
• Silvana Trevale
• Gianluca Gamberini
• Gregory Barker
• Dewi Lewis

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Max Pam is an Australian photographer born in 1949 in suburban Melbourne, which as a teenager he found to be grim, oppressive and culturally isolated. He found refuge in the counter-culture of surfing and the imagery of National Geographic and Surfer Magazine and became determined to travel overseas.

Max left Australia at 20, after accepting a job as a photographer assisting an astrophysicist. Together, the pair drove a VW Beetle from Calcutta to London. This adventure proved inspirational, and travel has remained a crucial and continuous link to his creative and personal development. As Gary Dufour noted in his essay in Indian Ocean Journals (Steidl, 2000): “Each photograph is shaped by incidents experienced as a traveller. His photographs extend upon the tradition of the gazetteer; each photograph a record of an experience, a personal account of an encounter somewhere in the world. Each glimpse is part of an unfolding story rather than simply a record of a place observed. While travel underscores his production Pam’s photographs are not the accidental evidence of a tourist.”

Max’s work takes the viewer on compelling journeys around the globe, recording observations with an often surrealist intensity, matching the heightened sensory awareness of foreign travel. The work frequently implies an interior, psychic journey, corresponding with the physical journey of travel. His work in Asian counties is well represented in publications as are his travels in Europe, Australia, and the Indian Ocean Rim cultures including India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Yemen, The Republic of Tanzania, Mauritius, Madagascar, the Cocos and Christmas Islands. The images leave the viewer, as Tim Winton said in Going East (Marval 1992), “grateful for having been taken so mysteriously by surprise and so far and sweetly abroad.”

Max’s first survey show was held at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1986, and was followed by a mid-career retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1991. He was also the subject of a major exhibition at the Comptoir de la Photographie, Paris in 1990, which covered the work of three decades. He has published several highly acclaimed photographic monographs and 'carnets de voyage', including Going East: Twenty Years of Asian Photography (1992), Max Pam (1999), Ethiopia (1999) and Indian Ocean Journals (2000). Going East won Europe’s major photo book award the Grand Prix du Livre Photographique in 1992. In the same year Max held his largest solo show to date at the Sogo Nara Museum of Art, Nara. He has published work in the leading international journals and is represented in major public and private collections in Australia, Great Britain, France and Japan.

In episode 217 Max discusses, among other things:

• How he adopted the visual diary as his photographic approach.
• The influence of Diane Arbus.
• Why he chose such a specific period of his life to explore in his new memoir.
• How Arbus inspired him to shoot 6x6.
• How surfing in Australia introduced him travelling.
• How he ended up in India and why it fascinates him.
• The magic of film vs. digital.
• Working with book designers… or not.
• The time he failed to get into Magnum Photos.
• Surviving financially, teaching, and the importance of ‘marrying up’.
• Travel and family.
• Returning to Australia in a poor mental state, post typhoid.
• His wife’s Alzheimer’s and eventual death.

Referenced:

• Philip Jones-Griffith
• Don McCullen
• Larry Burrows
• David Bailey
• Diane Arbus
• Edward Weston
• Tina Modotti
• Roger Ballen
• George Orwell
• Bernard Plossu
• Ramon Pez
• Sarah Moon
• One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
• Peter Beard

Website | Instagram

“I’m a very curious person and ultimately having the camera amplifies that curiosity in a really profound way. And it also gives you carte blanche to stick your head into areas where normally you’d think ‘ah, it’s a bit dodgy, maybe not, I could get my head cut off it I stuck it in the hole…’ But often then you think, ‘well come on man, you’ve got a camera there, isn’t this part of your self image?’ And so it’s like this ticket to ride on something that is actually quite dangerous.”

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Corinne Dufka is an American photojournalist, human rights researcher, criminal investigator, and psychiatric social worker.

Following completion of her master's degree in social work, Corinne worked as a humanitarian volunteer and social worker in Latin America. She volunteered with Nicaraguan refugees during the country's revolution, and with victims of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. She then moved to El Salvador as a social worker with the Lutheran church. While in El Salvador, Corinne became close with local photojournalists, and was asked by the director of a local human rights organization to launch a program to document human rights abuses through photography.

Over the course of her subsequent twelve year career as a photojournalist she covered more than a dozen of the world’s bloodiest armed conflicts across three continents and was honored with the Robert Capa gold medal; a World Press Club Award; a Pulitzer nomination; and the Courage in Journalism Award.

In 1998 Corinne went to Nairobi, Kenya to cover the bombing of the American Embassy. She arrived hours after the blast, and was deeply frustrated by 'missing the scoop.' Later, upon watching the news coverage of the attack, Corinne realized that she had lost “compassion” for the subjects of her work, and resolved to end her career as a photojournalist.

After leaving photojournalism, Corinne joined Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization. In 2003, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, alternatively known as a ‘genius grant’, for her journalistic and documentary work documenting the 'devastation' of Sierra Leone and the conflict's toll on human rights.

Corinne left HRW in 2022 and is now an independent researcher and advisor, focusing on helping countries mitigate the risk of armed conflict. Corinne has a daughter and a foster son and lives in Maryland with her four dogs. Corinne’s new book This Is War: Photographs from a Decade of Conflict is out now, published by G Editions.

In episode 216 Corinne discusses, among other things:

• Her reasons for publishing a book of her photograhs
• The experience of revisiting her archive
• Her transition from psychiatric social worker to photojournalist
• How she learnt the basics of photography in El Salvador
• How her family history and a challenges in childhood formed her independence
• Getting badly injured in Bosnia
• The relative dangers of different types of conflict
• Her experiences of violence in Liberia
• The epiphany that led her to walk away from photojournalism
• Her work with Human Rights Watch
• ‘Curiosity and compassion’
• Making an impact

“I just don’t do ‘hopeless’. I constantly try to find a way of having impact. And photography has so much impact. Using people’s voices through testimony has so much impact. And one has to believe that people are inherently good and they inherently care and that they can be moved when presented with these images. People in positions of influence. So that is a given in everything I’ve done. That this work will have an impact. It may have to be repeated again and again and again, multiplied by other practitioners in photography or human rights, but it will have an impact.”

