The United Nations of Photography: Recent Episodes
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The intention of our presence here is not to fulfill expectations. It is to promote questioning and debate. Both of which should be respectful and informed. Learning comes from listening not shouting. Our opinions may not be yours, and that is how it should be.
In episode 340 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
The image that accompanies this post was described by Paul Lowe as his best photograph, you can read why here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/aug/03/a-girl-plays-in-the-street-during-siege-sarajevo-paul-lowe-best-photograph
You can hear what photography meant to Paul here: https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2024/10/14/audio-paul-lowe-1963-2024/
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on photography, politics and the iconic image.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
Mentioned in this episode:
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/politics/paul-fusco-rfk-funeral-train/
www.life.com/history/john-f-kennedy-on-the-campaign-trail-classic-photos-from-1960/
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks in the rain during a campaign rally in Glen Allen, Virginia, 2012 by Brooks Kraft
JFK in West Virginia 1960 for LIFE Hank Walker
Margaret Thatcher leaves Downing Street for the last time as PM. Photograph: Lennox Ken/Alamy
© Grant Scott 2024
In this special episode Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography David Campany. This conversation was instigated by an Instagram post Campany made which Grant responded to thanks to one of his podcast listenners. Grant and David’s rigorous debate deals with the subject of how a photographer should/could present themselves and issues with gatekeepers.
David Campany is a curator, writer, editor who has worked worldwide with institutions including Tate, Whitechapel Gallery London, MoMA New York, Centre Pompidou, Le Bal Paris, ICP New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Photographer’s Gallery London, ParisPhoto, PhotoLondon, The National Portrait Gallery London. His work has been published with Aperture, Steidl, MIT Press, Thames & Hudson, Phaidon, MACK, Frieze, The New Yorker, The FT Weekend, and The Telegraph. Recent curatorial projects include IMMERSION: Gregory Halpern, Raymond Meeks and Vasantha Yogananthan (International Center of Photography, New York, 2023), William Klein: Yes. Photographs, Paintings, Films 1948-2013 (International Center of Photography, New York, 2022), ACTUAL SIZE! Photography at Life Scale (International Center of Photography, New York, 2022); A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload (International Center of Photography, New York, 2022); Gillian Laub: Family Matters (International Center of Photography, New York, 2021); A Handful of Dust (various venues worldwide, 2015-2022); Alex Majoli: SCENE (Le Bal, Paris, 2019); The Still Point of the Turning World: Between Film and Photography (FoMu Antwerp, 2017). David’s many books include Indeterminacy: Thoughts on Time, The Image and Race(ism), co-written with Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (MACK 2022), Victor Burgin’s Photopath (MACK 2022), On Photographs(Thames & Hudson 2020), So Present, So Invisible – conversations on photography (Contrasto 2018), A Handful of Dust (MACK 2015), The Open Road: photography and the American road trip (Aperture S2014), Walker Evans: the magazine work (Steidl 2014), Gasoline (MACK 2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (MIT Press/ After all 2010), Photography and Cinema (Reaktion 2008) and Art and Photography(Phaidon 2003). He has written over three hundred essays for monographs, museums, and magazines, he has a Phd and has received the ICP Infinity Award, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award, the Alice Award, a Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, and the Royal Photographic Society award. Instagram: davidcampany https://davidcampany.com
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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with art director, lecturer and creative director Fiona Hayes. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Fiona comment on the photographic environment as they see it through the exhibitions, magazines, talks and events that Fiona has seen over the previous weeks.
Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), MyselfGermany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator
Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work zas 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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on now.
Mentioned in ths episode:
Tina Barney Family Ties at Jeu de Paume, Paris (until January 19th, 2025)https://jeudepaume.org/en/evenement/exhibition-tina-barney
Yasuhiro Ishimoto Lines and Bodies at Le Bal, Paris (until November 17th 2024)
www.le-bal.fr/en/2024/10/yasuhiro-ishimoto-lines-and-bodies
Alice Mann Drummies at David Hill Gallery, London (until November 30th – check times before you turn up, as it’s a small gallery and timings can change)
https://davidhillgallery.net/artists/alice-mann-drummies
In episode 336 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I am truly saddened to hear that Paul Lowe has died. Paul was always so supportive of the UNP and a good person to share thoughts on photography with. We were friends through photography and such friendships can run deep.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and many past students. In memory of his many contributions to photography including his powerful and important work within conflict zones I am posting here the audio he sent me in which he describes what photography meant to him.
