A Photographic Life-411: 'The 'Proust Photo Quiz' with Photographer Perry Ogden

In this week's episode photographer Perry Ogden takes on our 'Proust Photo Quiz'. The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album, a form of parlour game popular at the end of the 1890s. The album, titled An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. was found in 1924 and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. Our 'Proust Photo Quiz' is an adaption of the original text. Perry Ogden Perry Ogden was born in Shropshire, England, grew up in London and now lives in Dublin, Ireland. His photographs have appeared in countless magazines worldwide including Italian Vogue, Luomo Vogue, British Vogue, W, The Face and Arena. He has photographed advertising campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Chloe and Calvin Klein amongst many others. These have supplemented his personal projects including his Pony Kids body of work, which was published by Jonathan Cape/Aperture in 1999. His photographs of the artist Francis Bacon’s studio,7 Reece Mews, were published by Thames and Hudson in 2001 and exhibited widely at galleries and museums including The Hugh Lane in Dublin, the Fondation Beyeler in Basle and the Fondation van Gogh in Arles. His first film Pavee Lackeen (The Traveller Girl) premiered in 2005 and won numerous awards around the world including the Satyajit Ray award for Best First Film at the London Film Festival and the Irish Film & Television Award for Best Film. Exhibitions of his work since 2010 include: Inspiration at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery, Dublin, 2010. Twenty at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2011, a group show celebrating the first twenty-years of the museum and Reined In, 2020, at The National Gallery of Ireland. Ogden's most recent book Paddy & Liam documenting two Traveller brothers Paddy and Liam Doran was published in 2018. In 2019 his 16 minute film FÍ made for the Design and Craft Council of Ireland was screened in Dublin, Paris, Tokyo and New York. A film about Perry's work Skin & Soul:The Life and Work of Perry Ogden was premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in March 2020. www.perryogden.com and www.ifiinternational.ie/film/skin-soul/ Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006), Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories (Orphans Publishing 2024). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. © Grant Scott 2026