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Italian photographer Luca Locatelli describes himself as an environmental visual storyteller.

 For more than a decade Luca has aimed to open a debate about the environment and our future with his work by synergizing art, science, and journalism to explore the world’s most promising solutions to the climate crisis. As an artist, Luca is concerned with trying to translate complex scientific data into visually engaging images and distribute them on social networks, in publications and at events.

 His work has been published in international media such as National Geographic, The New York Times, and TIME. It has also been displayed in prominent global venues, including the Guggenheim Museum of New York, the Shangai Center of Photography, and others.

 In addition, for over two years, Luca has been working on a significant and immersive cultural project about the Circular Economy with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is now an exhibition entitled The Circle at Gallerie D’Italia Museum of Turin, Italy, until February 2024.

 Since 2004 Luca has been a founding partner of a non-governmental association that contributes to protect 600 thousand hectares of tropical forest in the Amazon. 

In episode 215 Luca discusses, among other things:

• How it started with a trip up the Amazon
• Trying to do 2 things and failing
• How he discovered a talent for generating good story ideas
• Exploring his interest in ways that technology can help solve the environmental crisis
• His project about food, Hunger Solutions
• How he became interested in the circular economy
• The End of Trash - Circular Economy Solutions
• Stealing the idea of ‘Think Week’ from Bill Gates
• How he thinks about his own carbon footprint
• The problem of fast fashion
• Developing economies
• Future generations
• Hopes that his work can have an impact
• Creating ‘disorientation’ in the viewer
• The hope of nature-based solutions

Referenced:

• Kathy Ryan
• Che Guevara
• Bill Gates

Website | Instagram

“When we think about photography and changing the world we always think in one direction… we think that photography is about the last flood, about the last fire, the last tremendous things happening in the world with climate change. It’s not the only perspective. What if we can give to young people pictures that can show them solutions and a way of imagining and opening a debate about the future?”

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In episode 214:

An audio clip from each of the top 10 most downloaded episodes of all time (as of September 2023).

• 10 - Tom Craig (Episode 130)
• 09 - Martin Parr #2 (Episode 197)
• 08 - Tom Wood (Episode 160)
• 07 - Todd Hido (Episode 103)
• 06 - Chris Killip (Episode 094)05 - Paul Graham (Episode 149)
• 04 - Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb (Episode 105)
• 03 - Stephen Shore (Episode 192)
• 02 - Mark Steinmetz (Episode 112)
• 01 - Martin Parr (Episode 091)

And a swift tour of the Bonus Questions which all guests now answer for the member-only podcast:

• What has photography taught you about yourself or life in general?
• What is your greatest strength and your main weakness as a photographer?
• If you could meet your 20 year-old self now, what advice would you give to her/him?
• What’s the one most essential lesson you would pass on to someone considering a photography ‘career’ today?
• How has a failure, or what seemed like a failure at the time, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favourite failure” of yours?
• Can you think of any ideas or beliefs - whether about photography or anything else in life - that you have now reversed or totally changed your position on?
• Is there a photobook that has a special place in your heart or a particular significance, or that has been especially influential or inspiring to you?
• Do you have a favourite photographer, if you absolutely had to pick someone? Why them?
• Are there any notable photobooks or photographers that you have only just discovered for the first time in recent years?
• If and when you feel creatively exhausted, uninspired or blocked what do you do to get yourself moving forward again?
• How do you deal with self doubt if and when it arises? Do you have any strategies or habits that you come back to?
• What other artforms or cultural output, either highbrow or popular, do you consume, enjoy or take inspiration from?
• What is the thing you like most about photography or about being a photographer? What is the thing you like the least?
• How do you deal with juggling the need to make a living with finding time to pursue personal projects that don’t necessarily earn you any money?
• How do you manage a work/life balance and deal with juggling career with relationship/home/family life?
• What do you think you might have ended up doing if you hadn’t become a photographer and would you have been good at it?
• What are you hopes for the future?

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Ian Berry was born in 1934 in Lancashire, England. He made his reputation in South Africa, where he worked for the Daily Mail and later for Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960, and his photographs were used in the trial to prove the victims' innocence.

Henri Cartier-Bresson invited Ian to join Magnum in 1962, when he was based in Paris. He moved to London in 1964 to become the first contract photographer for the Observer Magazine. Since then assignments have taken him around the world: he has documented Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflicts in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and the Congo; famine in Ethiopia; and apartheid in South Africa. The major body of work produced in South Africa is represented in two of his books: Black and Whites: L'Afrique du Sud and Living Apart (1996).

Important editorial assignments have included work for National Geographic, Fortune, Stern, Geo, national Sunday magazines, Esquire, Paris-Match and Life. Berry has also reported on the political and social transformations in China and the former USSR. Recent projects have involved tracing the route of the Silk Road through Turkey, Iran and southern Central Asia to northern China for Conde Nast Traveler, photographing Berlin for a Stern supplement, the Three Gorges Dam project in China for the Telegraph Magazine, Greenland for a book on climate control and child slavery in Africa.

Ian’s recent book, Water (GOST Books, 2022), brings together many classic images from Ian’s extensive archive with material shot over the course of 15 years travelling the globe to document the inextricable links between landscape, life and water. This new book brings together a selection of the resulting images which collectively tell the story of man’s complex relationship with water — at a time when climate change demonstrates just how precariously water and life are intertwined.

In episode 213, Ian discusses, among other things:

• How all the pics in Water came to be used as B&W
• How the project came about
• How he got into photography
• How he came to be the only photographer at the Sharpeville Massacre
• The importance of luck
• Getting into Magnum after a tea with HCB and a disasterous first meeting
• Changes in Magnum over the years - and photography in general
• The controversy over David Allan Harvey and the subsequent action by Magnum
• Everything being ‘too woke’
• Learining from other people and looking at contact sheets

Referenced:

• Stuart Smith
• Abbas
• Roger Madden
• Drum Magazine
• Tom Hopkinson
• The Sharpeville Massacre
• Michele Chevalier (Visa)
• Marc Riboud
• Reni Burri
• Henri Cartier Bresson
• Burt Glinn
• Peter Dench
• David Allan Harvey
• Steve McCurry
• Bruce Davidson
• Philip Jones Griffiths
• Gilles Peress
• Bruno Barbey
• Werner Bischof

Website | Instgram

“I brought along my contact sheets which Henri spent ages going through. And he said ‘great, good to have you’. And I went back upstairs afterwards and they said ‘fine, you’re in Magnum.’ And that was it…”

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Benjamin Rasmussen is a Faroese/American photographer living in Denver, Colorado.