Dr. Paul Lowe was a Reader in Documentary Photography and the Course Leader of the Masters programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, UK. Paul was an award-winning photographer whose images were published in TIME, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer, and The Independent, amongst others. He covered breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the destruction of Grozny. He was also a member of the VII agency.
His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post-war situation in Bosnia, was published in 2005 by Saqi books. His research interest focused on the photography of conflict, and he contributed chapters to the books Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (Reaktion, 2012) and Photography and Conflict. His most recent books include Photography Masterclass published by Thames and Hudson, and Understanding Photojournalism, co-authored with Dr. Jenny Good, published by Bloomsbury Academic Press.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 333 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Image: Trueman Capote, June 1965 ©Irving Penn
Mentioned in this episode:
Rupert Everett 2024 by Chris Floyd
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on street photography as nostalgia and history.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
Mentioned in this episode:
Tria Giovan www.triagiovan.com Instagram @triagiovan
Her book “Loisaida. New York Street Work 1984-1990,” is available here
Matt Weber mattweberphotos.com Instagram @matt.weber.photos
His book “New York City 1985” is available here
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 333 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Image: Jean-Michel Basquiat ©Sylvia Plachy
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
*These films are posted from an educational perspective with the intention of sharing, inspiring and informing. They have all been sourced from open source platforms and no infringement of copyright is intended by this post. If you wish to have this post removed please contact us directly and we will be happy to do so immediately.
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with art director, lecturer and creative director Fiona Hayes. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Fiona comment on the photographic environment as they see it through the exhibitions, magazines, talks and events that Fiona has seen over the previous weeks.
Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), MyselfGermany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator
Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work zas 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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on now.
Mentioned in ths episode:
www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fragile-beauty-photographs-from-the-sir-elton-john-and-david-furnish-collection
Elton John/David Furnish video discussion with their curator, Newell Harbin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl7gHOuOL44
Interview with Elton John www.10magazine.com.au/articles/ten-talks-to-sir-elton-john-david-furnish
Billy Name/William John Kennedy exhibition: www.warholkennedyresidence.com/
https://serchiagallery.square.site
© Grant Scott 2024
*These films are posted from an educational perspective with the intention of sharing, inspiring and informing. They have all been sourced from open source platforms and no infringement of copyright is intended by this post. If you wish to have this post removed please contact us directly and we will be happy to do so immediately.
*These films are posted from an educational perspective with the intention of sharing, inspiring and informing. They have all been sourced from open source platforms and no infringement of copyright is intended by this post. If you wish to have this post removed please contact us directly and we will be happy to do so immediately.
*These films are posted from an educational perspective with the intention of sharing, inspiring and informing. They have all been sourced from open source platforms and no infringement of copyright is intended by this post. If you wish to have this post removed please contact us directly and we will be happy to do so immediately.
In episode 331 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
Image: Main Barber, 1968, © Fred Herzog
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on sports photography.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
Mentioned in this episode:
Image: © Jerome Brouillet 2024 AFP
Bill Frakes Instagram: @Billfrakes www.billfrakes.com
Steph Chambers Instagram: @stephchambersphoto www.stephchambersphoto.com
Robert Beck Instagram @shoot802 www.robertbeckphotography.com
Neil Leifer interview with Bill Shapiro: Heavyweight Pictures: Neil Leifer Reflects on 60 Years of Iconic Photos Inside the Boxing Ring
https://vault.si.com/vault/1999/07/26/moment-of-truth-there-was-no-action-in-the-tcu-locker-room-before-the-1957-cotton-bowl-but-what-marvin-newman-photographed-there-is-as-close-to-the-essence-of-sports-as-anything-that-happens-on-a-playing-field
https://neilleifer.com
© Grant Scott 2024
Roughly twenty five years ago I was privileged to be asked to speak about my good friend photographer David Eustace for a Scottish documentary production focused on his work. Now all these years later a copy of that television programme has surfaced. The quality is not great but I believe that the story Eustace tells is as relevant to day to any prospective photographer as it was all those years ago.
As for my contribution, well as Bob Dylan so memorably said “Oh, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…” Unfortunately, on this occasion I think Bob maybe mistaken. Enjoy!
www.davideustace.com
*These films are posted with the intention of sharing, inspiring and informing. They have all been sourced from open source platforms and no infringement of copyright is intended by this post. If you wish to have this post removed please contact us directly and we will be happy to do so immediately.
