A Photographic Life

In episode 28 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the relationship between photography and music, the importance of inspiration from multiple sources, making your own rules and the need for commitment in storytelling. Plus this week photographer Kenneth Jarecke takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Kenneth Jarecke is an American photojournalist, author, editor, and war correspondent. He has worked in more than 80 countries and has been featured in LIFE, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated magazines amongst many others. He is a founding member of Contact Press Images, and is notable for making the iconic image of a burnt Iraqi soldier that was published in The Observer newspaper in 1991. Jarecke moved to New York City to pursue his dream of being a photojournalist. Still a teen, he landed in New York with minimal experience and talked his way into meeting Sports Illustrated editor, Barbara Hinkle. She encouraged him to start shooting in colour rather than black and white. He then met David Burnett and Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images at a photography workshop and subsequently became a founding member of Contact Press.  Jarecke was a White House photographer in the Ronald Reagan years and covered the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the first Gulf War, and nine Olympic Games since 1988. He currently resides on a ranch in Montana. www.kennethjarecke.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 27 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the Portrait Salon portrait competition's publishing of judging data and reflects upon where we are today with photo book publishing and whether book reviews are wanted or needed.  Plus this week photographic curator Helen Trompeteler takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Helen Trompeteler is a Curator of Photography with over fifteen years’ experience working with museum collections, galleries and arts organisations. Her exhibitions and books include Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon (Co-Curator, 2015) and Man Ray Portraits (Assistant Curator, 2013). Past displays include Snowdon: A Life in View (2014), Fred Daniels: Cinema Portraits (2012) and Format Photography Agency (2010). Helen’s writing has been published internationally including texts for artist monographs, exhibition catalogues and magazines including Aesthetica, Of the Afternoon and Photomonitor. She has lectured on the history of photography for organisations including Central Saint Martins, Regent’s University, London and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. She is a board member of Four Corners, London and has worked as an advisor to organisations including the Photographic Collections Network. www.trompeteler.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 26 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the debate around the Taylor Wessing NPG Portrait Award winning images and the discussions surrounding the opening of the Photography Centre within the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Both of which present issues concerning transparency of process that Grant feels need to be addressed. Plus this week photographer Stuart Franklin takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Stuart Franklin was born in London in 1956. Having left school at 16, he went on to study photography at West Surrey College of Art and Design. His photographic career began when he started to work for The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph Magazine in London and later with Agence Presse Sygma in Paris, “At Sygma photographers arrived from Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon unloading their Domke bags and their stories. Later I felt confident enough to tell my own. I covered the 1983 Nigerian exodus, the Heysel Stadium disaster, the Beirut bombing of the French and American bases, the civil war there and in Sri Lanka, the conflict in Northern Ireland and finally the 1984–85 famine in Sudan.” In Khartoum, Stuart shared a flat with Sebastião Salgado for a few weeks. Salgado worked with Magnum Photos in Paris – founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, Robert Capa and George Rodger. Stuart was invited to join in the summer of 1985 and has been a full member since 1989, serving most recently as the agency’s elected president between 2006-2009. It was during 1989 that Stuart took his acclaimed photographs in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where a demonstration for freedom ended in a massacre. After that, he began to move away from news into magazine feature photography. Between 1990 and 2004 he photographed about twenty stories for National Geographic Magazine. During this time, Stuart decided to pursue a better theoretical understanding of some of the issues he confronted, by embarking on a period of academic study in 1997. He graduated with a first class degree in Geography from Oxford University and went on to complete his doctoral thesis there in 2002. During 2009, Stuart traveled to Mali and the Middle East and co-curated the Noorderlicht Photo Festival 2009 with an exhibition entitled Point of No Return on the continuing conflict in Gaza. In a change of approach to documentary, Stuart undertook a course of training at the UK’s National Film and Television School in observational documentary. Subsequently, Stuart worked on his first long-form documentary Runners, together with film work for ESPN. During 2010, Stuart continued with his project Farmscapes supported and funded by the Scottish National Galleries. The work was first exhibited at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2012. During 2010-13 Stuart completed a long-term landscape project Narcissus, exhibited during in 2012/13 in Ålesund-Norway, Kristiansund – Norway, London, Paris, and Edinburgh. www.stuartfranklin.