Explore every episode of the podcast A Small Voice: Conversations with photographers and filmmakers
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 238 - Diana Matar | 28 Aug 2024 | 01:06:00 | |
Using photography, testimony and archive, Diana Matar's in-depth bodies of work investigate themes of history, memory and state sponsored violence. Grounded in heavy research and often spending years on a project, Diana attempts to capture the invisible traces of human history and produces installations and books that query what role aesthetics might playin the depiction of power. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Diana has received the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art; the International Fund for Documentary Photography; a Ford Foundation Grant for artists making work on history and memory; and twice been awarded an Arts Council of England Individual Artist Grant. Her work is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited in numerous institutions including Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Singapore; Museum Folkswang, Essen, Germany; The Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Musee de la Photographie a Charleroi. Her monograph Evidencewas published in 2014 by Schilt Publishing Amsterdam to critical acclaim and chosen by New York Times Photography critic Teju Cole as one of two best photography books of the year. In 2019 Matar was appointed Distinguished Artist at Barnard College Columbia University, New York. In April 2024 Diana’s most recent book, My America, was published by GOST Books.
In episode 238, Diana discusses, among other things:
“I think I internalised a European sense of America in several different ways. When I was out on the road a lot of things seemed exotic to me, things that I’d grown up with and were just part of being: the long distances; these buildings that just pop up in the middle of nowhere; the emptiness; the scale… the kind of watching of movies of what is the American west. The internalisation I think has something to do with scale. I live in London - the small streets, you’re around people all the time, and then being in this openness, which i miss and i love, but I did find it unnerving and it effected how I made the work actually.”
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| 237 - Abdul Kircher | 14 Aug 2024 | 01:09:35 | |
Abdulhamid Kircher is an artist from Queens, New York. He was born in 1996 in Berlin to German and Turkish parents, and immigrated with his mother to the United States at the age of eight. His work is a living archive of place and people, as it is also a dedication to the language of photography, the mechanics and aesthetic possibilities of the form. Through his devotion to classical forms of image making and the radical experimentation required for each of his subjects, his process bridges the idea between document and narrative. He received his BA in Culture and Media from The New School in 2018 and his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego in 2022. Abdul currently lives and works between Berlin and Los Angeles. Abdul’s debut photobook, Rotting From Within, was recently published by Loose Joints in June this year (2024). In it Abdul explores identity, patriarchy, generational trauma and the possibility of reconciliation in a diaristic project between Berlin and Turkey. A solo exhibition of the work is currently on show at the Carlier Gebauer gallery in Berlin until the 31st August. The 53 minute documentary film, Noch ein Kind (Still a Kid), 2024, by Abdul’s childhood friend Maxi Hachem, a Lebanese-German filmmaker based in Berlin, is also being screened as part of the exhibition. His documentary investigates the complex relationships and wounded history of Rotting from Within spanning the past three years between Berlin and Turkey.
In episode 237, Abdul discusses, among other things:
“I love it, but it’s beyond love because it feels like something that I just need to do. That’s why I was talking about photography being such an intuitive thing in my head, it’s because I don’t really have an option. I need to take these photographs, I need to make these photographs, and it’s not really something I have power over. And I think that’s the scary bit, it’s that yes I love it for what it’s allowed me to explore and allowed me to sort of open up to the world, but in that way it’s also become a burden.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 236 - Louis Quail | 31 Jul 2024 | 01:14:46 | |
Louis Quail is a documentary photographer who increasingly devotes his time to personal, long-term projects. His most recent work ‘Big Brother’ (published with Dewi Lewis, 2018), has received significant critical acclaim. The book and the work in it has been shortlisted for the Arles Book and Text award 2018, Wellcome Trust photography prize 2019 and is winner of the Renaissance Series Prize 2017. His Arts Council funded, Solo show, ‘Before They Were Fallen’ also received significant exposure. It toured the UK and reflects an interest in aftermath that has taken him, previously to Libya, Afghanistan, Haiti and Kosovo. He has worked extensively for some of the UK’s best known magazines and has been published internationally over a period of many years. He has twice been a finalist at the National Portrait Gallery portraiture award and is held in their permanent collection. He lectures, exhibits internationally and makes short films.
In episode 236, Louis discusses, among other things:
“I’m not judgemental, I’m quite tolerant, and I do think that’s an important quaility that’s very much overlooked, especially these days on Twitter when everyone’s reacting to stuff all the time. I don’t like that. I’m really just into giving people a bit of space an allowing people to make some mistakes.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 235 - Debi Cornwall | 17 Jul 2024 | 01:11:15 | |
Debi Cornwall is a multimedia documentary artist who returned to visual expression after a 12-year career as a civil-rights lawyer. Her work explores the performance of power, citizenship and identity through still and moving images, sound, testimony, and archival material. While completing a degree in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Debi studied photography at RISD. After working for photographers Mary Ellen Mark and Sylvia Plachy, as an AP stringer, and as an investigator for the federal public defender's office, she attended Harvard Law School and practiced as a wrongful conviction attorney for more than a decade, also training as a mediator. Exhaustive research and negotiation were critical to her advocacy and remain integral to her visual practice. Debi was awarded the 2023 Prix Elysée, a biennial juried contemporary photography prize created by the Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland with the support of Parmigiani Fleurier. The award enabled her to complete Model Citizens, now a book in English and French editions (Radius/Textuel) and an exhibition at the 2024 Rencontres d'Arles festival. She is also a 2024 New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Grantee in film, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in photography, and inaugural Leica Women Foto Project Award winner. Debi’s work has been profiled in publications including Art in America, European Photography Magazine, British Journal of Photography, the New York Times Magazine, and Hyperallergic, and is held in public and private collections around the world. Debi has published two previous books, Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay and Necessary Fictions. She is also an ICP faculty member, teaching students how to plumb deeper layers in their work, and consults independently with artists developing long-term projects.
In episode 235, Debi discusses, among other things:
“I don’t think it’s a thread in the work so much as something that I’m really sitting with personally and creatively, but I have this advocate self who is outraged and frustrated at what is happening in our societies. And I have a trained mediator in me, which is more consistent with my creative approach, who thinks none of this changes unless we can really talk to each other across these divides; unless we can accept each other’s humanity and hear each other. Because that isn’t happening.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 234 - Photomeet 2024 Special | 03 Jul 2024 | 00:52:20 | |
Featuring:
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| 233 - Chloé Jafé | 19 Jun 2024 | 01:08:13 | |
Born in Lyon in 1984 represented by Ibasho and galerie écho 119, Chloé Jafé is an artist and a photographer trained at the École de Condé in Lyon and at the UAL Central Saint Martins School in London. In episode 233, Chloé discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“I was sure this project was mine. I had to do this. You know, I think I was frustrated that I was the right person to do this, and it was my mission. I was sure about that.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 100 - Ben Smith | 06 Mar 2019 | 01:15:02 | |
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:
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.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 000 - Ben Smith (intro) | 10 Sep 2015 | 00:03:42 | |
Photographer, Ben Smith introduces a new weekly photography podcast: 'A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers' and answers a few 'frequently anticipated questions.'