In episode 329 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
Image: Bruce Gilden USA. NYC. Coney Island. 1977. Crowds of people clustered together on the beach. ©Bruce Gilden | Magnum Photos
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with art director, lecturer and creative director Fiona Hayes. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Fiona comment on the photographic environment as they see it through the exhibitions, magazines, talks and events that Fiona has seen over the previous weeks.
Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), MyselfGermany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator
Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work zas 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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
www.iwm.org.uk/events/storyteller-photography-by-tim-hetherington
www.horniman.ac.uk/event/adolescent-wonderland/
https://naomihobson.com.au
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-roger-mayne-youth/
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 337 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
Image: Man Ray, Noire et Blanche (Black & White), 1926.
Dorothy Bohm is one of Britain’s finest street photographers, arriving in the UK in 1939 after fleeing Nazi persecution in Lithuania and died in London on 15 March 2023, at the age of 98. With contributions from friends and family, and reflections from Dorothy herself, this insightful documentary reflects her most important images and revisits the places that have shaped her unique view of the world.
https://dorothybohm.com
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they respond to a listener’s question and discuss how to create a narrative based series of images.
Mentioned in this episode:
www.catedingley.com
Instagram: @catedingley
www.greggulbransenpeds
Instagram: @greggulbransenpeds
www.setanta books
Instagram: @setantabooks
www.stephengill.co.uk
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
© Grant Scott 2024
catedingley.com
@catedingley
@greggulbransenpeds
@setantabooks
In episode 335 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
The image that illustrates this post is one of the images Grant mention’s in this episode, Betty Low, 1936, © Karsh.
You can read the rest of the autobigraphy of Yousuf Karsh you can hear https://karsh.org/a-brief-biography/
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with art director, lecturer and creative director Fiona Hayes. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Fiona comment on the photographic environment as they see it through the exhibitions, magazines, talks and events that Fiona has seen over the previous weeks.
Mentioned in this episode:
Akihiko Okamura was at Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin:
https://photomuseumireland.ie/akihiko-okamura
The book: https://prestelpublishing.penguinrandomhouse.de/book/Akihiko-Okamura-The-Memories-of-Others/Masako-Toda/Prestel-com/e632636.rhd
Ernest Cole, House of Bondage at The Photographers Gallery, London until September 22nd 2024: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/ernest-cole-house-bondage
Zanele Muholi is at Tate Modern, London until January 2026: www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/zanele-muholi
Beyond Fashion is at the Saatchi Gallery, London until September 8th 2024: www.saatchigallery.com/product/beyond-fashion?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAA97D8TjtPF8eKIe-D34fVdND2z2jg&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkdO0BhDxARIsANkNcreZ-6qBMiXXjOK9XGRNDsWsmB89mPNpMhPmz82D6AxHUoXs5BbxF6QaAl7IEALw_wcB
Cartography magazine: https://bycartography.com/en/homepage/
Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden, GQ India, Myself Germany, and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
© Grant Scott 2024
We all know this, but I think we sometimes forget what such a statement actually means. The moment I saw this image of Donald Trump I was reminded of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People of 1830. Not a photograph, but a painting. An interpretation of fact not a document of reality.
My mind then switched to the image of Robert Kennedy lying prone, shot, dying. It’s black and white intensity etched into my brain at an early age. Memory made history. The image captured by photographer Boris Yaro, in 1968. The image of his brother’s assassination similarly graphic and heart rending but ripped from an amateur cameraman’s super 8 footage. The Kennedy deaths provided us with pieces of visual evidence that cannot be dismissed although it can be and has been challenged.
The images of the attempted assassination of Trump could and would have done the same. Just as the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by night club owner Jack Ruby, captured by photographer Bob Jackson and broadcast live to the nation. The visceral impact of a live shooting cannot be underestimated. We can only presume that such footage would have been seen once and once only, however, the Kennedy experience suggests that this may not have been the case.
Instead we are left with an iconic image of defiance captured by photographer Evan Vucci working for AP, suggesting what may have been. What actually happened is once again open to interpretation. This was not the case with the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, which presented nothing more than a series of black and white images suggesting confusion. As this image of a Secret Service agent brandishing a submachine gun while agents and police subdue the potential assaasin John Hinckley after he shot Reagan and others in Washington on March 30, 1981.