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 25 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is considering why so much online photographic discussion is filled with absolutes and anger, whilst also commenting on the current state of photography magazines and their relationship with their readers and the photographic industry. Plus this week Grant re-visits a recorded conversation with legendary photographer Susan Meiselas from 2013 in which she addresses the importance of narrative in visual storytelling, the utilisation of multi-media, what photography means to her and her belief in young photographers and what they need to do within the medium. Susan Meiselas was born in Baltimore, in 1948. Her first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs, who she photographed during three consecutive summers while teaching photography in New York public schools. Carnival Strippers was originally published in 1976 and a selection was installed at the Whitney Museum of Art in June 2000. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. She is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her extensive documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. She published her second monograph, Nicaragua, June 1978–July 1979, in 1981. Meiselas served as an editor and contributor to the book El Salvador: The Work of Thirty Photographers (1983) and edited Chile from Within (1991) featuring work by photographers living under the Pinochet regime, as well as an updated ebook on the 40th anniversary of the Chilean coup (2013). She has co-directed three films, Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family (1986); Pictures from a Revolution (1991) with Richard P. Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti where she searched for the people in her photographs ten years after they were taken and Re-framing History (2004) where she returned to Nicaragua again with 19 murals to place them in the landscape where they were first made to again interrogate the history they represent on the 25th anniversary of the Revolution. In 1997, she completed a six-year project curating a hundred-year photographic history of Kurdistan, integrating her own work into the book Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997) along with the pioneering website akaKURDISTAN (1998), an online archive of collective memory and cultural exchange. Meiselas has had one-woman exhibitions in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, and her work is included in collections around the world. She has received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for her work in Nicaragua (1979); the Leica Award for Excellence (1982); the Engelhard Award from the Institute of Contemporary Art (1985); the Hasselblad Foundation Photography prize (1994); the Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2005); the Harvard Arts Medal (2011) and most recently was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). www.susanmeiselas.com Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 24 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott considers writing and photography. The use of captions and the provision of text to provide context on websites, in books and as part of a photographic exhibition, and the first steps to consider when looking to get commissioned. Plus this week legendary photographer Brian Duffy recalls making the iconic image of David Bowie and designing the iconic 1973 album cover Aladdin Sane as well as revealing the inspiration for Bowie's zig-zag make-up. This brief audio is extracted from a telephone conversation between Duffy and Grant Scott recorded shortly before Duffy's death in 2010. In 1955 Duffy began freelancing as a fashion artist for Harper's Bazaar magazine where he first came into contact with commercial photography. Inspired by the photographic contact sheets he saw passing through the art director's desk he sought a job as a photographers assistant, and was subsequently employed at Carlton studios and then at Cosmopolitan Artists. Duffy went on to work as an assistant to the photographer Adrian Flowers and whilst working for Flowers he received his first photographic commission for the The Sunday Times magazine. In 1957 Duffy was hired by British Vogue where he remained working until 1963. With fellow photographers; David Bailey and Terence Donovan, Duffy was a key player in the 'Black Trinity' as affectionately named by Norman Parkinson, who redefined not only the aesthetic of fashion photography but also the place of the photographer within the industry. Apart from Vogue, Duffy also worked for numerous publications including Glamour, Esquire, Town, Queen, The Observer, The Sunday Times and the Telegraph Magazine. Duffy was also a highly successful commercial advertising photographer. In 1968 he set up a film production company with Len Deighton and went on to produce the film adaptations of Deighton's book Only When I Larf (1967), and of the musical Oh! What a Lovely War. Duffy had an eight-year working relationship with David Bowie and shot five key sessions over this period providing the creative concept as well as the photographic image for three album covers, including the 1973 Aladdin Sane, 1979 Lodger and 1980 Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). The story of his life and work is documented in a BBC documentary titled The Man Who Shot the 60's. Duffy died in May 2010, after suffering from the degenerative lung disease pulmonary fibrosis. www.duffyphotographer.