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 239 - Kiana Hayeri | 11 Sep 2024 | 01:13:44 | |
Visual storyteller Kiana Hayeri grew up in Tehran and moved to Toronto while she was still a teenager. Faced with the challenges of adapting to a new environment, she took up photography as a way of bridging the gap in language and culture. In 2014, a short month before NATO forces pulled out, Kiana moved to Kabul and stayed on for 8 years. Her work often explores complex topics such as migration, adolescence, identity and sexuality in conflict-ridden societies. In 2014, Kiana was named as one of the emerging photographers by PDN 30 Under 30. In 2016, she was selected as the recipient of Chris Hondros Award as an emerging photographer. In 2017, she received a grant from European Journalism Center to do a series of reporting on gender equality out of Afghanistan and received Stern Grant in 2018 to continue her work on the state of mental health among afghan women. In 2020, Kiana received Tim Hetherington Visionary award for her proposed project to reveal the dangers of dilettante “hit & run” journalism. Later that year, she was named as the 6th recipient of the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting. In 2021, Kiana received the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal for her photographic series Where Prison is Kind of a Freedom, documenting the lives of Afghan women in Herat Prison. In 2022, Kiana was part of The New York Times reporting team that won The Hal Boyle Award for The Collapse of Afghanistan and was shortlisted under International Reporting for the Pulitzer Prize. In the same year, she was also named as the winner of Leica Oskar Barnack Award for her portfolio, Promises Written On the Ice, Left In the Sun, an intimate look into the lives of Afghan from all walks of life. Kiana, along with her colloaborator, the researcher Mélissa Cornet, is recipient of the 2024 Carmignac Photojournalism Award for the reportage No Woman’s Land, an investigation into the plight of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban and the work will be showcased in a double exhibition this Autumn - from October 25th to November 18th - at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers in Paris as part of the Photo Saint Germain festival. Kiana is a Senior TED fellow, a National Geographic Explorer grantee and a regular contributor to The New York Times and National Geographic. She is currently based in Sarajevo, telling stories from Afghanistan, The Balkans and beyond.
In episode 239, Kiana discusses, among other things: Her story for the NYT about FGM in Gambia Gender apartheid Her take on winning awards as a photojournalist Having to Google what the Robert Cap Gold Medal was - having won it Her book When Cages Fly Moving to Canada from Iran as a teenager How photography helped her bridge the ‘culture and language gap’. Being at a ‘gifted’ school Her first trip to Afghanistan Comparisons with Iran in terms of relative ‘liberalism’. Her first commission from National Geographic Her story on women in Herat prison The moment Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and her guilt over leaving friends behind Gender apartheid in Afghanistan specifically The dangers of ‘dilettante hit and run journalism’
Referenced:
“I tell people having a camera is like living a thousand different lives, but you have that camera as an excuse to immerse yourself into something, live it for a while and then walk away when you’re ready.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 240 - Robbie Lawrence | 25 Sep 2024 | 01:19:33 | |
Robbie Lawrence is a London based Scottish photographer and director represented by Webber Represents. Robbie is acutely attentive to the way images tell a story. Working with a painterly softness and sensitivity to his subjects, he deals in detail and nuance. From portraiture, travel and documentary to editorial work, he places the human experience front and centre to create thoughtful, abstract images, with an emphasis on narrative. Recent books include Blackwater River and A Voice Above The Linn published by Stanley/Barker. Stills gallery in Edinburgh hosted the first UK institutional solo exhibition by Robbie in 2022, bringing together a snapshot of life post-Brexit across Scotland’s cities, rural locations and coastal towns. Robbie’s new book, Long Walk Home, was just released (September 2024) by Stanley/Barker. Clients Include: UN, Apple, Nike, Hermes, Gucci, The New Yorker, Du Monde, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, I-D and many others.
In episode 240, Robbie discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“I like the variety […] I like being on set. You become more like a director. As a photographer you’re almost the emotional heartbeat of a set. It’s interesting because at school and university I really found exams hellish from an expectation point of view. Like, I would put myself under a lot of pressure. And I would describe some of those more pressurised commercial jobs almost like a school exam where you expected to produce something of quality under a very tight time constraint. As a physical experience it can feel similar, and I suppose maybe it’s just experience that I can now recall moments where I’ve overcome those kind of stresses. So I like the shift.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 241 - Agnieszka Sosnowska | 09 Oct 2024 | 01:20:29 | |
Agnieszka Sosnowska was born in Warsaw, Poland and was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and a MFA from Boston University. She is currently an elementary school teacher. She lives on farm “I grew up in Boston and traveled to Iceland 25 years ago on a whim”, says Agnieszka. “I fell in love and remained. With my Icelandic husband I chose to live in nature, not visit it. This decision has not been without tests. Together we have made a life that I feel we are only beginning. Everyday, I search for corners of quiet. When there, I stop and listen for a long time. These places exist around our farm, with friends, and the students I teach. These places are my everyday. They are my everything.” Agnieszka has been the recipient of a number of grants, including a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship to Poland and an American Scandinavian Fellowship to Iceland. She was awarded the Hjálmar R. Bárðarson Photography Grant by the National Museum of Iceland. Her series was awarded the Director’s Choice by the Center awards in 2017 and she has been in the Top 50 of Critical Mass on three occasions. Her work has been exhibited in the National Museum of Iceland and the Reykjavik Museum of Photography. She is represented exclusively by Vision Neil Folberg Gallery in Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Agnieszka released her debut photobook, För, published by Trespasser Books and already sold out. Her collaboration with Icelandic poet Ingunn Snædal, entitled RASK, is currently being exhibited at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography until Decembet 2024. In episode 241, Agnieszka discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“I wanted to grow. I just didn’t know how. And I think the only way you grow is not by thinking about it but by doing it and making the mistakes. And I made a lot of mistakes. And thank God I did because in doing the mistakes I started to get more to having the self-portraits be more real. And that’s really hard to do. Especially I think as me having done it for so long, and also getting older in front of a camera, as a woman, it’s hard.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 242 - Polly Braden | 23 Oct 2024 | 01:16:53 | |
Polly Braden is a documentary photographer whose work features an ongoing conversation between the people she photographs and the environment in which they find themselves. Highlighting the small, often unconscious gestures of her subjects, Polly particularly enjoys long-term, in depth collaborations that in turn lends her photographs a unique, quiet intimacy. She works on long-term, self-initiated projects, as well as commissions for international publications. Polly has produced a large body of work that includes not only solo exhibitions and magazine features, but a number of books published by Dewi Lewis, including Holding The Baby (2022), Out of the Shadows: The Untold Story of People with Autism or Learning Disabilities (2018), and China Between (2010), and two published by Hoxton Mini Press: London’s Square Mile: A Secret City (2019) and Adventures in the Lea Valley), (2016). Polly teaches regularly at The University of Westminster and London College of Communication (LCC), she is a winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize, The Guardian Young Photographer of the Year, 2002, and the Joanna Drew Bursary 2013. Polly is nominated by Hundred Heroines 2020 and she has exhibited at numerous venues internationally. Her most recent solo exhibition, of her project Leaving Ukraine, just ended at the Foundling Museum in London, where it was on show from March 15th to October 20th 2024.
