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:

• Her forthcoming debut documentary.
• How everything she’s done is an attempt at making sense of her experience during the Balkan war
• Her book YU: The Lost Country
• The influence of Rebecca West’s book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia
• How she would measure the success of the new film
• Wanting to reach as large an audience as possible
• The imposter syndrome she felt as a first time film maker
• Being ‘ergonomic’ about the way she approaches making
• The story of her Aunt and her book Her Own

Website | Instagram

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• Sjef van Duin, Librarian
• Roderick van der Loos, Interim Director
• Zippora Elders, incoming General & Artistic Director
• Grace Wong-Si-Kwie, Head of Presentations and Public Outreach
• Guinevere Ras, Curator of opening exhibition Awakening in Blue
• Martijn van den Broek,  Head of Collections
• Joop De Jong, Guest Curator of opening exhibition, Rotterdam In Focus

Website | Instagram

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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).

Instagram

In episode 277, Zackary discusses, among other things:

• How he started in photography
• The experience of cutting his photographic teeth in India
• The complicated question of whether it's a good time to be a filmmaker
• His early project California Is a place, with his collaborator Drea Cooper
• Learning the ropes through experience
• His first feature documentary, T-Rex, and being smiled upon by the documentary gods
• Flint Town
• Thoughts & Prayers
• Fire in Paradise

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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:

• Current projects
• Her attraction to dark subject matter
• Her TV mini series Captive Audience
• Forming close relationships with her subject
• The random coffee shop interaction that changed her direction forever
• The chance encounter that led to her first big photography project and subsequent book, The Ninth Floor
• How the musician Moby played a part in her journey
• Serendipity and her project The Pearl
• The challenge of landing lucrative commercial work
• The Netflix series she co-directed, Flint Town
• Her most recent film Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America

Website | Instagram

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• His ‘cabinet of curiosities’ studio space
• A recent, powerful urge to photograph in Australia
• Why he left the newspaper world there in favour of Thailand
• His early project “The Cars That Ate Bangkok”
• His sense of anger at injustice
• His ‘near death experience’ on Sleeping Dog Mountain
• Process, shooting on film, and working close to the subject
• The influence of Koudelka’s book Exiles
• The ways in which his old home of Bangkok has changed since he was there
• Why he moved to France

Website | Instagram

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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:

• Having arthritis as a teenager and the impact it had on his life (good and bad)
• Starting his career as an intern at a local newspaper
• Moving on to ‘the best job in the world’ at national newspaper Politiken
• Winning the World Press Photo award
• Words of wisdom received from Magnum legend Constantine Manos
• Getting into Magnum… and being chucked out again
• Being part of ‘the new wave of Danish photojounalists’
• Why changing direction on becoming a father was “the right decision, but a hard decision”
• Why three photographers were just made redundant on his newspaper
• His approach to shooting and lighting portraits
• His book project Time After My Time
• Photographing his kids with the iPhone

Instagram

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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.

Website | Instagram

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• Ed Sykes
• Ian Howarth
• Dina Litovsky
• Joseph Michael Lopez
• Mike Abrahams
• Ian Macdonald
• Katrin Koenning
• Tomasz Tomaszewski
• Mackenzie Calle
• Marc Wilson
• Paul Seawright
• Mohamed Bourouissa
• Anna Arendt
• Marjolein Martinot
• Rankin
• Tony Docekal
• Eli Reed
• Merlin Daleman
• Mike Brodie
• Paul Sng
• Ed Kashi
• Rachel Elizabeth Seed

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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:

• A summary of her mum’s character
• nature vs. nurture
• Her mum’s Images of Man interviews for ICP/Scholastic
• What inspired her to make a film
• How her own story became interwined with her mum’s
• Discovering a family archive of super 8 footage
• How she recreated the interviews using actors
• The importance of working with good editors
• The challenge of funding and financing
• Key advice for anyone wanting to make a personal documentary
• The fine balance between collaboration and having the courage of your convitions as director
• Writing for narration as opposed to for reading
• Sharing her personal stories as the film evolved over a ten year period - How to balance life and art
• ‘Selling the film’ and what that means in practice
• The Brooklyn Documentary Club
• Moving to L.A.
• Projects she has in development