After growing up in the Philippines and studying photography at Ateneo de Manila University, he moved to the United States to explore contemporary American identity. His practice is research and photography based and centers on the intersection of law, history and sociology.

Benjamin works for magazines including Time, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He is also the founder of Pattern, an exhibition and educational space in Denver, Colorado that works to spark dialogue and acts as a meeting place for the art and documentary worlds.  

Benjamin’s debut photobook, The Good Citizen, which explores how American society came to be what it is today, was published last year by GOST books.

In episode 212, Benjamin discusses, among other things:

• His origin story growing up in the Philipines and then moving to the USA for college
• Growing up amidst his family’s deeply religious roots
• By The Olive Trees project
• Faroese hunting pilot whales - story
• Faroe islands being too picturesque
• The dark side of his American family
• The origins of The Good Citizen project
• The five chapter structure of the book
• Book banning in the USA
• Trump
• His optimism re. photojournalism
• The implications of AI

Referenced:

• Michael Brown
• Dred Scott
• Stuart Smith
• Frank H Wu
• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Juan Fuentes

“I’ve survived largely off editiorial commissions for the past 10-15 years. It’s been really interesting.You have a lot more complex voices who are involved even in my short history of it. The reality is that in my entire career rates haven’t changed. It’s getting increasingly difficult to survive financially, but I think in terms of the conversations that are happening it’s gotten so much more interesting. ”

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Yelena Yemchuk's output as a visual artist is immediately recognizable, regardless of medium. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Yelena immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was eleven. She became interested in photography when her father gave her a 35mm Minolta camera for her fourteenth birthday.

Yelena went on to study art at Parsons in New York and photography at Art Center in Pasadena. Yelena has exhibited paintings, films and photography at galleries and museums worldwide. She has shot for the New Yorker, New York Times, Another, ID, Vogue, and others.

Yelena released her first book Gidropark, published by Damiani in April 2011, followed by Anna Maria, published by United Vagabonds in September 2017. Yelena had her first institutional debut with her project Mabel, Betty & Bette, a photography and video work at the Dallas Contemporary Museum. A monograph with the same title was released by Kominek Books in March 2021. Her newest book Odesa was released in May 2022, by Gost Books.

In episode 211, Yelena discusses, among other things:

• The relevance of her book to the current war
• The “immigrant parent bullshit story”
• Moving to New York
• The influence of her uncle and her dad’s best friend
• Discovering her calling at art school doing photography
• Her early career success, including working with Smashing Pumpkins
• Returning to Ukraine in 1990
• Gidropark project
• Deciding to focus on her personal work
• Mabel, Betty & Bette
• YYY, published by Depart pour l’image
• Odessa being “love at first sight”
• Deciding to focus on the youth
• Forthcoming book, Milanka

“It was very clear to me that I needed to tell the story of these people. Not just the cadets, but the story of the people in Odesa. And it was like an urgency. I wanted to go back all the time. If i didn’t have kids I probably would have just stayed there. I couldn’t get enough… I was going back and forth. I couldn’t stop. I had to tell this story. I had to shoot these people. It was like a romance. It was like I had a lover over there.”

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Moises Saman is widely considered to be one of the leading documentary and conflict photographers of his generation and has been a full member of Magnum Photos since 2014. His work has largely focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Moises was born in Lima, Peru, from a mixed Spanish and Peruvian family and grew up in Barcelona, Spain. He studied Communications and Sociology in the United States at California State University, graduating in 1998. It was during his last year in university that Moises first became interested in becoming a photographer, influenced by the work of a number of photojournalists that had been covering the wars in the Balkans.

After graduating, Moises moved to New York City to complete a summer internship at New York Newsday and joined as a Staff Photographer, a position he held until 2007. During his 7 years at Newsday Moises' work focused on covering the fallout of the 9/11 attacks, spending most of his time traveling between Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries. In the Autumn of 2007 Moises left Newsday to become a freelance photographer represented by Panos Pictures. During that time he become a regular contributor for The New York Times, Human Rights Watch, Newsweek, and TIME Magazine, among other international publications.

Over the years Moises' work has received awards from the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year and the Overseas Press Club and his photographs have been shown in a several exhibitions worldwide. In 2015 Moises received a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his work.

In 2011, Moises relocated to Cairo, Egypt, where he was based for three years while covering the Arab Spring for The New York Times and other publications, mainly The New Yorker. His first book, Discordia, on which he colloaborated with artist Daria Birang, documents the tumultuous transitions that have taken place in the region. The work featured in Discordia has received numerous awards, including the Eugene Smith Memorial Fund.

Moises’s latest book, Glad Tidings of Benevolence, was published earlier this year by GOST books to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. It brings together Moises’s photographs taken in Iraq during this period and the following years, with documents and texts relating to the war. Exploring the construction—through image and language—of competing narratives of the war, the book represents the culmination of Moises’s twenty years of work across Iraq.

Moises currently lives in Amman, Jordan with his wife and their young daughter.

In episode 210, Moises discusses, among other things:

• The catalyst that was 9/11
• Newsday
• His introduction to photography via his studie in sociology
• The Balkans conflict
• Learning the ropes in Afghanistan
• How his attitude towards photojournalism evolved over time
• The impact of spending eight days in Abu Ghraib prison
• Surviving a helicopter crash
• The myth of objectivity
• Trying to show a more nuanced picture
• Every day life continuing amidst war
• “The framing of the frame”
• Covering The Arab Spring
• Collaborating with artist Daria Birang on Discordia
• Facts, truth and questioning
• Victim vs. perpetrator
• His current project in Amman

Referenced:

• Judith Butler
• Stuart Smith
• Daria Birang

“One thing I’ve realised is, at least for me, that perhaps this other approach to the work, the one that’s a little bit quieter and more nuanced, more human really, where you’re also celebrating humanity rather than the lack thereof in this very difficult context, that perhaps is a little more effective. I like to think that.