In episode 242, Polly discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“I’m not someone who wanted to just jump in, point a camera at someone and walk away. I think I’ve always been someone who wanted it to feel very collaborative. Whether you’re on the street and you’ve made eye contact and you feel like someone’s ok with it, at the very basic level, to now as I get older, when I’d be as interested in someone doing all the work and me just being a vehicle through which someone can tell their story.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 243 - Unseen Festival 2024 Special | 06 Nov 2024 | 01:10:14 | |
Featuring:
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 244 - Stephan Vanfleteren | 20 Nov 2024 | 01:17:02 | |
Stephan Vanfleteren's career began as a staff photographer for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. He continued to contribute to its weekend magazine as a freelancer until 2009. His radical black and white social documentary work covers the disappearing phenomena of everyday life in his homeland, Belgium. Over the years, Stephan has worked in conflict zones such as Kosovo, Rwanda and Afghanistan and he is a six time winner of the prestigious World Press Photo awards among a number of other international prizes. Stephan's intense portrait photography captures the essence of humanity in subjects ranging from the ordinary man to top politicians, sports idols and celebrities. He has exhibited in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Liverpool and Verona and his books include: Elvis & Presley (Kruse Verlag, 2001) a road trip across America dressed as Elvis Presley with photographer Robert Huber; Flandrien (Mertz, 2005) on the Flemish obsession with cycling; Belgicum (Lannoo 2007) an enigmatic portrayal of Belgium and Portret 1989-2009 (Lannoo 2009). His most recent books are Atelier published by Hannibal Books, an ode to the ability to observe, represent, elevate, and ultimately, connect, and Present, a journey through his oeuvre, with expansive personal reflections and stories from three decades of encounters and photography, from street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide of Rwanda, from storefront façades to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic wall, from still lifes to intense portraits, and Charleroi – Il est clair que le gris est noir.
Referenced:
“I was very scared of success. That was maybe my luck. Success was something I had difficulty dealing with. People are complimenting you on your work at the beginning and I’m just accepting that but it was difficult. And it helped me because I never arrived. I was on my way and the doubts were still there. If you think you know how to do it, it’s time to leave. Sometimes if I think ‘ok, I can do that pretty well, Of course other people can do it better, but it’s time to change, to have another approach…’ So I had that in the early beginning, that feeling that I have to change. I love to begin something new.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 245 - Paris Photo Fair 2024 Special | 04 Dec 2024 | 01:27:29 | |
Featuring:
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 246 - The Year In Review 2024 | 18 Dec 2024 | 01:21:41 | |
Featuring:
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 247 - Ed Sykes | 01 Jan 2025 | 01:18:35 | |
Ed Sykes is a photographer and visual artist based in London. Ed’s practice focuses on landscape and changes to the environment as a result of natural processes and human activity. This approach is in conjunction with a re-working of photographic materials and a disruption of traditional photographic production. The processes and effects of climate change are often replicated during the image making process itself. The series 1000 Degrees used a blow torch to melt photographic negatives at a heat similar to the furnaces that propelled the Industrial Revolution. The work Hanging By A Thread pushed this same notion to the picture frames which were sourced secondhand and then the wooden surrounds were charred in a similar way to the subject matter of wildfires. Other approaches have involved sanding and abrasion echoing the effects of coastal erosion and also the use of soluble paper, the dissolution of an image in water, mimicking flood damage. Ed was the recipient of an Arts Council grant for the project Eco Matters and Sustainable Processes. This saw Ed travel along Britain’s east coast and to some of Europe’s fastest eroding coastlines, embedding a new creative approach to climate change, environment and the anthropocene. In 2021 he was nominated for Prix Pictet Award with1000 Degrees, a response to the historical, industrial exploitation of natural resources in UK.
In episode 247, Ed discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“As a photographer, you want something that drives you on. You need to find something that is close to your heart. And if you have that, you’re gonna go the distance. You’re gonna persevere, you’re gonna get up at four in the morning with the slim chance of getting one picture, because it’s important to you.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 248 - Ian Howorth | 15 Jan 2025 | 01:11:18 | |
Ian Howorth is a documentary photographer based in Brighton, UK. His work deals with themes of identity and culture. Through Setanta Books, Ian sold out his first book, Arcadia, in 2019 and published his second, A Country Kind of Silence, in 2023. Ian’s work has been featured in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, It’s Nice That and Huck.
Referenced:
“Wim Wenders and Robby Müller [In Paris Texas] happened to hit on something that made sense artistically but also looks beautiful aesthetically, and that for me is the perfect marriage. Not everyone can achieve it, but that to me became very important. I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t smart enough to do that. But at the same time I knew the power of colour - I knew what it did, I understood my emotional response to it. And that was enough for me to pursue it at the time, and I would figure it out later.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 249 - Dina Litovsky | 29 Jan 2025 | 01:08:30 | |
Dina Litovsky is a Ukrainian-born photographer living in New York City since 1991. Dina's imagery can be described as visual sociology. Her work explores the idea of leisure, often focusing on subcultures and social gatherings. Dina is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, New Yorker, GQ and New York Magazine. In 2020 Dina won the Nannen Prize, Germany's foremost award for documentary photography. Other awards include the PDN 30, New and Emerging Photographers to Watch; POYi; NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International Photography Awards and American Photography. Selected exhibitions include group and solo shows at the Museum of the City of New York; Noordelicht Festival, Netherlands; Annenberg Space for Photography, LA and the Anastasia Photo Gallery, NYC. In 2022 she started writing the Substack newsletter In The Flash, an ongoing dialogue about the art and craft of creating and thinking about images. In her weekly posts, she discuses the creative process, focusing on the WHY of photography — intent, meaning, and inspiration. She shares her insights into the world of a professional photographer as well as all the things that make her tick and inspire her to create, from photography to art to music. Dina holds a bachelor in psychology from NYU and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, NY. In episode 248, Dina discusses, among other things:
“I’m an introvert with a social phobia. So I would never draw attention to myself. But with a camera I could actually go where I wanted to go and photograph and confront people, with a shield. And so I think I was using it more as my own self therapy, like I wanted to be in the middle of the party, and I wanted to be on this dancefloor with the young women, but I couldn’t. And so with a camera I was there just photographing it.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 250 - Joseph Michael Lopez | 12 Feb 2025 | 01:15:16 | |
Joseph Michael Lopez - JML, (b. 1973) is an independent photographer born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a mother who escaped the Cuban Revolution in 1967. He earned his MFA in 2011 at Columbia University. Lopez began his career as an analog cinematographer on the critically acclaimed Bruce Weber film, Chop Suey (2001). Currently, Joseph divides his time between long-form projects, teaching, and commercial work. His photographs have appeared on the covers of M, The Magazine for Leica M Photography, Leica Fotografie International, The Sunday Review of The New York Times, New York magazine and The New Yorker, among others. Joseph’s photographs were on exhibit in “Cuban Photography after 1980: Selections from the Museum’s Collection”, at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2016, a commissioned series of his photographs of New York neighborhoods, “New York at Its Core: Future City Lab”, was installed at The Museum of the City of New York. Photographs from JML NYC, the series from which this commission originated, have also been published in the book Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz. JML’s first book JML NYC 02-23 was published by GOST in the fall of 2024. In episode 250, Joseph discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“Essentially, it’s about saying something and having a voice and having a perception of the world that is, like singing a loud song you know, your pictures have to say something. And how do you separate yourself from all the noise that’s out there already? You have to have an obsessive, emphatic way to perceive things. I think to a certain extent what we see is who we are in a way.”