Website | Instagram

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• Yasuhiro Ogawa
• Marshall To
• Lua Ribeira
• Gianluca Gamberini (L'artiere books)
• Eleonora Agostini
• Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
• Aletheia Casey

Books/Projects mentioned:

• Lost in Kyoto, Yasuhiro Ogawa
• Blank Notes, Marshall To
• 44 Irvine Street 1970-1971, Susan Meiselas
• Agony In The Garden, Lua Ribeira
• Calling The Bird Home, Cheryl St. Onge
• Another England, Phil Toledano
• A Study On Waitressing, Eleonora Agostini
• Flowers Drink The River, Pia Paulina Guilmoth
• Fishworm, Pia Paulina Guilmoth & Jesse B. Saffire
• A Lost Place, Aletheia Casey

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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:

• Wanting to contribute to positive change
• Donating his archive and why
• A lesson learned on being assertive
• His new book A Period In Time
• Publishing extracts from his journal entries
• Editing language in response to modern sensibilities
• Seeing the impact of identity politics in the USA
• His book project with his wife, Julie, American Sketches
• America being less divided than we are being led to believe
• His interest in ‘advocacy journalism’

Website | Instagram

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In episode 268, Paul discusses, among other things:

• Growing up in London with a single mum
• Having outsider syndrome… and imposter syndrome, and using that to your advantage
• His educational history, including a couple of false starts
• Making a feature as his first ever film with the ‘confidence of ignorance’
• The importance of finding a good Producer (and what their job involves)
• The important questions he asks himself in considering whether to make a film
• Structure and working with an editor
• Applying the same narrative principles to documentary as are prevalent in fiction
• The creative treatment of actuality
• Finding an audience
• Currently in production, Little Warrior

Referenced:

• Trainspotting
• Symposium, Plato
• Bruce Lee
• Jackie Chan
• David Yip
• John Woo
• Wong Kar-Wai
• Colin McArthur
• Sleaford Mods
• Nathan Hannawin
• Bruce Robinson
• Orson Welles
• Rebecca Mark-Lawson
• Jennifer Corcoran
• Moonage Daydream
• The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard
• The Man In The White Suit
• Emma Butt

Website | IMDB page | Instagram

Episode sponsor:

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• Merlin Daleman
• David O’Mara
• Jem Southam
• Martin Parr
• Christoph Bangert from Photobus
• Ayesha Jones
• Mark Power
• Tom Shaw

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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:

• The documentary he helped to make about his freighthopping years - Slack
• How train hopping and photography went hand in hand
• Romanticism vs. misery
• Train hopping as a performance
• Losing his girlfriend, Mia Justice Smith, to a drug overdose
• His attempt at a ‘normal’ life and how that impacts his creativity
• The success of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity and its downside
• How the title came about
• The darkness of the pictures in latest book, Failing
• Tussling with the question of exploitation and ethical responsibility
• Ambitions to make a feature film one day
• The ongoing push/pull of art v. home life
• The desire to photograph machines and ways of life and ways of working that are passing away
• Next steps in the USA - projects vs. photographing life

Website | Instagram

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In episode 265 Merlin discusses, among other things:

• How the Mutiny project came about
• How he funded it and set about shooting it
• Some of the stories behind images in the book
• Black lung story in Appalachia
• How a major motorycle accident helped his photography

Website | Instagram

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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:

• His ongoing mentoring of former students
• How working in a hospital was good prep for the kind of work he does
• Growing up in the Delaney Homes housing project in Perth Amboy, NJ
• How a visiting art critic gave him early encouragement at school
• Losing his mum at 12 years old
• The importance of certain teachers and mentors, especially Donal Greenhouse
• How his project Black In America came about
• Working for the San Francisco Examiner
• Joining Eugene Smith’s workshop after a long wait
• How Philip Jones Griffiths invited him to join Magnum
• Whether he is still an optimist?
• Photographing Trump
• Kamoinge
• A teaser about the book he is writing
• Being the first person of colour to join Magnum Photos

Referenced:

• Jaqueline Kennedy
• Roy De Carava
• W Gene Smith
• Bruce Davidson
• Eugene Richards
• Susan Meiselas
• Son of Sam
• Gordon Parks
• Gilles Peress