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Much of the work of Dublin-born Irish photographer Trish Morrissey is a study of the language of photography through still and moving images, using performance and wit as tools to investigate the boundaries of photographic meaning. Although most of Trish’s work features her as the protagonist, she does not consider the photographs to be self portraits per se, though they can be read that way. She uses humour as a tool to disarm the viewer, hoping it wil then evaporate, leaving a slow burning psychologically tense afterglow. Weaving fact and fiction, Trish plunges into the heart of such issues as family experiences and national identities, feminine and masculine roles, and relationships between strangers.

Her work has been exhibited widely, including in the shows ‘Landscape, Portrait: Now and Then’ at the Hestercombe Gallery in 2021; ‘Who’s Looking at the family now?’ at the London Art Fair 2019 and in the solo show ‘Trish Morrissey: A certain slant of light’ at the Francesca Maffeo Gallery in 2018 and most recently in 2022 he exhibition Trish Morrissey, Autofictions; Twenty Years of Photography and Film, at Serlachius Museum Gustaf, Finland.

Her work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The National Media Museum, Bradford and the Wilson Centre for Photography, London and was published in 2022 in the book Autofictions to coincide with the aforementioned exhibition in Finland.

In episode 209, Trish discusses, among other things:

• Her recent retrospective and book
• The Front project
• Her parents family album
• Reading pictures from body language
• Her collaborative project with her daughter
• The performative side of her practice
• A Certain Slant of Light
• Exploring the female experience
• Early life
• Residency in Australia
• Working with video

Referenced:

• Andy Grundberg
• Zed Nelson
• Nicholas Nixon, Brown Sisters
• Kate Best
• Mark Harriott
• Hilary Mantel
• Diane Arbus

“Everything I’ve done, when I’ve looked back on it I’ve realised is actually trying things on. It’s kind of like a way of rehearsing for the future…”

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Curran Hatleberg is an American photographer based in Baltimore, MD. He attended Yale University and graduated in 2010 with an MFA. Influenced by the American tradition of road photography, Curran’s process entails driving throughout the United States and interacting with various strangers in different locales. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows at the Whitney Biennial, MASS MoCA, the International Center of Photography, Rencontres d’Arles, Higher Pictures and Fraenkel Gallery. He is the recipient of various grants, prizes and awards including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. Curran’s work is held in  various museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work has been published frequently in periodicals such as Harpers, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vice and The Paris Review. Lost Coast, his first monograph, was released by TBW Books in fall 2016. His second monograph, River's Dream, was published by TBW Books in 2022. Curran has taught photography at numerous institutions, including Yale University and Cooper Union.

In episode 208, Curran discusses, among other things:

• Coming from a big family
• His background in painting
• The benefits of taking a break from education
• ‘Stumbling’ into an MFA at Yale
• His first book The Lost Coast
• His process and saying yes to everything
• Being open and vulnerable to what might happen
• The fascination with the USA
• Trying to convey the ‘atmospheric intensity’ of Florida in Summer
• How he decides where to stop and photograph
• The ‘origin story’ of lending his van and trailer to a stranger
• His artist’s book, Double Rainbow
• Being guided by reading fiction

Referenced:

• Peter Matthiessen
• George Saunders

“I hate this idea that’s so grounded in the myth of road photographers, or American photography, where it’s this fallacy about the singular genius of the person bending the world to their will. It just seems so absurd to me. Chance is everything. I’m constantly levelled by how little control I have when I’m working. I feel insignificant and almost powerless a lot of the time.”

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French photographer Bertrand Meunier has spent most of the past three decades quietly working either editorially or on personal long-term documentary projects both internationally and, in more recent years, at home in France. He worked extensively in Pakistan and Afghanistan among other places, primarily for Newsweek magazine, but much of his time has been spent in China documenting the tumultuous social and economic changes that the population has been faced with, focussing in particular on the economic decline of the large industrial cities, and the consequences for the people living in them. In 2001 he won the Leica Oskar Barnack prize for the work from China and in 2005 published a book, The Blood of China, When Silence Kills, in collaboration with Pierre Haski. In 2007, Bertrand won the annual Niépce prize.

A more comprehensive and definitive collection of the work from China has just been published as a book by EXB Editions entitled Erased and a corresponding solo exhibition of the work is currently on show at theMusée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon sur Saône until September 17th 2023 and will subsequently be shown at the museum of photography Charleroi, Belgium from 30 September 2023 to 28 January 2024.

Bertrand is currently finalizing the editing of his documentary film shot in a French prison and entitled Conversations. And he has recently obtained a creation grant in Luxembourg to work on a new documentary film about an open psychiatry centre.

Bertrand lives in Paris with his partner Juliette and is a member of the Tendance Fleue collective.

In episode 207, Bertrand discusses, among other things:

• Photography as a language
• His previous life as a professional climber
• How he began his longstanding relationship with China
• Current book and exhibition: Erased
• His biggest achievement in China
• Memory
• His project on his dad and family
• Being ‘lost’ trying to shoot in France
• The importance of teaching people to read photoographs
• The ‘reverse angle’
• His forthcoming documentary about prisoners: Conversations
• His work on psychiatric facility in Luxembourg
• Applying for grants
• Passion

Referenced:

• HCB
• The Provoke collective
• For a Language to Come (Kitarubeki kotoba no tame ni), by Takuma Nakahira

Website

“Photography is like rock climbing, yeah, you have to focus, but if you do it to make a living? It’s a bad way to make a living. You do it because it’s a passion. It’s your life.”