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| 253 - Katrin Koenning | 26 Mar 2025 | 01:13:29 | |
Katrin Koenning is a visual artist from Germany whose work travels across still and moving images and text, at times including found materials, painting and collage. Pursuing intimacy and interconnection her work centres around practice as relational encounter. Most stories evolve through years and use returning as a way of drawing closer. Different series often intersect, merging in and out of each other. In her extended image-dialogues, Katrin uses fragments and slippages to suggest narrative spaces, communities and lived experiences that are allied, fluid and multiplicit. Many of her series render non-human human entanglement and intimate kin, positing imaginaries with a greater-than-human world. Katrin has been the recipient of multiple awards, such as the Bowness Photography Prize. Her work is regularly exhibited in Australian and international solo and group exhibitions including presentations at Ishara Art Foundation Dubai, Chobi Mela, Paris Photo, Hamburg Triennial of Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australian Centre for Photography and the National Gallery of Victoria (2023). Koenning’s images have been published in The New Yorker, Vogue.com, Zeit Magazine, The Guardian, New York Times, Esquire Italy, Der Spiegel, Yucca Magazine, California Sunday and many other places. Her work is held in numerous institutional and private collections both in Australia and abroad; most recently her large-scale installation While the Mountains had Feet [2020 — 2022] was acquired in whole by the National Gallery of Victoria. Katrin regularly teaches workshops in photographic practice and thinking, working closely with many institutions and festivals locally and across the Asia-Pacific region such as Angkor Photo Festival (Siem Reap Cambodia), Photo Kathmandu (Kathmandu, Nepal), The Lighthouse (Calcutta, West Bengal), Myanmar Deitta (Yangon, Myanmar), Australian Centre for Photography, Perth Centre for Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Palmtree Workshops (Santorini Greece, forthcoming), and others. Katrin lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) on unceded Boon Wurrung Woi Wurrung Country. In episode 253, Katrin discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“This is always the way that I work, I look at what the thing is that is at stake, and what am I trying to talk about? And actually also very much like I’m listening to the thing that I’m trying to talk to. So what does it want from me? You know, what does the story want from me and what does the situation around it ask of me? And therefore how do I need to approach it?”
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| 252 - Ian Macdonald | 12 Mar 2025 | 01:07:32 | |
Ian Macdonald (b. 1946) is an internationally acclaimed photographer born and raised in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, UK. He studied Graphic Design and Printmaking at Teesside College of Art in 1968 and went on to study Painting and Photography at Sheffield School of Art, Photography and Graphic Design at Birmingham Polytechnic and Education at Lancaster University. He pursued photography alongside drawing – his first love - painting and printmaking. Since 1968, Ian has consistently photographed the people and places of Teesside, one of Europe’s most heavily industrialised areas in the north east of England. His love of the region, the beauty of the landscape – great expanses of wildness nestling among industrial settings - and his solid admiration for the people working and living amongst this environment has resulted in a completely honest and passionate depiction of a place and its community. “The most successful of my photographs seem to be a product of an exploration into my environment and the people I live and work amongst and an excitement generated in me by what I confront. Sometimes by-product would seem a more appropriate term, because only rarely do images really come near to saying anything about the strength, humour, vitality, atmosphere, pathos and despair which seems to make up what goes on around us all. Always, I am spurred on by a tingling sensation at the possibility, this time, perhaps, the image may really say something”. Ian’s work has been included in various publications, such as England Gone, Smith’s Dock Shipbuilders, Images of the Tees, Eton and The Blast Furnace. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many private and public photography collections around the world. In 2024 Ian had a major retrospective entitled Fixing Time, covering the first twenty years of his work, displayed across two venues in the north east of England - Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art. Ian is currently working on a series of forthcoming books with GOST Books. In episode 252, Ian discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
Website | Short film about Ian by Jamie Macdonald “When I first went to Greatham Creek, there was no history anywhere about it. I couldn’t find anything written down. So I wrote a lot down. I talked to people. I went into pretty deep research into archives in the local library and stuff like that. And I guess this was part of the drive for [photographing] both the shipyard and the furnace. Because maybe I did have an inkling, because there was nothing about the creek - where’s the stuff about the furnace?… about the men who worked there, like my dad and granddad? Where is their history? And I wanted to celebrate their history. I wanted to celebrate what they were. I wanted a record, a document, a memory of them. And that’s what drove me to do it.”
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| 251 - Mike Abrahams | 26 Feb 2025 | 01:02:01 | |
British photographer Mike Abrahams has worked as a freelance photographer for over 40 years having become renowned for his sensitive eye in documenting the lives of ordinary people often in extraordinary situations. In 1981 he was a cofounder of Network Photographers the Internationally renowned picture agency and his work has taken him around the world. His photographs have been published in all the major international news media. In 2024, Mike’s much anticipated book This Was Then, was published by Bluecoat Press and has been described as a lyrical portrait of humanity in adverse circumstances. It features photographs taken from 1973 to 2001 in cities from Liverpool to Glasgow. Blackburn to Bradford, Northern Ireland to the coalfields of Kent and London. Mike’s work on Faith - A Journey with Those Who Believe, published in 2000, was the culmination of five years work, documenting the extremes and passion of Christian devotion throughout fourteen countries. Awards for this work included the World Press Photo Award in 2000, and the book Faith designed by Browns, was a finalist in the Design Week - Editorial Design: Books. It has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and Europe. Colin Jacobson, picture editor of The Independent Magazine, described Mike’s body of work from the conflict in Northern Ireland and published in the book Still War, in 1989 as "Documentary photography at its best - imaginative, comprehensive, confident and concerned". His coverage of the troubles in Northern Ireland was the subjects of a Television documentary Moving Stills. Other important assignments have included coverage of the division of Cyprus, Migrant labour in Southern Africa, the Intifada in the Occupied Territories, the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the rise in the influence of the religious in Israeli politics, the Cult of Assad in Syria, Northern Ireland and documenting Another Britain. In episode 251, Mike discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“You can go here, there and everywhere, and I have travelled a lot and it’s been interesting and fascinating, but you’re always the outsider coming in. You don’t really know the story. It’s glamorous, it’s exotic, it’s fascinating, but I think it’s much harder to photograph your home turf. You come to it with quite an honest perspective. It’s the land you’re living in, you’re conscious of the differences in the country between the north, south, east and west, the regions… it’s kind of embedded in you, the differences.”