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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:

• Her Czech dad and Dutch mum’s history
• Dealing with the ‘weight’ of the photographic history of the American road trip genre
• The advantage of being an outsider
• Getting a dream gig early on - a photobook book about alternative schools
• Going to Lesbos to cover the refugee crisis
• Working with the unhoused for Dutch non-profit the Sheltersuit Foundation
• The story behind her picture of a man in a pink frilly dress…
• … And the one of 9-year-old Lyric in front of a plate of beans
• The short film she made
• The amazing 70’s-built house she has bought with her partner

Referenced:

• Josef Koudelka

Website | Instagram

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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:

• The magazine and show Faik, a first foray into AI
• His love/hate relationship with AI imagery and why he uses it anyway
• The way in which AI will also transform the music industry
• The importance of critical thinking
• The early days - starting Dazed & Confused
• Using the magazine as a ‘Trojan Horse’
• Being confrontational
• Being a ‘dick’ and taking cocaine
• Being saved by photography and fatherhood
• Imposter syndrome and the benefit of losing it
• Making a conscious decision not to be an ‘artist’
• Teaching himself photography
• Collaboration
• Rankin Live - photographing 'normal' people
• Being prolific
• Personal Projects

Website | Instagram

EPISODE SPONSORS:

CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. 
THE ‘SUMMER SERIES’ TAKING PLACE IN PORTLAND, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2025. 
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“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:

• The beginnings of her book project, Riverland.
• How her mum ran a circus when she was a kid
• What makes a good portrait
• Seeking comfort in nature during difficult times
• The project having a fairy tale element
• Photographing her six children
• The end of her relationship
• What she took away from the workshops she’s attended
• Feedback she’s received about the book

Referenced:

• Vanessa Winship
• George Georgiou
• Israel Ariño
• JH Engstrom
• Sally Mann
• Emmet Gowan

Website | Instagram

EPISODE SPONSORS:

CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. 
THE ‘SUMMER SERIES’ TAKING PLACE IN PORTLAND, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2025. 
FEATURING: ANTOINE D’AGATA, TODD HIDO AND CHRISTIAN PATERSON. SIGN UP AT THE LINK!

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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:

• The origins of her photography
• Growing up in East Germany
• Beginning to understand her family history
• The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989
• Being ‘connected to pictures’
• The importance of visiting Poland and its significance for her family
• The cast of characters in the book, including wolves…
• ….And her friend, who sadly died
• Allowing the photograph to tell her what it wants to be (and where)
• How Charcoal Press came to publish the book
• Her collaboration with publisher Jesse Lenz
• Having a day job and a change of identity
• What she’s currently up to in the darkroom

EPISODE SPONSORS:

CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. 
THE ‘SUMMER SERIES’ TAKING PLACE IN PORTLAND, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2025. 
FEATURING: ANTOINE D’AGATA, TODD HIDO AND CHRISTIAN PATERSON. SIGN UP AT THE LINK!

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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:

• The sense of community growing up in the Parisian suburbs
• His early experiences as a graffiti artist
• His first project, Nous Somme Halles
• The 2005 riots that preceded Péripherique
• Why he decided to stage images… and why he sketches the images out first
• The theme of masculinity and his own experience of growing up without a father present
• The challenges of being a dad
• Knowing that he wanted to be an artist
• How artists must value their own work and learn to say no
• His project Horse Day and how it came about
• Art as a playground
• His new project, Hands
• How he arrives at the choice of medium and the factors that inflence that choice
• Why he is, in his own words, an ‘extremely bad photographer’

Referenced:

• Anoushkashoot
• Jamel Shabazz
• Emma-Charlotte Gobry
• Fletcher Street by Martha Camarillo

Website | Instagram

EPISODE SPONSORS:

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THE ‘SUMMER SERIES’ TAKING PLACE IN PORTLAND, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2025. 
FEATURING: ANTOINE D’AGATA, TODD HIDO AND CHRISTIAN PATERSON. SIGN UP AT THE LINK!