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Featuring:

• Brad Zellar
• Chris Campbell
• Bryan Schutmaat
• Dena Eber
• Pradip Malde
• Johnny Autry
• Tania Franco Klein
• Justin Herfst
• Tim Carpenter
• Reed Klass
• Todd Hido

Website | Instagram

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Featuring:

• Martin Parr (Ep. 91 & 197)
• Dr. Claire Hyman
• Tracy Marshall Grant
• Chris Dorley Brown (Ep. 97)
• James Hyman
• Simon Roberts (Ian Parry Photojournalsim Grant) (Ep. 43)
• Michael Benson
• Jillian Edelstein (KIckstarter) (Ep. 87)
• Gideon Mendel (Ep. 40)
• Alex Schneiderman

Website | Instagram

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After taking a degree in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport, Ivor Prickett began working in Europe and the Middle East, striving to convey and denounce the effects of war on the civilian population – on the people whose lives it ravages and uproots, whatever side they may be on. Initially focused on the private, domestic sphere of war’s long-term social and humanitarian consequences, Ivor’s gaze has shifted over the years towards places of forced migration and lands where people seek refuge, and then to the front lines of combat zones.

His early projects focused on stories of displaced people throughout the Balkans and Caucasus. Based in the Middle East since 2009, Ivor documented the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Libya, working simultaneously on editorial assignments and his own long term projects. In 2012 he was selected for the World Press Photo Joop swart Masterclass, named as a FOAM Talent and selected by PDN for their 30 under 30 list. 

Travelling to more than ten countries between 2012 and 2015 Ivor documented the Syrian refugee crisis in the region as well as Europe, working closely in collaboration with UNHCR to produce a comprehensive study of the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history. 

Most recently Ivor’s work has focused on the fight to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Ultimately working exclusively for the The New York Times he spent months on the ground, particularly covering the Battle of Mosul, reporting in both words and pictures. His work in Iraq and Syria has earned him multiple World Press Photo Awards and in 2018 he was named as a Pulitzer finalist. The entire body of work titled End of the Caliphate was released as a book by renowned German publisher Steidl in June 2019. 

Ivor’s work has been recognised through a number of prestigious awards including The World Press Photo, The Pulitzer Prizes, The Overseas Press Club Awards, Pictures of the Year International, The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and The Ian Parry Scholarship. Most recently he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet 2019 cycle and his work is currently touring the globe as part of the group exhibition. 

His pictures have been exhibited widely at institutions such as The Victoria and Albert Museum, Sothebys, Foam Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery, London and he currently has a major solo show at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy, In conjunction with the 2023 Fotografia Europea festival, for which the theme is Europe Matters: Visions of a Restless Identity. Ivor’s show and the corresponding book is entitled No Home from War: Tales of Survival and Loss and features over fifty photographs taken in conflict zones from 2006 to 2022. It is the the largest show of Ivor’s work to date, the first in italy, and it will be up until 30th July 2023.

Ivor is represented by Panos Pictures in London and he is a European Canon Ambassador.

In episode 203, Ivor discusses, among other things:

• His route to Newport and what he got from going there.
• How he got started and his strategy to get his work seen.
• Arab Spring 2011 and the lessons learned from that.
• Branching out and needing to get closer to the source.
• Mosul.
• The NYT and being asked to write.
• Going through times of wanting to quit.
• What keeps him doing it.
• Is an art gallery the right place for photojournalism?
• Can your work have an impact?
• Ukraine.
• Processing the witnessing of horror and adjusting to normal life.
• AI and its implications for photojournalism.

Referenced:

• Christine Redmond
• Joe Stirling
• Ken Grant
• Clive Landon
• Cheryl Newman
• Tim Hetherington
• Chris Hondros
• David Furst

Website | Instagram

“By the time it came to the ISIS work in Iraq and Syria, it was almost like I wanted to get closer to the source myself and see up close what it was I’d been investigating all these years and what people had been running from. Maybe it was a personal fascination that led me there to a certain extent, but also Mosul was essentially a humanitarian crisis as much as a war, and that’s why I went in the first place. ”

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Working within the documentary tradition, Stacy Kranitz makes photographs that acknowledge the limits of photographic representation. Her images do not tell the “truth” but are honest about their inherent shortcomings, and thus reclaim these failures (exoticism, ambiguity, fetishization) as sympathetic equivalents in order to more forcefully convey the complexity and instability of the lives, places, and moments they depict.

Stacy was born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Additional awards include the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography (2017), a Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development grant (2020), a Puffin Foundation grant (2022), and a Center for Documentation Fellowship (2023). Her work was shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2019). She has presented solo exhibitions of her photographs at the Diffusion Festival of Photography in Cardiff, Wales (2015), the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France, the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy (2022) and the Tennessee Triennial (2023) Her photographs are in several public collections including the Harvard Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and Duke Universities, Archive of Documentary Arts. Stacy works as an assignment photographer for such publications as Time, National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Mother Jones. Her first monograph, As it Was Give(n) To Me, was published by Twin Palms in 2022 and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo - Aperture First Photobook Award.

In episode 202, Stacy discusses, among other things:

• Her ‘awful’ childhood
• Her interest in the grey areas
• Violence as catharsis
• Why she was dissatisfied with her early work…
• …and what she did about it
• How she ‘accidentally’ ended up living in her car for 3.5 years
• Blurring her professional and personal lives
• How she came to work in Appalachia
• The title of her book, As it Was Give(n) To Me
• The mythology of Daniel Boone
• Why she included self-portraits in the book
• Playing with stereotypes and representation in her images
• Her grant writing endeavours
• Her next project in Appalachia
• The challenges of editing the book
• The long term nature of her projects

Referenced:

• Harry Cottle
• The FSA
• Jack Woody

Website | Instagram

“The camera for me is a connector. It connects me to people. And I always knew that if I hadn’t been a photographer, especially an editorial photographer where you’re sent out to all these different places, that I would be a very unhealthy hermit and I would just wither away. (Which isn’t even logical, but that’s how I felt). So the camera is a lifeline for me.”

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Igor Posner was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). After the fall of the Soviet Union, he moved to California in the early 90s. He studied molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he first started to take pictures and experiment in the darkroom.

Initial infatuation with picture-taking led Igor to explore the silent and haunting experience of walking after dark on the streets of Los Angeles and Tijuana. In a collision between social and typical with personal and psychological, this first series of images “Nonesuch Records” savors the strange solitude of the enigmatic region between California and Mexico; amid the streets, bars, night shelter hotels, and disappearing nocturnal figures.