Trump is a skillful manipulator of fact and fiction. A man with an instinctual command of media image-making. I am not suggesting any form of conspiracy but where a vacuum of information is created others are eager to fill in the gaps and the online warriors have from both political sides. What we are left with is an image that documents a moment but also helps to shape a future and a multude of narratives.
This is a photograph that has political capitol. It can and is being used to move a voting populace to believe that Trump like Liberty in Delacroix’s painting is an allegorical figure, a robust man of the people. A fierceness and determination in the eyes of the leader whilst the eyes of the others within the image are covered or cast down. Only Trump is reaching to the sky with of course the Stars and Stripes prominent just as Liberty carried the Tricolour which became France’s national flag after the events depicted. Delacroix understood the image he was creating and its potential power but Vucci could have had no idea in the split second he pushed the shutter how his image would be used outside of a traditional news context. Vucci has no control of how his photograph will be used politically in memes, banners, signs and on Trump merchandise. He can try but his attempts will be futile.
The death of the photograph has been aanounced many times of the years as new forms of visual recording and disemination have arrived. The truth of course is that the power of the single image will never diminish as long as it is created. Once the image is created its journey is undetermined by the photographer. It becomes a cultural artefact to be used and abused. Its message manipulated and interpreted to meet the needs of whoever wishes to use it. After he completed his painting of Liberty Delacroix commented in a letter to his brother that, “My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject – a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her.” I wonder how Vucci now feels about the image he has given to the world.
Image: Evan Vucci/AP
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 318 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Mentioned in this episode:
Fred and Harry Borden: Photoshoot Breakdown https://www.youtube.com/@fredandharryborden
Image: Radiohead, 2007 by Harry Borden
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
Last week fourteen years of Conservative rule ended in the UK. It was not a surprise to anyone watching the polls or living in the country. We all knew what was coming even if the size of the Tory defeat may have shocked some die-hard believers on the right. Labour have come in and they have started speaking in a different way to that which we had become used to in our politics.
It’s very early days but there seems to be a desire to solve problems, employ experts, engage in conversation and to listen. I will admit a personal view that I am not sad to see the Conservatives lose but that is not the point in my writing this article. The point is that the outcome of the election and the responses from both sides reminds me of the factional nature of the photographic community.
One side looking forward and investing in new thinking and the other looking backwards to a past through rose-tinted-glasses with a heavy dose of cynicism. Since last Friday all I have heard from the losing party is contrition based upon a need to listen. Something no one was stopping them from doing. They have balanced this out with a large dose of disbelief that anything can be better than what they ‘acheived’ combined with loud aggresive rhetoric stating that everything will get worse based upon their opinion and no facts. I hope this soon becomes the political rhetoric of the past. However, I am not convinced.
The similarities between this response to the new and untried and that of photographers concerning analogue and digital (Yes! Still!) and computational and AI image-making are clear to me. We should not be afraid of change, but I have always believed that many of those engaged with photography are conservative by nature. That’s conservative with a small ‘c’. A bizarre position to adopt when involved in a practice based upon technological evolution but one I have observed none the less.
There is a right wing manifesto currently being promoted across the world based upon fear and a distorted view of the past. One not disimilar to the ‘photo wars’ of the last three decades. This we know. It is our choice if we buy into that message. I suggest that by adopting an open mind, looking for facts and avoiding the noise we can all make the right decision.
Whenever people ask me for some advice concerning progressing their work I always say the same thing, be nice. Polite, professional and patient. You can be forthright, straight speaking and strong minded but the three words beginning with ‘p’ are essential. It seems that many of the deposed Conservatives are unaware of this blaming others for their demise and attacking those who have opinions different to their own. Like photographers on social media too keen to stress their views without the knowledge or insight required to do so.
It has been a breath of fresh air to see and hear the approach to politics that Keir Starmer is spearheading. He is not perfect and I am sure that he and we will have choppy waters ahead but his approach is one that I think the photo community could benefit from. Less angry, less argumentative, less accusatory, less doom-mongering. Less self-centred.
I am not sure how well this article will age. I may be getting swept up in a form of post election euphoria. However, this is not my first rodeo. I have been on the horse and been thrown off a few times before. I am also aware of the political challenges taking place globally and particularly in the United States. However, I would like to polietly propose a question. How can we expect change if we do not support it and implement it in our own worlds? Do I get your vote?