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 23 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the transferable skills of a photographer, the importance of remaining open-minded and how to remain positive throughout a long career as a photographer. As well as the resurgence in humanist photography. Plus this week photographer Tom Oldham takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Tom Oldham is a London-based portrait photographer, shooting portraits of musicians, sports stars and all sorts of talented folk in locations across the nation and worldwide. He was a winner in the 2018 BJP Portrait of Britain with Son 2,  and his latest project, The Last of The Crooners, was awarded the 2018 Sony World Photography Award for Portraits in the Professional Category. In June 2017, he exhibited his project shot in Lesotho - The Herder Boys of Lesotho, at the White Space Gallery in London. In 2016 on the longest day of the year, he stayed up for 40 hours and shot a portrait per hour from midnight to midnight, for a project called The Longest Day. He is a founder member of the House of St Barnabas, and proudly shoot portraits of their graduates, team and guest speakers. His work has been exhibited at agencies Mother and Publicis and the Gibson Showroom in London. He also accepted into the 2015 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and the 2016 Open Series in the AoP Awards for my work with Riders For Health in Liberia. www.tomoldham.com For those intrigued or confused by Tom's reference to the Helsinki Bus Station Theory this link may be of use: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/23/change-life-helsinki-bus-station-theory You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 22 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering unexpected events, inspirations and situations, the responsibility of Instagram takeovers and the importance of collaboration.  Plus this week photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a Finnish photographer who has worked in Britain since the 1960s. Intending to pursue photography as a career, she was apprenticed to a fashion photographer in Helsinki for a year before studying photography in London in the 1960s, and co-founding the Amber Collective in Newcastle in 1969. From 1969 Konttinen lived in Byker, and for seven years photographed and interviewed the residents of this area of terraced houses until her own house was demolished. This work resulted in the book Byker. Konttinen's next project was a study of girls attending dance schools in North Shields, their mothers, and the schools, resulting in the book Step-by-Step. The book was an influence for the film Billy Elliot. www.amber-online.com/collection/byker The image discussed (Girl on a Spacehopper, 1971. From the series Byker, 1970's) in this podcast can currently be seen in the Women by Women exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead until the 30th of September, 2018. http://baltic.art/whats-on/exhibitions/idea-of-north

In episode 21 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott introduces a new feature to the podcast in which photographers recall 'Photo Stories' from their careers and considers the setting of achievable expectations for projects, work and careers, informal mentorships and the building of useful archives. Plus this week legendary photographer Burk Uzzle recalls making the iconic image at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 that became the cover for the album of the event, the poster for the film of the event and the defining image of a cultural phenomenon. Initially grounded in documentary photography when he was the youngest photographer hired by LIFE magazine at age 23, Burk Uzzle's work grew into a combination of split-second impressions reflecting the human condition during his tenure as a member of the Magnum Photo agency. For 15 years, Uzzle was an active contributor to the evolution of the organization and served as its President in 1979 and 1980. During the 16 years he was associated with Magnum, he produced some of the most recognizable images we have from Woodstock to the assassination and funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. to the experience of Cambodian war refugees.  www.burkuzzle.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018

In episode 20 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the differences between personal, commissioned and commercial work, the importance of personal projects and how he approaches projects to ensure successful outcomes. Plus this week London based photographer Emma Blau takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Emma Blau is an award-winning British photographic artist, curator and commentator; her photography is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London and has been exhibited both internationally and in the UK as well as featuring in leading publications including British Vogue, Wallpaper* and The Sunday Times Magazine. www.emmablau.com

In episode 19 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering portrait photography competitions, a recent editorial commission to photograph a photographer and commenting in online photo-forums.  Plus this week photographer Rob Hudson takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Rob Hudson, is based in Cardiff, Wales. That latter fact is more important to him than it might initially appear, because as he struggles towards some form of personal philosophy for his landscape photography he finds himself increasingly focusing on his immediate environment. In fact, for the past few years Hudson has rarely traveled beyond a 15 minutes drive from his home and during his whole life as a landscape photographer he has rarely stretched beyond 30 miles from the landscape of his youth around the town of Abergavenny where his grandparents lived and where his appreciation for the landscape of Wales was first nurtured. He believe's that "the photographic series is essential not only to give space to develop ideas, but also to communicate them to my viewers. If I were to draw out one thread in all my recent work, it is this relationship that is paramount. And this continued search for a unity of representation, that is local, honest, un-romanticized and yet allowing for the personal relationship that drives me forward." www.robhudsonlandscape.net You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018. © Grant Scott 2018