After 14 years, Igor returned to St. Petersburg in 2006, taking up photography full time, which led to his first book Past Perfect Continuous, published by Red Hook Editions in 2017.

In 2022, Igor published his second monograph, entitled, Cargó. The book is a visual exloration of psychological aspects of migration and the gradual disappearance of neighborhoods based on immigrant communities in North America.

Igor is currently based in New York and in 2021 he joined Brooklyn-based independent publishing company Red Hook Editions as a managing partner. 

Igor’s work has been shown in North America, Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia and he has been a member of Prospekt Photographers since 2011.

In episode 202, Igor discusses, among other things:

• Growing up in St. Petersburg
• Moving to the USA
• Being gifted a camera by his mother
• The New York Photo League
• Shooting in LA
• The ‘language’ he employs intuitively
• Returning to Russia
• First attempts at editing being a ‘total failure’
• Brighton Beach and his second book, Cargo.
• The themes associated with the book
• Commercial work
• Social media

Referenced:

• Anders Petersen
• Michael Ackerman
• Antoine D’agata
• Robert Frank
• Jason Eskenazi

Website | Instagram

“All I wanted to do was go out there and be on the street and just photograph. It was an incredible sense of freedom and liberation for the first time in my life of not going from point A to point B. That’s what photography gives you because you have to be open to everything that’s around you. All of a sudden I started just looking at things. That’s a very trivial thing to say, but to me it felt like something I’ve never experienced before or at least not since my early childhood.”

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Antoine D'Agata is a French photographer and film director and a full member of Magnum Photos. His photographic subjects have mostly been those on the fringes of society and his work deals with topics often considered taboo, such as addiction, sex, personal obsessions, darkness, and prostitution.

Born in Marseilles in 1961, Antoine left France in his early 20s and remained overseas for the next ten years. Finding himself in New York in 1990, he pursued an interest in photography by taking courses at the International Center of Photography, where his teachers included Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. During his time in New York, Antoine worked as an intern in the editorial department of Magnum Photos, but after his return to France in 1993, he took a four-year break from photography. His first books of photographs, De Mala Muerte, and Mala Noche, were published in 1998, and the following year Galerie Vu began distributing his work. In 2001, he published Hometown and won the Niépce Prize for young photographers. He continued to publish regularly: Vortex and Insomnia appeared in 2003, accompanying his exhibition 1001 Nuits, which opened in Paris in September; Stigma was published in 2004, and Manifeste in 2005.

Since 2005 Antoine d’Agata has had no settled place of residence but has worked around the world. He is currently based in Paris.

In episode 201, Antoine discusses, among other things:

• Wanting to become a priest at 15
• Sacrifice
• Moving to London
• Situationism
• His intro to photography before he took pictures
• Being accepted into the ICP as a ’social experiment’
• Being ‘ashamed’ of having left the street
• Critics not having the full facts
• Moments of Paroxsysm
• The question for morality and ethics
• Quitting photography for 4-5 years
• Cambodia, his book Ice, Crystal Meth and the consequences of using it
• How he manages to endure the banality of the real world
• Contamination
• His Covid project with a heat sensitive camera
• His commitment to and passion for teaching workshops

Referenced:

• Luc Delahaye
• Moises Saman

Instagram

“I didn’t want to betray in any way what I was or what I was doing, so I needed to find different ways to keep going without negating what I believed in, and photography seemed to be the only considerable way to do it…”

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Based in London, Emma Hardy is well practiced in capturing the nuances of everyday life. Her images reflect an often unnoticed drama behind the scenes. Coming from a theatrical background and having worked as an actress herself before focusing on photography, Emma cites her fascination with people’s behaviour, the tensions, interactions and quirky humour, as a driving energy in her work.

Mainly self-taught, Emma photographs on film, simply, with natural or available light, stating “I try not to impose much technique or too much of myself on my subjects.” As such, there’s a hallmark honesty to her work. Her images are infused with a believable sense of being, her portraits are intimate and unselfconscious. Tilda Swinton, Natalia Vodianova, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Stella McCartney have sat for her, among others.

She started photographing portraits, documents and fashion for British Vogue, The Telegraph magazine, Vanity Fair, The Fader, The New York Times and Rolling Stone, among many others, and had her first solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2006 with a project titled Exceptional Youth.  Other exhibitions in London, New York and Milan followed, and she was invited to photograph a series of portraits for the London 2012 Olympics, again featured at the National Portrait Gallery. Thirty-nine of her portraits are in the permanent collection at the NPG London. In 2012 she was commissioned by Oxfam & The Economist to travel to Cambodia to document the citizens of Phnom Penh who were battling the governments land grabs—this series became an exhibition in London in 2013 titled Losing Ground, the exhibition travelled to Washington DC where the images were used as a lobbying tool to help the Cambodian situation onto the G8 summit list.

Permissions, Emma’s first monograph, was published by Gost Books in November 2022.  Some of the images were exhibited at 1014 Gallery in Dalston, London, December 2022 - January 2023.

Describing her aesthetic as raw but tender, Emma finds beauty in imperfection, and polish in the detail of everyday life. And through her lens, the most ordinary moments seem steeped in romance and intrigue, as if her subjects are characters in a movie playing in her head.

On episode 200, Emma discusses, among other things:

• Is art more pure if it’s done for the joy of it?
• Beauty and lyricism
• Childhood feelings of being an outsider
• Taking pictures of her children from an early age
• Trying to transmit how she felt in her work
• The inclusion of still lifes of flowers
• Why she started to photograph her mum
• The issue of permission and consent
• How the way she shot changed over time

Referenced:

• Nan Goldin
• Richard Billingham
• Nick Waplington
• Vivian Maier
• 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• Stuart Smith
• Stephen Ledger-Lomas
• Niall Sweeney

Website | Instagram

“When things line up, when life or the universe says ‘I’ve got something I can show you. Are you ready? ARE you ready?’ And you might be ready, and you might catch this thing that is shown to you. And that’s incredibly beautiful. And the times that that has happened I was very aware of it. Like, my whole body started fizzing.”