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 318 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his garage reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
We are all born to die. However, don’t let that simple fact put you off reading this article. I will try to be positive but I will also deal with facts. Different cultures deal with the aging process differently. Western cultures have traditionally been labeled as ageist societies that undervalue their older adult populations. Eastern cultures are recognized for their more accepting view of older adults, placing them on a pedestal of wisdom and respect. I live in the West and this year I am sixty years of age.
Of course I do not feel it. Despite a dodgy knee, an occasional back issue every few years and a recovering elbow tendon I am still the person I always was. Or am I? I came to photography as a young man filled with enargy and enthusiam but little knowledge. Today I have the latter and fight to retain the former. In this I believe that I am no different to any man or woman my age.
My local hardware store actively employs older people who have knowledge beyond what is in stock and on the shelves. I like that. It gives me a sense of wellbeing knowing that I am being served not just being sold to. Knowledge and experience is hard to gain, it takes time and effort. It takes failure and hardships as well as success and achievement. Its the same with photography as it is with selling paint and tools. Unfortunately, this mind set is rarely seen as a positive when employing a photographer.
Photography has a tendency to ‘feed off itself’ and continually want the ‘new thing’, the latest name, the new young buck to feel as if it is relevant. I am reminded of the song by Jacques Brel titled Le Bourgeois (The Middle Class), in which three young men ‘cock their noses’ and ‘show their asses’ to the establishment when young only to find themselves having the same done to them as they replace the aged men of their youth. This sense of cyclical replacement is the reality of aging but in a medium that feeds on the new and the young for its vibrancy this process can not only remove income it can also destroy confidence and a sense of worth.
The hope for many photographers as they grow older is that their hard work is either recognised by a revaluation of their worth by the young commissioners or that their archive is in itself recognised as has having relevance and value. Sadly, both of these observations are rare.
Throughout the 1990s I saw myself as a sort of ‘phoenix from the flames’ figure working as an art director, bringing back photographers to the commissioned world who had been forgotten or dismissed. It may be hard to imagine but Don McCullin, Jean Loup Sieff, Abbas, Leonard Freed and William Klein were all in this category at that time. They were not holding major exhibitions, selling large quantities of prints or regularly working for magazines when I contacted them and offered each one of these great photographers work. Work they were grateful to undertake. I still have the letters of thanks to prove it!
All of these photographers have since re-invented themselves or been re-invented and their work lives on through books, exhibitions and print sales. But they are some of the fortunate few.
The challenge for the aging photographer is to remain relevant and avoid bitterness. The industry constantly evolves and a desire for the return of the past is a pointless and fruitless hope that is both negative and destructive. It doesn’t make new friends and it is that need to make new friends that is key to maintaining the required relevance. A willngness to listen to new approaches and beliefs. You dont have to agree with them but you do need to listen to them and be able to reflect and analise what you hear to your benefit.
We can’t stop the passing of time, unless of course you take that to mean the very essence of making a photograph. Which I suppose in the simplest sense it is. But we can accept the passing of time in how we approach our photography and the expectations we have from participating in the medium. Our expectations must change even if we do not wish them to just as our reasons for making images will change. That is natural and reasonable. When we are young we may not have the wisdom to understand or accept this but as we grow older we do and we must. As Brel so passionately sang, “Your heart feels so right, Your eyes swim in the beer, Where the bar room lights are hung, With your friend Jojo, And with your friend Pierre, You drink a toast to being young, Jojo thinks he’s Voltaire, And Pierre, Casanova, And me, who proudly did not care, Me, me, I was a lover, And at midnight, We watched the lawyers pass, Coming out of hotels which had real class, We showed them our good manners, And we showed them our ass, And, oh, how we sang.” A sentiment that Bob Dylan put even more succinctly, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Image: Jacques Brel ©Paris Match
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on teaching photography and the role of the teacher.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
© Grant Scott 2024
When was the last time you bought something online? Something you have never held, touched or used. Something new to you? The answer will probably be at least once in the last week. Even if it was just your online grocery shop. The decisions you made in those transactions will have been informed by a photograph. You will have read a description and maybe some product reviews (hoping that they are honest and true!) but the look of the product will have been central to your buying decision.
This year I have bought a house through an online portal, booked a holiday and purchased a car. I researched my daughter’s new school online and I have purchased a long list of decorating products, a new squash racquet, clothes and various pieces of furniture. I have trusted the photographs of each.