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| 254 - Tomasz Tomaszewski | 09 Apr 2025 | 01:30:22 | |
Tomasz Tomaszewski has a Ph.D from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and is a member of the Union of Polish Art Photographers, the Visum Archiv Agency of Hamburg, Germany, the National Geographic Creative Agency of Washington D.C., and the American Society of Media Photographers. He specializes in journalistic photography and has had his photos published in major newspapers and magazines worldwide including National Geographic Magazine, Stern, Paris Match, GEO, New York Times, Time, Fortune, Elle, Vogue. He has also authored a number of books, including Remnants: The Last Jews of Poland, Gypsies: The Last Ones; In Search of America, In the Centre, Astonishing Spain, A Stone’s Throw, Overwhelmed by the Atmosphere of Kindness, Things that last, and has co-illustrated over a dozen collective works. He has held numerous individual exhibitions in the USA, Canada, Israel, Japan, Brazil, Madagascar, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia and Poland. Tomasz is the recipient of many Polish and international awards for photography. For over thirty years he has been a regular contributor to National Geographic Magazine USA in which eighteen of his photo essays have been published. Tomasz has taught photography in Poland, the USA, Germany and Italy. Tomasz’s most recent book, The World Is Where You Stop was published in 2023 by Blow Up Press. In episode 254, Tomasz discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
Website | Instagram | Interview in ‘Hot Mirror’
“Most of the time when I was working for Geographic, I wanted my photographs to serve a purpose, to tell a story, or explain a person to another human being. But this time I only wanted to capture surprise, maybe, wonder, occassionally joy, amusement, but also discomfort. In short, anything but a desire to tell a story.”
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 255 - Mackenzie Calle | 23 Apr 2025 | 01:09:33 | |
Mackenzie Calle is a freelance documentary photographer and National Geographic Explorer based in Brooklyn. In 2024, she was awarded first prize in the World Press Photo Open Format category award (North & Central America) for her project the Gay Space Agency, and was a finalist for the Sony World Photography Awards. She was selected as a Magnum Foundation Counter Histories Fellow in 2022. That same year, she was named one of the Lenscratch 25 to Watch and was shortlisted for the PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant. In 2023, she was named as a Lens Culture Emerging Talent Award winner and received the Dear Dave Fellowship. Mackenzie is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Cinema Studies and was awarded the Director’s Fellowship to attend ICP’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program. She was selected to Eddie Adams Workshop class XXXV. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at CUNY’s College of Staten Island. Prior to her freelance career, she was a photo producer at NBC Universal. Her work has been exhibited at Fotografiska Stockholm, Photoville, Pride Photo Festival, and Noorderlicht International Photo Festival. Clients include National Geographic, The Washington Post, GAYLETTER, Discovery, MSNBC, and The Wall Street Journal.
In episode 255, Mackenzie discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“For me, it’s letting the story tell me what it needs. So it’s not so much going in with a preconceived notion. You obviously go into most stories with some idea of what you’re going to do, but every idea I have, that work in itself almost reveals or tells me kind of what it should be. So sometimes that means fiction, sometimes that does mean straight photojournalism, sometimes that means entirely imagined and staged projects…”
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| 256 - Marc Wilson | 21 May 2025 | 01:11:14 | |
London-born British photographer Marc Wilson’s images document the memories, histories and stories that are set in the landscapes that surround us. His long term documentary projects include The Last Stand (2010-2014), A Wounded Landscape - bearing witness to the Holocaust (2015-2021) and The Land is Yellow, the Sky is Blue (2021-2023). Marc’s aim is to tell stories through his photography, focusing at times on the landscape itself, and the objects found on and within it, and sometimes combining landscape, documentary, portrait and still life, along with audio recordings of interviews and sounds, to portray the mass sprawling web of the histories and stories he is hoping to tell. Marc has published 6 photo books - Travelogue 2 (2024), The Land is Yellow, the Sky is Blue (2023), Remnants (2022), A Wounded Landscape - bearing witness to the Holocaust (2021), Travelogue 1 (2018), and The Last Stand (2014). Solo exhibitions include those at Impressions Gallery, Bradford, Side Gallery, Newcastle, The Royal Armouries Museum and Focal point Gallery in the UK and Spazio Klien in Italy. Marc’s work has been published in journals and magazines ranging from National Geographic, FT Weekend, Leica LFI, Source, Raw Magazine, Wired, Dezeen and others, he also works as a visiting lecturer at various universities in the UK and has given talks about his work both in the UK and abroad. In episode 256, Marc discusses, among other things:
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| 257 - Photo London 2025 Special | 04 Jun 2025 | 01:01:52 | |
Featuring:
Featured in the Positions exhibition: Adam Rouhana (@adam.rouhana), Aikaterini Gegisian (@aikaterini_gegisian), Babak Kazemi (@babakkazemi1), Bibi Manavi (@bibimanavi), Ippolita Paolucci (@ippolitapaolucci), Kalpesh Lathigra (@kalpeshlathigra), Karim El Hayawan (@karimelhayawan), Mieke Douglas (@miekedouglas) and Roberto Conde (@robconde33)
Photo London Website | Instagram
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| 258 - Paul Seawright | 18 Jun 2025 | 01:25:28 | |
Paul Seawright is Professor of Photography and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. His photographic work is held in many museum collections including The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Tate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, International Centre of Photography New York, Arts Councils of Ireland, England and N.Ireland, UK Government Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. In 2002 he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum London to undertake a war art commission in Afghanistan and his photographs of battle-sites and minefields have subsequently been exhibited in North America, Canada, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Korea, Japan and China. In 2003 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale of Art and in 1997 won the Irish Museum of Modern Art/Glen Dimplex Prize. He is represented by the Kerlin Gallery Dublin. Paul was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to higher education and the arts.
In episode 258, Paul discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
EPISODE SPONSOR: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS.
“‘Allusive documentary’ is probably a good way to think about it. For me, it’s really about - and this is the bit that goes back to my experience of photography in Northern Ireland, which was all about dramacentric imagery - how you can make photographs that have a documentary subject (that might be the closest I come to being a documentarian, that I work with the subject of documentary photography) but with the methodology of an artist. That’s kind of the way I like to frame it, and I think that follows through to the work which is nearly always conceived for the gallery wall.”