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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:

• The influence of studying at Farnham..
• and Martin Parr…
• …And being at Newport
• Not taking a position
• ‘Allusive documentary’
• The danger of losing the meaning
• The ethical considerations of working on foreign soil
• The essential business of research
• How do you find your next project?
• His USA projects Volunteer and Things Left Unsaid
• The importance of titles
• His work from Rwanda, Beasts of Burden

Referenced:

• Thomas Joshua Cooper
• Anna Fox (Ep. 166)
• Ken Grant (Ep. 128)
• Chris Shaw
• Martin Parr (Eps. 91 & 197)
• Peter Fraser (Ep. 172)
• Paul Graham (Ep. 149)
• Jem Southam (Ep. 174)
• Chris Killip (Ep. 94)
• Victor Burgin
• Anne Williams
• Newport
• Daniel Meadows (Ep. 116)
• Clive Landen
• Ivor Prickett (Ep.204)
• Anastasia Taylor Lind (Ep.68)
• Rich Gilligan
• James Mollison
• Paul Virillo
• Parr and Badger
• Robert Adams, The New West
• Ian Walker, Desert Stories, or Faith In Facts
• Baudrillard
• Calvino, Invisible Cities
• Gilles Peress The Silence
• Alfredo Jaar
• Fergal Keane
• Brian Keenan

Website | Instagram

EPISODE SPONSOR: CHARCOAL WORKSHOPS. 
THE ‘SUMMER SERIES’ TAKING PLACE IN PORTLAND, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2025. 
FEATURING: ANTOINE D’AGATA, TODD HIDO AND CHRISTIAN PATERSON. SIGN UP AT THE LINK!

“‘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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• Francis Hodgeson
• Maria Sukkar
• Sophie Parker
• Ami Bouhassane
• Tom Hunter
• Silvana Trevale (but not Gabriel Pinto).
• Zed Nelson

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
Peckham24/A Bigger Book Fair Website | Instagram

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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:

• What he’s working on
• Getting arrested in Moldova
• His work in Ukraine
• New book Travelogue 2 - A Thousand Days of Longing
• Travelling 25,000 miles for his project The Last Stand
• His initial failed attempt at shooting his holocaust project A Wounded Landscape
• His adventures in self-publishing and tips for those considering it
• His route into photography
• Loneliness and ‘wandering lost’
• His project Remnants

Website | Instagram

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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:

• Winning the WPP open category
• Tangible and intagible benefits of winning
• Her journey to photography
• How the idea for the Gay Space Agency came about
• How she set about making images to tell the story
• The goal to disseminate the story as widely as possible
• Her experience of doing the Eddie Adams Workshop
• Letting the story tell her what it wants
• Experimentation being the fun part
• Her love of sport...
• ...and TV

Referenced:

• Sally Ride
• Francis French
• Billie Jean King
• Christina De Middel
• Erika Larson

Website | Instagram

“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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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:

• His insecurity about his English
• Truth
• The wisdom of age
• His father’s advice ‘don’t forget about art’
• Progress
• His discovery of photography
• Spending five years working on his first book, smuggled to the states and published in NY.
• Spending time in the USA
• His new book The World Is Where You Stop
• Metaphor
• Photography not being dialectical
• The appeal of a good single malt
• His teaching academy
• Bravery as the mother of all qualities
• His dream to play the piano and how music is pure mathematics

Referenced:

• Raymond Chandler
• Aristotle
• Uffizi Museum
• Susan Sontag
• Nasim Taleb
• James Nachtwey
• Garry Winnogrand
• Cartier Bresson
• Keith Jarrett

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.”

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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:

• Ankor Photo Festival in Cambodia
• Working on her practice daily
• Coming out of “the most difficult year of her life”
• Why she chose to shoot Polaroids during that time
• Responding to the suicide of her cousin’s husband
• How the sudden death of her best friend put her on the path of photography
• How she took pictures with the camera she inherited from him which were all blank
• Having a ‘web’ of ‘projects’
• Her practice as a relational encounter
• Her new book Between The Skin and Sea
• Her engagement with environmental issues
• Younger photographers being more inward looking
• Her current engagement with the indigenous community of Riverdale

Referenced:

• Photo Katmandu
• Chobi Mela
• RMIT
• National Gallery of Victoria

Website | Instagram

“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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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:

• His recent dual exhibitions, Fixing Time, in the North East of England
• How his fascination for drawing took him to art college
• His discomfort with his work being put in the documentary pigeonhole
• Finding it hard to approach your subjects
• A brief description of the area he grew up and photographed in
• His transition from drawing to photography
• Greatham Creek and the portrait (above) that made him excited
• His early memories of his grandfather and father and wanting to celebrate and document their history
• His year spent as artist in residence at Eton College
• His reasons for choosing to teach in a school and not at art college

Referenced:

• Len Tabner
• Cesare Pavese
• Bruce Davidson
• Bill Brandt
• Vic Allen, Dean Clough Gallery
• Graham Smith
• Martin Parr
• Chris Killip
• Tom Wood
• Max Beckman
• Goya
• Titian
• Delacroix

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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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:

• Discovering the darkroom at 12
• Growing up in post-war Liverpool
• The infamous Toxteth Riots of the early 80s
• Network Photographers agency
• The story of the IRA bombing
• His interest in religious ceremony
• Going back to his archive of British work for the new book, This Was Then
• The impetus behind it
• The sustainability of of a long-term career
• Personal work that he is still doing

Referenced:

• Eugene Smith
• David Douglas Duncan
• Larry Burrows
• Tim Page
• Network Photographers
• John Sturrock
• Mike Goldwater
• Judah Passow
• Chris Davies
• Laurie Sparham
• Steve Benbow
• Martin Slavin
• Barry Lewis
• Red Saunders
• Sid Shelton
• Roger Hutchins
• Chris Killip
• Daniel Meadows
• Peter Marlow
• Peter Van Agtmael

Website | Instagram

“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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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:

• Relocating to Rome from NYC
• His intro to NYC via assisting Bruce Weber
• His early career as a professional assistant
• Shooting with his Leica as a ‘coping mechanism’
• The challenge of creating a cohesive narrative from 20 years of single images
• His Dear New Yorker project
• Why B&W is where his heart is at
• How what we see is who we are
• His approach towards light and sun
• Using digital vs. film
• Assisting Mitch Epstein
• How his opinion on grad school has changed
• Controversy surrounding Columbia University prof. Thomas Roma
• His plans for working in Rome and going forward

Referenced:

• Bruce Weber
• Danny Lyon, Knave of Hearts
• Tod Papageorge
• Chuck Kelton’s darkroom
• Mitch Epstein
• Thomas Roma
• Mohammad Rasoulof

Website | Instagram

“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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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:

• Moving to the U.S. from Ukraine at 12 years old
• The immigrant dream of her parents for her to study medicine
• The formative experience of earning her first $40 for shooting a portrait
• Why she couldn’t hold down a job in her early life
• Coming out of wedding photography retirement to write a piece about it
• How working on personal work was the key to getting good editorial clients
• Untag This Photo and Bacherolette being the projects that got her attention
• How her background in psychology plays into the way she approaches shooting her projects
• Her experience of being questioned in a classroom setting - why she does the newsletter
• Her post about why photographers should stop calling themselves artists
• Her approach to Instagram and how she set out to build a huge audience
• How her Substack newsletter began with an invitation from Meta
• Her strategy around building community rather than earning income
• Why working for exposure is photography’s bigges Ponzi scheme
• The importance of pursuing personal work
• Her projects Fashion Week and Meatpacking

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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In episode 248, Ian discusses, among other things:

• Striving to spend as much time as possible not compromising
• The benefits of having a full-time job
• His Instagram strategy
• His previous life as a videographer
• An early fascination for film stock
• Influence of cinema
• The contrast between his trips to Peru and Cuba
• His first book Arcadia
• His origin story in which he lived in 9 homes across 3 countries
• His adventurous dad’s influence on him (and his brothers)
• Having to adapt to a move from Peru to Miami at 12
• His relationship with England and the things he is drawn to photograph there
• Combining documentary with fiction and not wanting to feel constricted
• His second book A A Country Kind of Silence

Referenced:

• Zed Nelson
• Phil Toledano
• Robbie Lawrence
• Max Miechoswski
• Stephen Shore
• William Eggleston
• John Divola
• Gregory Crewdson
• Sean Tucker
• Willam Verbeeck
• National Film & Television School
• Paris Texas
• Tania Franco Klein
• Bill Callaghan
   

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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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:

• Early days on The Independent
• Going to Somalia for ‘Operation Restore Hope’ and being disillusioned by it
• Moving towards portraiture for magazines…
• …and fashion
• Having to take a day job and the feelings that brings up
• Resetting, getting a 4x5 and doing it ‘without compromise’.
• Environmental themes and concerns
• Darkroom practice
• His Arts Council grant to pursue the project Eco Matters and Sustainable Processes
• Using plant-based developer and Agfa Record Rapid paper for the project Rock
• Accepting and embracing mistakes as part of the creative process

Referenced:

• Brian Harris
• Kalpesh Lathigra
• James Nachtwhey
• Paul Lowe
• Chris Steele Perkins
• Delilah Sykes
• Rodrigo Arantia

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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• Richard Kalvar
• Natalie Keyssar
• Lorenzo Castore
• Edward Burtynsky
• Mitch Epstein
• Nicole Tung
• Linda Troeller
• Valerie Belin
• Michael Ackerman
• Julia Kochetova
• Chloé Jafé
• Debi Cornwall
• Louis Quail
• Abdul Kircher
• Diana Matar
• Kiana Hayeri
• Robbie Lawrence
• Agnieszka Sosnowska
• Polly Braden
• Stephan Vanfleteren

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• Bieke Depoorter
• Jesse Lenz
• Lucas Foglia
• Sergio Purtell
• Richard Sharum
• Mark McLennan
• Alex Webb
• Rebecca-Norris Webb
• Michal Iwanowski
• Dragana Jurisic
• Lisa Barlow
• Toma Gerzha
• Gregory Halpern
• Mark Steinmetz
• Maxime Riché

Website | Instagram

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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.

In episode 244, Stephan discusses, among other things:

• Memory
• Photographing (older) men
• Skin… and light
• Cutting his teeth in the newspaper world
• Flandrien book
• Rwanda
• Being scared of success
• Still getting nervous
• Atlantic Wall
• The intensity of collaboration with a subject
• Being perceived as a ‘traitor’ for shooting colour
• His project with Robert Huber, Elvis and Presley
• Dead animals
• Photographing his dad post mortem
• Moving to digital from film
• Charloi residency and his book Charleroi – Il est clair que le gris est noir

Referenced:

• SebastiãoSalgado
• James Nachtwey
• Gilles Peress
• Robert Huber

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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• Javier Hirschfeld Moreno
• Francesco Zizola
• Melissa Schriek
• Chilli Power
• Self Publishers United
• Bryan Schutmaat
• Tiffany Jones
• Atong Atem

Website | Instagram

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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:

• Exhitibition at the Foundling Museum, Leaving Ukraine and how it came about
• Some of the people she focussed on
• Holding The Baby , her project on single parents
• Jena’s story
• Why she has started working with film projects
• Her introduction to photography
• Her first trip to China: “an exercise in isolation”
• Her project on Chinese factories and their workers
• Great Interactions book on people with learning disabilities
• Her current project she’s working on
• Securing funding, building partnerships and being an entrepreneur

Referenced:

• Patrick Sutherland
• Cheryl Newman
• Katz Pictures
• Becky Sexton

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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“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:

• Early years travelling to Communist Poland
• Wanting to assimilate into the USA as an immigrant
• Early education in photography at Mass. Art
• Her early interest in self-portraiture
• Not having a plan… but being a hard worker
• The trip to Iceland that changed her life…
• …and her decision to move there
• A description of where she lives
• The hardest thing to adapt to being the Winters
• The first things she started to photograph there
• Self-portaiture and the suckiness of documenting ageing
• The freedom of realising that you don’t have to work on distinct ‘projects’
• ‘Myth of a Woman’ - her attempt at exploring the experience of womanhood
• Collaborating with her students on portrait sessions
• The last picture in the book
• Her collaboration with Icelandic poet Ingunn Snædal, RASK, currently an exhibition at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography

Referenced:

• Cindy Sherman
• Margaret Johnson
• Laura McPhee
• Ingunn Snædal
• Barbara Bosworth

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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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:

• His recent assignment at The Olympics
• His internship in Paris and his time in New York
• His relationship to painting and writing
• Building a career to encompass commercial and personal work
• How working commercially can be a ‘relief’.
• His ‘macrojournalistic approach’
• His first book project, Blackwater River
• His second book, A Voice Above The Linn
• Collaboration with poet John Burnside
• His new book about the Highland Games, Long Walk Home.
• Why he threw away three years worth of work and began again
• Working digitally with ‘manual’ lenses
• The difference between myth and history
• A reading from John Burnside’s essay in the book

Referenced:

• The Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa
• The French, William Klein
• John Burnside
• Renton’s rant on why it’s ‘shite being Scottish’ from the movie Trainspotting

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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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:

Eddie Adams workshops

Dominic Nahr

Kitra Cahana

Ed Ou

Guy Martin

Stephen Mayes

Mélissa Cornet

Sarah Leen

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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In episode 238, Diana discusses, among other things:

• Early experiences in Panama and Latin America.
• How an errand to buy a lightbulb changed everything.
• A brush with Manuel Noriega.
• How she met her Libyan husband, the writer Hisham Matar.
• Why she found doing her M.A. ‘really, really challenging’.
• Her first book project, Evidence.
• The inclusion of her own writing in the book.
• Her latest book, My America.
• Some of the key factors around the issue of police shootings.
• The complexities of the subject.
• How she has “intermalised a European sense of America.”
• Why she shot the project on her iPhone and the rules she imposed on herself.
• Whether photographs can ‘bear the burden of history.’
• What she is currently working on.
• Her reaction to the bonus questions.

Website | Instagram

“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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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:

• His early life “dragging bags of weed around the house”
• The history of paternal abuse in his family
• How he ended up moving from Berlin to New York
• How he got into photography through Tumblr
• How his interest in photography drove the reconnection with his father
• Where the books title stems from
• Parallels between his mum and grandmother
• Keeping a diary since highschool
• His obsessive nature and tendency for self-flagellation
• His partner, Zoe, who contributed text to the book
• How the documentary his friend Maxi Hachem shot, Noch Ein Kind (Still A Kid)
• How the work has been received as an exhibition
• How the process of making the work may or may not have helped him

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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In episode 236, Louis discusses, among other things:

• How the subject of his book, his big brother Justin, is doing
• Childhood with his schizophrenic mum
• Why he believes firmly in the importance of tolerance
• The way that he approached telling his brother’s story
• Some of the structural and political issues that impact people with mental health issues
• The importance of not over-focussing on some of the un-pc language that some of us use in daily life (including me, in this example)
• How he found his way into photography
• His portrait series ‘Aftermath’ which began in Kosovo
• His career as a jobbing editorial photographer
• HIs latest project about air pollution

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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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:

• Winning the Prix Elysée
• Her path into a legal career in civil rights
• The ightbulb moment that took her to Guantanamo Bay
• Working around restrictions imposed
• “The performance of American power”
• Her secoond book Necessary Fictions
• Her films Pineland/Hollywood and Jade Helm
• Her latest book Model Citizens

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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• Mimi Mollica website/Instagram
• Keerthana Kunnath website/Instagram
• Mikael Buck website/Instagram
• Chris Dorley Brown website/Instagram
• Shaw & Shaw website/Instagram
• Mal Woolford website/Instagram
• Imogen Forte website/Instagram
• Quetzal Maucci website/Instagram
• Richard Eyers website/Instagram

Website | Instagram

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In episode 233, Chloé discusses, among other things:

• Photography as ‘a tool’
• Her first trip to Japan
• Moving there
• Hostess job
• Meeting ‘the boss’
• The women of The Yakuza
• The significance of tattoos
• Painting onto her prints
• Her trilogy of books: I Give You My Life, Okinawa Mon Amour and How I Met Jiro
• Finding abandoned negatives
• Adventures in publishing

Referenced:

• Paolo Roversi
• Sarah Moon
• Yakuza Moon
• Jake Adelstein
• Reminders Project
• Teun van der Heijden

Website | Instagram

“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.”

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