What we wear, what we drive, where we live, how we decorate, what we eat, where we go, the sports we watch, the films we see, the restaurants we use, and how we vote are all informed by a photographic image both still and moving. This is photography in the 21st Century. Of course it also exists on gallery walls, in museums and beutifully designed self-published photo books but this is a very small aspect of the photographic medium. It may be the area that photographers and critics focus on the most. The area that they consider to be the most important and serious but that is in my opinion an elitist stance to adopt.
Others may consider images seen on Instagram as being the true heart of photography but again this is just as an elitist position. The most important and powerful images are the ones that reach the largest audience. Not the ones that receive the most social media likes from like minded souls but those that connect with an audience not engaged with photography as a creative medium.
The rise of online engagement and social media platforms combined with the smartphone’s image-making functionalities has taken photography away from the photographer and I do not judge that as being a bad thing. Just as I do not feel the need to criticise or look down upon images created specifically within a commercial context. Which image has the most power? A full-colour image of a succulent quarter-pounder burger back lit in a fast food restaurant or an aesthetically pleasing image based upon a poem that means everything to the maker but little if anything to the viewer. Both are valid but the role of the image of the burger will be more impactful to a greater audience. Its cultural importance cannot be denied even if its photographic qualities may be discussed and derided by some.
I think it is important to take a step back and see photography from this perspective. To ensure that the confusion of detail does not cloud a clarity of vision. Photography is now a global visual language without borders. It does require a sense of translation but that does not need to be at an academic level. Our daily engagement with visual matter provides us with the opportuinity to improve our visual literacy. You may or may not have consdered photography with such an open mindset. I don’t know, but I do know that I have had many conversations with people who do not. It is easy for us to remain stuck-in-the-past seeing photography as a creative practice disconnected from our daily lives. It is not, it is our daily lives, not just as photographers but as human beings navigating the every day reality of life.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 320 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his garage reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Mentioned in this episode:
www.vivianmaier.com
Image: Vivienne Maier, Self-Portrait, 1953
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I think we can all agree that the world if full of analogue cameras. Some sit in attics, at the back of cupboards in drawers. Others populate charity shops, thrift stores and antique shops. Neat lines sit on photo school and university kit stores shelves. Many live on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. And there are even some that are actually used.
Suffice to say if you want to use an analogue camera there is no shortage of supply at every price, from the cheap to the expensive from the unibiqitous to the rare. Whicever one you but there will be a load of lenses out there you could use and the build quality will envariably be good. So good that they will have survived in reasonable to good condition for many decades. And yet Pentax have decided to launch a new one. The 17.
The analogue community are cheering loudly arguing that this is commercial proof that there is a future for film. Like old jazzers rejuvenated by the release of a long lost Miles Davis album they can stream.
The Pentax Film Project web page launched in 2022 https://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/pentax/filmproject/ and the analogue world were beside themselves with excitement and expectation. Ricoh, the owners of Pentax, began a world wide tour talking to influencers within the analogue community who are now seeing this as a new chapter in film photography. Companies such as the film manufacturer Ilford were and now are equally excited. So what’s the deal?
Takeo Suzuki – one of the Product Designers working on the Project revealed that the reason for the Pentax 17 (that’s is its name!) has been designed primarily for vertical-format use, was informed by the camera we all have in our pockets, the smartphone, “When we communicate with each other using smartphones… we basically hold the device in a vertical position,” Suzuki explained.
The 17 has also seen a return to the half-frame format of the long-gone Olympus PEN because as Suzuki says they want to make film photography more cost effective and therefore more appealing to a younger audience, “We believe that this is a very effective solution to reduce the costs involved.”
The truth is that this new camera, I believe, is a Trojan horse. A smartphone informed camera launched to appeal to a market tired of plastic cameras with plastic lenses. It is not for the ‘dyed in the wool’ analogue photographer, they don’t need it. I’m sure that many in that community that have blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels will be sent one to review and shout about proclaiming the next analogue revolution but that noise will soon die down. That’s the nature of camera launches.
Will a younger audience buy it and begin to invest in the associated analogue costs? I’m sure some will that can afford to buy what’s needed or pay someone else to process, develop and scan their images but the majority will not. Analogue photography is not easy however much you make it sound as if it is. I know, I was a working commissioned photographer between 1999 to 2006 when I was left no option but to embrace digital capture. Digital is now established and many know nothing more.