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| 259 - Mohamed Bourouissa | 02 Jul 2025 | 01:24:50 | |
Mohamed Bourouissa is an Algerian-born French artist (b. 1978) who lives and works in Paris. Mohamed's practice moves between photography, video, sculpture, and installation, often blurring the lines between these mediums. His work explores social issues, power dynamics, and the representation of marginalized communities. He often engages with or embeds himself into specific communities for extended periods, spending significant time with individuals and groups to understand their experiences and perspectives before then creating collaborative works that challenge societal structures and explore the complexities of identity. Mohamed's work frequently addresses the tensions between different social contexts, particularly those related to race, class, and immigration, often questioning how different social groups are represented in media and art, challenging stereotypes and seeking to offer alternative narratives. His work has been exhibited in major museums and biennials worldwide, and in 2020 he received the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for his retrospective exhibition featured in the Arles Festival the previous year. Mohamed currently has a major solo show at Fondazione MAST in Bologna Italy, curated by Francesco Zanot. The exhibition is entitled Communautés and features four notable works produced over a twenty year span between 2005 and this year - Péripherique, Horse Day, Shoplifters and Hands.
In episode 259, Mohamed discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
EPISODE SPONSORS: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. PICDROP
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| 260 - Anna Arendt | 16 Jul 2025 | 01:10:21 | |
Anna Arendt is a photographer and visual artist living and working in Berlin whose images explore memory, silence, loss, and the invisible links between personal history and larger events. Her work often moves between personal, historical, and symbolic worlds, shot in black-and-white to capture places where the past and present meet. Anna was born in the German Democratic Republic and was 24 when The Wall fell, at which time her daughter was two. Her parents were born 1940 in Germany, children of war. Both of her grandfathers had been soldiers, who had been in Poland between 1940 and 1942. One came back 2 years after the war was over, the other one never returned. As a child Anna found a secret shelf that contained photo albums of her family. "It is where I discovered the power of a picture. A picture taken in summer 1940. A young family, my grandmother, her baby and my grandfather in a German uniform. A picture full of contradictions, carrying ambivalent feelings even today." Anna graduated with a degree in Fine Arts and Set Design and then received a one-year grant from the DAAD to study photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. For 15 years, she worked as a set and costume designer for opera, drama, and puppet theater, collaborating with directors at theaters across Germany and Switzerland. Anna recently published her first book, Vanishing, with Charcoal Press. Photographed mostly between Germany and Poland over 15 years, the work slides back and forth through time like a blood memory. Walking naked through the dark forest, wolves circling, howling. A daughter becoming a mother becoming a grandmother becoming a child. Haunted villages, and souls in jeopardy. The harsh reality of the past merges seamlessly with moments of rapture that feel plucked from a Grimm fairy tale. Photography has now become the center of Anna’s creative life. She continues to develop long-term projects that reflect her search for meaning in places marked by beauty, pain, and the mysteries of time. Alongside her artistic work, she also works with disabled people in an art workshop, sharing the joy of creative expression. In episode 260, Anna discusses, among other things:
EPISODE SPONSORS: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. PICDROP
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| 261 - Marjolein Martinot | 30 Jul 2025 | 01:03:14 | |
Marjolein Martinot is a Dutch photographer, based in France. She was always been drawn to photography from an early age, and has continued using and exploring the medium throughout her life, while raising a family of six children. Her photography touches on the poetic, while striving to remain authentic and true at the same time. She aims to evoke sentiments by using and mixing different photographic approaches and analogue cameras. The prime focus of Marjolein’s work is on everyday life: family, friends, and the places and things that touch her. She currently works on personal projects and commissions. Her debut photobook, Riverland, was very recently published by Stanley Barker. On whose website the blurb states: “During times of darkness and moments of deep turmoil in her personal life, Dutch photographer and mother of six, Marjolein Martinot, found herself lost, searching for a renewed sense of self. Each evening, she sought solace in nature, walking to a nearby river in the South of France with her camera in hand. There, she captured the quiet beauty of the natural world in the golden light of dusk, forming connections with the animals and families she encountered at the river’s edges—jumping, splashing, climbing, and swinging from the trees. What began as a ritual of aimless wandering and photographing soon became a form of visual journaling—a quiet meditation on healing and transformation. The water, ever-flowing and unpredictable, mirrored her own emotional state, while the families she met, however briefly, embodied the warmth and belonging she longed for. Through these intimate, unguarded moments—children mid-leap, ripples catching the last light of day, trees bending towards the water, and horses galloping in the fading glow—Martinot began to piece together a new sense of self. Her photographs, though deeply personal, transcend autobiography, offering a universal reflection on resilience, connection, and the subtle magical beauty of the everyday.”
In episode 261, Marjolein discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
EPISODE SPONSORS: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. PICDROP
Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here. | |||
| 262 - Rankin | 13 Aug 2025 | 01:34:42 | |
John Rankin Waddell, or just Rankin, as he is more commonly known, is a British photographer, publisher, and film director. Best known for work that is on the cultural cusp and leading future trends, he has produced rule-breaking campaigns for brands such as Rolls Royce, Unilever, L’Oréal, Lego, and Samsonite; created wide-reaching projects for charities including Women’s Aid and Macmillan; and shot music videos for the likes of Miley Cyrus, Rita Ora, and Kelis. As a photographer, Rankin’s portfolio ranges from portraiture to documentary. He has shot The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner, Zendaya and Queen Elizabeth II, to name only a few. In 2023, Rankin photographed King Charles III to mark the monarch’s 75th birthday for The Big Issue magazine. As a publisher, Rankin co-founded the seminal magazine Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1990, and has since published the likes of AnOther and AnOther Man, alongside over 40 books and the fashion and culture publication Hunger. His photography has been published everywhere from his own publications to Elle, Vogue, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Wonderland, and exhibited in galleries globally, including MoMA, New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Rankin lives in London with his wife Tuuli and their dogs. In episode 262 Rankin discusses, among other things:
EPISODE SPONSORS: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS.
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| 263 - Tony Dočekal | 27 Aug 2025 | 01:23:15 | |
Tony Dočekal (Amsterdam, 1992) is a photographer and visual artist. Her work explores identity, belonging, and the friction between autonomy and societal expectations. Working intuitively, she combines personal encounters with quiet observations. Her images balance intimacy and distance, often showing how personal stories and landscapes reflect larger systems. Tony’s first book, The Color of Money and Trees, was published by VOID in 2024 and launched at Paris Photo. The work was also exhibited at Biennale Images Vevey alongside her debut short film, Pearls on Credit. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from ArtEZ University of the Arts.