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Nick Brandt’s photographic series always relate to the devastating impact that humankind is having on both the rapidly disappearing natural world and now on itself, as a result of environmental destruction, climate change and human actions.

In the East African trilogy, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls Across The Ravaged Land(2001-2012), Nick established a style of portrait photography of animals in the wild similar to that of humans in a studio setting, shooting on medium format film, and attempting to portray animals as sentient creatures not so different from us.

In Inherit the Dust(2016), Nick photographed in places in East Africa where the animals used to roam. In each location, life size panels of unreleased animal portrait photographs were erected, setting the panels within a world of explosive human development. It is not just the animals who are the victims in this out of control world, but also the humans.

Photographed in color, This Empty World(2019) addresses the escalating destruction of the East African natural world at the hands of humans, showing a world where, overwhelmed by runaway development, there is no longer space for animals to survive. The people in the photos are also often helplessly swept along by the relentless tide of ‘progress’. Each image is a combination of two moments in time shot from the exact same camera position, once with wild animals that enter the frame, after which a set is built and a cast of people drawn from local communities.

The Day May Break (2021) is the first part of a global series portraying people & animals impacted by environmental destruction. Photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya, the people in the photos have all been badly affected by climate change - displaced by cyclones that destroyed their homes, displaced & impoverished after years-long severe droughts. The photos were taken at 5 sanctuaries/conservancies. The animals are almost all long-term rescues, due to everything from poaching of their parents to habitat destruction & poisoning. These animals can never be released back into the wild. Now habituated, it was therefore safe for strangers to be photographed close to the animals in the same frame.

Nick has had solo gallery and museum shows around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles. All the series are published in book form. Born and raised in London, where he originally studied Painting and Film, Nick now lives in the southern Californian mountains. In 2010, Nick co-founded Big Life Foundation, a non-profit in Kenya/Tanzania employing more than 300 local rangers protecting 1.6 million acres of the Amboseli/Kilimanjaro ecosystem.

On episode 199, Nick discusses, among other things:

• Why he moved to the USA
• His 18 ‘wasted’ years making films
• His first trilogy of projects: On This Earth, A Shadow Falls Across The Ravaged Land
• Having a niche that enabled him to start making a living
• Only taking photographs to exist on prints
• Inherit the Dust
• Going in to each project both ‘excited and scared shitless’
• This Empty World
• The Day May Break
• How he was personally impacted by wild fires at home in California
• The story of Kuda and Sky II
• His level of optimism about climate change

Referenced:

• Martin McDonagh
• Richard Avedon
• Irving Penn
• Arnold Newman
• Greta Thunberg

Website | Instagram

“Every project I go into I have no bloody clue whether it’s gonna work. But, that is part of the buzz, by which I mean I like to go into each project excited and scared shitless. I find that challenge to be incredibly stimulating.”

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Gregory Crewdson’s photographs have entered the American visual lexicon, taking their place alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch as indelible evocations of a silent psychological interzone between the everyday and the uncanny. Often working with a large team, Crewdson typically plans each image with meticulous attention to detail, orchestrating light, color, and production design to conjure dreamlike scenes infused with mystery and suspense. While the small-town settings of many of Crewdson’s images are broadly familiar, he is careful to avoid signifiers of identifiable sites and moments, establishing a world outside time.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Crewdson is a graduate of SUNY Purchase and the Yale University School of Art, where he is now director of graduate studies in photography. He lives and works in New York and Massachusetts. In a career spanning more than three decades, he has produced a succession of widely acclaimed bodies of work, from Natural Wonder (1992–97) to Cathedral of the Pines (2013–14). Beneath the Roses (2003–08), a series of pictures that took nearly ten years to complete—and which employed a crew of more than one hundred people—was the subject of the 2012 feature documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, by Ben Shapiro.

Crewdson’s emblematic series Twilight (1998–2002) ushers the viewer into a nocturnal arena of alienation and desire that is at once forbidding and darkly magnetic. In these lush photographs, the elements intervene unexpectedly and alarmingly into suburban domestic space. Crewdson’s psychological realism is tempered in these images by their heightened theatricality, while themes of memory and imagination, the banal and the fantastic, function in concert with a narrative of pain and redemption that runs through American history and its picturing.

Cathedral of the Pines, which was first exhibited at Gagosian in New York in 2016, depicts unnamed figures situated in the forests around the town of Becket, Massachusetts. In scenes that evoke nineteenth-century American and European history paintings, the works’ subjects appear traumatized by mysterious events or suspended in a fugue state. Working with a small crew to maintain an intimate and immediate atmosphere, the artist also used people close to him as models. But even once we know who “plays” the protagonists, their actions remain cryptic and their relationships unclear. “There are no answers here,” states the artist, “only questions.” The 2018–19 series An Eclipse of Moths is set amid down-at-heel postindustrial locations including an abandoned factory and a disused taxi depot. They serve as backdrops for Crewdson’s enigmatic dramas of decay and potential rebirth.

Gregory’s most recent body of work, Eveningside (2021-2022), was shot in B&W and formed the centrepiece of a retrospective trilogy of work, alongside Cathedral of the Pines and An Eclipse of Moths, in a major exhibition at Galerie D’Italia in Turin from October 2022 until January 2023. A older series called Fireflies (1996) was also included as ‘both connective tissue and counterpoint…’. A book, also entitled Eveningside, was published to accompany the show.

On episode 198, Gregory discusses, among other things:

• The three phases of his creative process
• Why he chose B&W for Eveningside
• His transition from film to digital
• The abiding themes in his work
• How every artist has one story to tell
• Falling in love with photography from day one
• His love of movies
• The significance of nudity in his work
• Allowing for ‘a certain kind of unexpected beauty and mystery’ to come out of the process
• Windows
• Never being quite satisfied with the results
• The relationship between true beauty and sadness
• The act of making a picture being an act of seperation from the world
• The way in which the subjects of his work always seem disconnected and alone…
• And how that references the act of making the picture.