In a short attention span culture the smartphone is hard if not impossible to beat, even when emotion and nostalgia are the triggers used to buy a camera you don’t need. Of course this is just an opinion.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with art director, lecturer and creative director Fiona Hayes. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Fiona comment on the photographic environment as they see it through the exhibitions, magazines, talks and events that Fiona has seen over the previous weeks.
Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), MyselfGermany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
www.edwardburtynsky.com
www.hamiltonsgallery.com/artists/90-nick-waplington/overview/
www.sergiostrizzi.com
www.francis-bacon.com/life/family-friends-sitters/john-deakin
https://theinformationfront.com
I often start these think pieces with a question or an attempt to defend the title as being succinct and relevant rather than a clickbait attempt to get people to read what I have written. Primarily because I like to feel that we are all on the same page before I get started. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the issue. This time I am going to do neither of these things because I don’t think I need to. I think we are all reading from the same book.
In all aspects of our lives what we once knew and now know as being the foundations of learning are being challenged. In addition the sense of security we once may have had within a chosen career has been removed. As a result the ability to control our own destinies has become a daily consideration based upon a sense of self-worth and resilience.
These are factors that we develop through education, not just formal but lived. Through our friends, mentors, family, colleagues and teachers. The photographic world is no different. I have often spoken about the fact that I never studied photography formally. However, I did attend art school and gained a degree in graphic design at a time when all of my teachers used the extra income they received from teaching to fund their extra curricular activities, both work and social! I was never taught by a career academic within the creative arts. I may have been unusual in this as over the past decades I have met many who wear teaching during the time that I was a student. However, I believe that such dedication to academia over engaging with a broader practice experience can become a heavy burden to carry.
Photography is an evolving practice with a great deal of that evolution based in technology and yet many of those teaching the medium over the past thirty years have either decried that new technology or pretended that it wasn’t happening feeling safe in remaining within what they had been taught and passing this on to future generations. Meanwhile photo school administrators constantly looked to start new courses that reflected the changing nature of the visual communication world with little success as neither they or the photography courses were willing to understand a new direction of travel. Why fix what is not broken? The problem is that the break was there, it just couldn’t or wouldn’t be seen by those that needed to see it most as its fracture widened.
This lack of willingness to embrace new ways of seeing and engaging with photography as an evolving taught subject combined with poor financial control and projection by academic institutions has seen a tsunami of staff redundanicies, course’s ending and entire schools closing over the last year and there will be many more over the coming months. This is a big problem for the medium.
I know that many people believe that attending any form of insitutional learning related to photography is a waste of time and money. Everything can be learnt on Youtube and forums I hear them cry. The truth is that such comments are ill-informed at best and ignorant at worst in their understanding of good formal learning. It is true that you can learn a lot on line but successful learning is about being challenged to understand yourself, not just mastering cameras, lenses, lighting and post-production.
I speak from the inside on this matter as a university lecturer and course leader at both under graduate and post-graduate level but my life is not controlled by that reality. Having never studied photography I am not bound by what I learnt within one medium. Whatever I know about photography came from personal interaction with some of the greatest photographers of the last and this century. Discussions, conversations and the sharing of knowledge. That is what makes good education and a relevant photo school in my opinion.
So where is the photo school today? Schools are fighting to defend what was, whilst spreadsheets and financial forecasts are the basis for any decision at management level. As you can tell I am not placing the blame on one group of people here. The issues are too complicated to do so. The key I think is a lack of communication and a sense of protectionism. The decision makers are disconnected from the academics and the academics have been attempting to keep what they had and have in the face of a change they could not stop. If you are an academic of any kind you may well disagree with me on this and you are welcome to do so. I can only write on the basis of personal experience.
However you see the state that photographic education is in I think we can agree that it is not looking good or positive. The mantra I often hear is that student numbers are the basis of continuity for a course and yet I have also heard of high recruiting courses losing staff members who have not been replaced due to cost cutting measures. It maybe a numbers game but it is clear that something else is at play.
It makes me wonder if the ubiquity of the smartphone and its constant promotion as a camera to supply a reason to upgrade has removed the magic of photography. Add to this the role photography now has in so many of our every day decisions in what to buy, wear, eat, live, vote etc etc and it is clear to me that to many photography is no longer something that you need to study. Of course this is ridiculous and as nonsensical as stating that we should not study reading and writing because they are everday aspects of our lives.