In episode 263 Tony discusses, among other things:
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| 264 - Eli Reed | 10 Sep 2025 | 01:24:51 | |
Eli Reed was born in the US in 1946 and studied pictorial illustration at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, graduating in 1969. In 1982, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he studied political science, urban affairs, and the prospects for peace in Central America. Eli began photographing as a freelancer in 1970. His work from El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries attracted the attention of Magnum, he was the first African American photographer, and indeed the first person of colour, to join the agency, becoming a full member in 1988. In the same year, Eli photographed the effects of poverty on America’s children for a film documentary called Poorest in the Land of Plenty, narrated by Maya Angelou. He went on to work as a stills photographer for major motion pictures. His video documentary Getting Out was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1993 and honored by the 1996 Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame International Film and Video Competition in the documentary category. Eli’s special reports include a long-term study which became his first, highly acclaimed book, Beirut, City of Regrets; the ousting of Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti (1986); US military action in Panama (1989); the Walled City in Hong Kong; and, perhaps most notably, his documentation of African American experience over more than 20 years. Spanning the 1970s through the end of the 1990s, his book Black in America includes images from the Crown Heights riots and the Million Man March. In 2015, he published his first career retrospective, A Long Walk Home. Eli has lectured and taught at the International Center of Photography, Columbia University, New York University, University of Texas and Harvard University and is a member of Kamoinge, the collective of black photographers founded in 1963 and the longest continuously running non-profit group in the history of photography.
On episode 264, Eli discusses, among other things:
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| 265 - Merlin Daleman | 24 Sep 2025 | 01:03:51 | |
Merlin Daleman (b.1977) is a British photographer who has spent most of his adult life living in the Netherlands. He attended South Devon College, Torquay, the University of Central England (now Birmingham City University) in the UK, and graduated from The Royal College of Art in The Hague, the Netherlands. He works as a freelance documentary photographer for leading Dutch publications, including NRC Handelsblad, Dagblad Trouw, Financieel Dagblad, and De Groene Amsterdammer. He is the recipient of awards including the Silver Camera awards for Documentary Photography in the Netherlands in 2008 and 2010 and had received grants from the EU Journalism Foundation Grant and the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship. His debut photobook, Mutiny, published by GOST Books in August 2025, builds on his long-term projects, such as the new black lung epidemic in Kentucky, USA and exploring the lives of families separated by labour migration in Ukraine. In episode 265 Merlin discusses, among other things:
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| 266 - Mike Brodie | 08 Oct 2025 | 01:12:10 | |
Mike Brodie’s first monograph, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was published by Twin Palms more than a decade ago in 2013, depicting his fellow rail-riders and drifters in a rebellious and wildfire pursuit of adventure and freedom. “Brodie leapt into the life of picture-making as if he was the first to do it,” Danny Lyon wrote about the book in Aperture. Next came Tones of Dirt and Bone, a collection of earlier SX-70 pictures Brodie made when photography first led him to hopping freights, when he was known as “The Polaroid Kidd.” And then Brodie seemed to disappear from the art world as suddenly and mysteriously as he’d first appeared. Maybe his vanishing was another myth. Maybe it was just a necessary retreat. “I was divorcing myself from all that,” he says. “I was growing up. I was pursuing this other life.” In Nashville he became a diesel mechanic. Fell in love. Moved across the country again. Got married. Bought land on the long dusty Winnemucca road Johnny Cash sang about. Started his own business. Built a house. Put down roots. And when that life exploded, the open road called again. Throughout almost all of it, his cameras were with him, and at last those pictures are coming to light. If Michael Brodie’s first monograph was a cinematic dream, his latest, Failing, again published by Twin Palms in 2024, is the awakening and the reckoning, a raw, wounded, and searingly honest photographic diary of a decade marked by love and heartbreak, loss and grief — biblical in its scope, and in its search for truth and meaning. Here is the flip side of the American dream, seen from within; here is bearing close witness to the brutal chaos of addiction and death; here are front-seat encounters with hitchhikers and kindred wanderers on society’s edges, sustained by the ragtag community of the road. Failing often exists in darkness but is tuned to grace. Brodie’s eye stays forever open to the strange and fleeting beauty that exists in forgotten places — the open country and the lost horizons that sweep past dust-spattered windows in a spectral blur. Mike worked on and features in a recently released hour long documentary eponymously entitled Slack, the nickname of his one time girlfriend, Mia Justice Smith, who sadly died of a drug overdose, and to whom the film is dedicated. The film, which is directed by Mike’s friend and collaborator Cyrill Lachauer., revisits the freighthopping years and delves into Mike's creative collaboration with Mia. In episode 266, Mike discusses, among other things:
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| 268 - Paul Sng | 05 Nov 2025 | 01:18:45 | |
Paul Sng is a bi-racial British Chinese filmmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland whose work focuses on people who challenge the status quo. He has directed six feature documentaries, including Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche (winner of BIFA 2021 Best Documentary, BIFA 2021 Raindance Discovery Award), Tish (Sheffield DocFest 2023 Opening Gala film) and Reality Is Not Enough (Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 Closing Gala film). Paul strives to make bold and creatively ambitious films that connect emotionally with audiences, working collaboratively with great teams to tell stories about outsiders and amplify rebellious voices. In 2022 he was named as a BAFTA Breakthrough Artist and directed Folding, his first short drama film, funded by Screen Scotland and BFI Network. In episode 268, Paul discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
Website | IMDB page | Instagram
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| 267 - BoP Festival 2025 | 22 Oct 2025 | 01:04:17 | |
Fearturing:
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| 269 - Ed Kashi (#2) | 19 Nov 2025 | 01:12:01 | |
Ed Kashi is a renowned photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator who has been making images and telling stories for 40 years. His restless creativity has continually placed him at the forefront of new approaches to visual storytelling. Dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times, a sensitive eye and an intimate and compassionate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his intense and unsparing work. As a member of VII Photo, Ed has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. Ed’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking has produced a number of influential short films and earned recognition by the POYi Awards as 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year. Ed’s embrace of technology has led to creative social media projects for clients including National Geographic, The New Yorker, and MSNBC. From implementing a unique approach to photography and filmmaking in his 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook, to paradigm shifting coverage of Hurricane Sandy for TIME in 2012, Ed continues to create compelling imagery and engage with the world in new ways. Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Ed’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated fourteen books. In 2002, Ed in partnership with his wife, writer + filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books, and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues. In 2019, The Enigma Room, an immersive installation, premiered at NYC’s Photoville festival, and has since been seen in Israel, the Netherlands, South Korea, and New Mexico, USA. HIs new book is, A Period In Time: Looking Back While Moving Forward, 1977 - 2022.