Referenced

• The Night of the Hunter
• The Last Picture Show
• Mank
• Roma
• Rick Sands
• Laurie Simmonds

Gallery | Instagram

“I’ve said many times, I feel like every artist has one story to tell and that central story is told through an artists lifetime, and when you come of age in your early twenties you’re confronted with movies and artwork that you love or you hate and you’re defined in a certain way as a kind of aesthetic being, and then you spend your life sort of working out those things, and trying to find yourself within that frame of influences.”

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Martin Parr (born 23 May 1952), the man who the Daily Telegraph declared to be, “arguably Britain’s greatest living photographer” is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.

His major projects have been rural communities (1975–1982), The Last Resort (1983–1985), The Cost of Living (1987–1989), Small World (1987–1994) and Common Sense (1995–1999). Since 1994, Martin has been a member of Magnum Photos, where he scraped in by one vote and where between 2013 and 2017 he served as President. His work has been published in numerous photobooks, over 120 of his own, and he has exhibited prolifically throughout his career.

In 2017 the Martin Parr Foundation was opened in Bristol. The MPF is as a gallery and archive and research resource dedicated to both preserving the Martin’s photographic legacy and to supporting emerging, established and overlooked photographers who have made and continue to make work focused on the British Isles.

Since his first A Small Voice appearance on Episode 91 of the podcast in October 2018, Martin has had a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which opened in March 2019. Entitled Only Human, the show included portraits from around the world, with a special focus on Britishness, explored through a series of projects that investigated British identity. Also since that episode Martin was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours in June, 2021.

Martin’s latest book, A Year in the Life of Chew Stoke Village was released in September 2022 by RRB Books.

On episode 197, Martin discusses, among other things:

• Influence of his methodist grandfather… and peers at Manchester
• Early experiences in Hebdon Bridge
• The move to Ireland - From the Pope to a Flat White
• Liverpool and the controversy around The Last Resort work
• Bristol and Bath - The Cost of Living
• Being blown away by his first experience of Arles
• Joining Magnum amidst disapproval from the old guard
• Small World
• A Year in the Life of Chew Stoke Village
• Signs of the Times
• Common Sense
• The work of the Martin Parr Foundation
• Good work and bad work

Referenced:

• Robert Doisneau
• Bill Brandt
• Robert Frank
• Garry Winogrand
• Alan Murgatroyd
• Brian Griffin
• Daniel Meadows
• Albert Street Workshop
• Fintan O’Toole
• Peter Fraser
• Peter Mitchell
• Tom Wood
• Anna Fox
• Ken Grant
• David Moore
• John Hinde
• Philip Jones Griffiths
• Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Boris Mikhailov
• Krass Clement

Martin: Website | Instagram | Episode 91 | Chew Stoke book
MPF: Website | Instagram

“Most of the pictures I take are very bad, because to get the good pictures is almost impossible. If you went out in the morning and said ‘today I’m only gonna take good pictures’ you wouldn’t get anywhere. You wouldn’t even start. So you’ve got to have that momentum of shooting, and you’ve got to have found the right subject, the right place, the right time, and then things will start to happen.”

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As a teenager I wanted to be a professional journalist and an amateur photographer. This was a perfectly good and eminently attainable goal for a bright, lower-middle class fifteen year old boy to have. So, for reasons that are too complicated to explore here, I promptly set about dismantling any prospect of achieving it in a miasma of Marlboro reds and vast quantities of Pakistani Black. After hundreds of identical misspent nights in the White Hart, a relentless pursuit of any and all self-destructive displacement activites, and a brief detour into the cul-de-sac of a media production degree, the ‘dream’ was eventually realised when I sat down in front of a portable typewriter (old sckool, y’all) and became a freelance journalist, contributing features on a diverse range of subjects to a wide array of publications from specialist magazines to national broadsheets.

This arrangement was soon to change, however, when a long-standing love of photography was re-ignited by a short succession of annual pilgrimages to the World Press Photo exhibition at the Barbican in London. Instinctively feeling - or perhaps hoping - that I may have caught a glimpse into my future, I enrolled on a post-graduate diploma in photojournalism at the London College of Printing, after which I managed to combine both disciplines before ultimately electing to focus on the photography. Thus the adolescent ambition was fulfilled, but arse about backwards.

Then a bunch of other stuff - aka ‘life’ - happened; I worked consistently as a freelance editorial photographer (though never really as much as I should have); had an all too brief foray into the big bucks of commercial and lifestyle commissions; made sure I torpedoed every opportunity to progress that came my way lest I might have to face the terrifying prospect of success; and more or less sleep-walked zombie-like through what should have been the best years of my life. Thankfully the Marlboro reds and Pakistani Black, and indeed the endless, Groundhog Day nights in the pub, had long since lost any allure they may have once had. As, to be brutally frank, had photography and just about everything else.

Anyway, then a bunch more stuff happened, most of which (with the notable exception of my inexplicably becoming a father) was less than fascinating. In 2015 I decided to start a photography podcast. I’ve written about the reasons for this in my blog but the truth is it was what the Americans might call a ‘hail Mary pass’. A last ditch attempt at dragging myself out of the mire of self-flagellation, regret, disappointment and depression in which I found myself. I’ve come to realise that though I seem to lack the confidence and self-belief to really succeed and thrive, I can at least always muster the necessary resources to save myself from oblivion. Such was the case in September 2015 when I started this podcast. As Marc Maron once put it when asked whether he could have imagined when he started his podcast eventually interviewing the President. “I didn’t imagine anything. It was an alternative to suicide!”

Thanks for listening. I really mean that. Here’s to the next 100 episodes. I’ll do them as well as I can, keeping in mind my aforementioned podcasting hero’s beautiful words of advice: try to act from your heart, no matter how broken it is.

In episode 100, I discuss, among other things:

• Early days
• First breaks
• Regrets
• Voice memos
• The podcast
• My long-term project: 'Indicative Only'.

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

“Never believe you’ve played your last hand... Never believe you've played your last hand. There’s always more cards coming.”

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Photographer, Ben Smith introduces a new weekly photography podcast: 'A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers' and answers a few 'frequently anticipated questions.'

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