In episode 269, Ed discusses, among other things:
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| 270 - Paris Photo 2025 Special | 03 Dec 2025 | 00:50:18 | |
Featuring:
Books/Projects mentioned:
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| 271 - Rachel Elizabeth Seed | 17 Dec 2025 | 01:05:00 | |
Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a Brooklyn and Los Angeles-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography, and writing. In 2025, she won the Truer Than Fiction Spirit Award for her debut feature film, A Photographic Memory, which is also a New York Times Critics Pick. Rachel’s work has received support from the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Films, the Jewish Film Institute, the California Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Maine Media Workshops, the Roy W. Dean grant, the National Arts Club, IFP, and many others. Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited worldwide, including at the International Center of Photography, and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries. Rachel’s writing has been published by No Film School, the Sundance Institute, and Talkhouse and she is Executive Director / Co-founder of the Brooklyn Documentary Club, a NYC-based filmmaker collective with 250+ members. In episode 271, Rachel discusses, among other things:
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| 272 - Year In Review 2025 | 31 Dec 2025 | 01:08:18 | |
Featuring:
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| 273 - Lee Shulman | 14 Jan 2026 | 01:10:25 | |
Lee Shulman is a visual artist, filmmaker, and founder of The Anonymous Project, one of the most significant archives of vernacular color photography in existence. Since 2017, the project has amassed nearly one million Kodachrome slides from the 1940s to the early 2000s — intimate, everyday images that might have otherwise been lost to time. Through curation and transformation, Lee reanimates these personal photographs, weaving them into compelling narratives that explore memory, family, love, and cultural shifts across generations. Lee’s career also extends into film direction, notably with his debut feature documentary, "I Am Martin Parr," released in 2025. This film chronicles a road trip with renowned photographer Martin Parr, revisiting iconic locations from his oeuvre. Shulman's prior collaboration with Parr on the "Déjà View" project, which paired Parr's distinctive photographs with images from The Anonymous Project, laid the groundwork for their working relationship. The documentary provides an affectionate portrayal of Parr's artistic process and enduring work ethic, further cementing Lee’s engagement with the broader discourse of photography. Born in London in 1973, Lee lives and works in Paris. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and Rencontres d’Arles, and is held in major collections such as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Photo Elysée in Lausanne.
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| 274 - Joachim Ladefoged | 28 Jan 2026 | 01:15:05 | |
Joachim Ladefoged is a Danish photographer born in 1970. He has worked as a professional since 1991, and is a member of the international photo agency VII. Today he is a staff photographer at the Danish Daily Jyllands-Posten, but over the years he has worked regularly for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Mare, The New Yorker and TIME. Joachim has received numerous awards for his work from institutions such as Visa D'Or, World Press Photo, POYi, Eissie, and Agfa, as well as Picture of the Year in Denmark. Over the years he has published 3 monographs, Albanians, Mirror and Time After My Time. Joachim photographs everything with the same inventiveness and diligence, whether sports, war or commerce. His highly accomplished career has seen him master complex, violent news stories, commercial assignments, daily news, and rich, vibrant, and spectacular feature stories. Joachim is credited with being one of the driving forces behind the new wave of Danish photojournalism. In episode 274, Joachim discusses, among other things:
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| 275 - Philip Blenkinsop | 11 Feb 2026 | 01:14:35 | |
On episode 275, Philip discusses, among other things:
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| 276 - Jessica Dimmock | 25 Feb 2026 | 01:11:18 | |
Jessica Dimmock’s work focusses on humanistic and intimate storytelling. She is the recipient of numerous international awards for her photography and video work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three World Press Photo Awards for short films, The Inge Morath Award from Magnum, the F Award for Concerned Photography from Forma and Fabrica, The Infinity Award for Photojournalist of the Year from the International Center of Photography, and The Kodak Award for Best Cinematography at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She is a Sundance Edit and Story Lab Fellow, and her first feature film The Pearl was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival and was executive produced by Impact Partners. Her clients include HBO, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Microsoft, The UNFPA, Aperture, Showtime and PBS. She is the co-director of the Netflix series Flint Town as and directed on the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries and AppleTV’s Home. In 2007 Jessica produced a photobook entitled The Ninth Floor (Contrasto). Her most recent film, co-directed with her partner Zackery Canepari, is Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America, focussing on the USA's $3 billion active shooter preparadness industry and its effects on teachers and students, released in 2025. In episode 276, Jessica Discusses, among other things:
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| 277 - Zackary Canepari | 11 Mar 2026 | 01:21:00 | |
Zackary Canepari is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow whose work moves between documentary film and photography. He began as a photojournalist in India and Pakistan before creating the Sundance-screened series California Is a place, a portrait of the golden state unraveling at the edges. He later co-directed the feature documentary T-Rex (SXSW), following teenage Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields as she fought her way toward gold; the film was adapted by MGM into the narrative feature The Fire Inside. His Guggenheim-supported project Flint Is a place expanded documentary storytelling across film, photography, archival material, and immersive media, earning a World Press Photo Award and recognition as Multimedia Photographer of the Year at POYi. His monograph REX won POYi Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture First PhotoBook Prize. Zackary's documentary Fire in Paradise won an Emmy and an Edward R. Murrow Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. He received a second Emmy for directing The Gallagher Effect for The New York Times Presents (FX/Hulu). In episode 277, Zackary discusses, among other things:
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| 278 - Nederlands Foto Museum Special | 25 Mar 2026 | 01:01:09 | |
Featuring:
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| 279 - Dragana Jurišić | 08 Apr 2026 | 01:09:54 | |
Dragana Jurišić is a photographer, writer and filmmaker. She has exhibited extensively and won numerous awards. Dragana’s work is in several significant collections, including the National Gallery of Ireland, the Arts Council Collection, the Irish State Art Collection (OPW), the Bank of Spain, and others. Her first book, YU: The Lost Country, received accolades worldwide. Her second book, Museum, a collaboration with Paula Meehan, was published in July 2019 and is now in its 2nd edition. Her Own, published in December 2022, received outstanding reviews in El País, The Irish Times and RTE Culture. Dragana is currently working on her first feature-length documentary, The Last Balkan Cowboy (working title). In episode 279, Dragana discusses, among other things:
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| 280 - Jon McCormack | 22 Apr 2026 | 01:21:00 | |
Jon McCormack is - as plainly stated on his Linked-In profile - a Photographer, Nerd, Educator and Conservationist His photographic work is deeply informed by his upbringing in the stark, untamed landscapes of the Australian Outback, where early life among sheep and cattle fostered a profound respect for nature’s rhythms of resilience and fragility. Beginning as a teenager photographing quiet, often-overlooked moments in the bush, he developed a photographic voice rooted in patience, attention, and ecological empathy. Today, his images explore the intricate patterns and emotional textures of wild places, seeking to inspire both wonder and a sense of responsibility, and are widely published and used by global conservation organizations to advocate for the protection of fragile ecosystems. In addition to photography Jon is also actively involved in conservation and social good organizations. He is a member of The Explorer’s Club, a founding board member of Sealegacy, co-founder of his non-profit in Kenya, The Kilgoris Project and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Alongside his creative work, Jon has a day job as a tech nerd. He is Vice President of Camera & Photos Software Engineering at Apple in California, leading the software team responsible for the iPhone camera. His new photobook entitiled Patterns: Art Of The Natural World, is published by Damiani and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Vital Impacts, the non-profit founded in 2021 by photographer Ami Vitale and visual journalist Eileen Mignoni to advance conservation through visual storytelling, community partnership, and strategic investment in local solutions. On episode 280, Jon discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
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