The smarter the tools become, perhaps the belief is that photographers are not required. The arrival of AI supplements this argument. The future will no doubt see more and more AI related courses launched with the hope of connecting with a new young audience. I am not so sure however if success will be guaranteed. I am not pessimistic, merely realistic. The majority of students in the UK coming to universities come straight from high school. Aged eighteen they have little understanding of the subject they choose to study and decide based upon something they may have enjoyed previously or their highest subject grade attained. As we know photography is not an easy option and without extensive research an expensive mistake can be made.
To my eyes for the photo school to exist it requires a rigourous re-think. It needs to place itself within the new world and explain this new context to insitution management with clarity and belief. I cannot guarantee that this will work but it has to be a sensible first step. The beginning of a converstaion. Photography is a global visual language that needs to be studied and to lose the spaces where that study can take place is in my view a criminal act.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 318 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Image: © Robert Adams, Colorado Springs,1974
Mentioned in this episode:
https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/robert-adams
https://www.uarts.edu
www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/royal-photographic-society-sell-bristol-headquarters/#:~:text=“The%20decision%20to%20sell%20RPS,mission%20of%20creating%20a%20more
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on teaching/learning photography and the role of the teacher and the student.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
Mentioned in this episode:
Brady Robinson: @ebradyrobinson
Phil Penman: @philpenman and his recent book “New York Street Diaries”
Ralph Gibson: @ralphgibson_photography and his new book “SALON LITTÉRAIRE”
© Grant Scott 2024
A big question but one that I feel is given too little thought. It’s literally a big picture question, a wide-screen discussion that too often I believe gets drawn into the weeds of academic critical theory, technical considerations or historical importance. That’s fine but I think it misses the point of my question and offers too many rabbit holes to disappear inside.
What all of these methods of investigation exclude is emotion as a foundation for connection. In essence that is what a photograph needs to connect. We can admire technical ability, historical relevance and academic understanding but it is that emotional connection that takes us into an image at a physical level.
I heard the much derided and I think often misunderstood photographer Jeurgen Teller speak recently. He said that he had no interest in photographing a flower to make a nice picture but if someone gave him a flower he would photograph it as a record, a memory embued with the emotion of the moment. A record of giving and receiving. This resonated with me. Of course that is what makes an important photograph I realised. Not the photograph itself but the context in which it was made.
I instantly thought of Richard Avedon’s photographs of his terminally-ill father. Then, Annie Leibowitz’s images of the deceased Susan Sontag. Two photographers whose archives are filled with memorable and iconic images but these photographs are different. They were made for the photographer to remember and for no other reason.
I have images that mean everything to me but that have no great photographic quality. I’m sure you do also. We all do.
So, maybe the answer to such a large question is small and intimate. I saw a post on Facebook whilst I was writing this article by the photographer Graham Macindoe. He said this, “A couple of years ago when my dad was sick with cancer I took a set of pictures that I thought I’d backed up onto a drive but subsequently couldn’t find. Even though I’ve taken many pictures of him it pained me because I remembered the moment and the conversation I had with him and how the photos looked. Yesterday I found them in a folder on a backup drive labeled “miscellaneous stuff”. I’m over the moon to have them back along with some other photos.” Having read this it was clear that I had an answer to my question. I think you will too.
Perhaps too many photographers spend too much time worrying about what other people think of their photographs. An insecurity fed by social media likes, and in so doing start to create work for others rather than themselves? Chasing a ‘quick-fix’ validation, whilst losing the true meaning of the importance of creating work. If that is the case then you will never truely know what makes a photograph important to you. Importance cannot be judged through numbers it needs some empathy, emotion and connection to make the grade. As Avedon said of the images of his father “Whatever happened between us was important to us, but it is not important to the pictures.”
Image: ©Richard Avedon, 1971
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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 315 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Image: © W. Eugene Smith/Magnum Photos
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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
A gatekeeper is someone who prevents access unless they are persuaded to allow the person at the gate to pass into the garden. A conspiracy is a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. Both terms are often used in relation to photography. Why?
I think the answer is simple but the reasons are complicated. Let’s begin with the simple part and at the beginning. The photographer makes work and then wants that work to be seen, recognised and potentially praised. For this to happen an audience has to be found that approves of the work. This is not easy. Making work is releatively easy but finding like minded souls who appreciate the work is not. This is when those who could be important in the appriciation of the work can be perceived as gatekeepers by those who find themselves hitting a brickwall.
In a sense they are right. There are gatekeepers who can prevent work and a career receiving the recognition they deserve but it is important to identify the true gatekeepers from those for whom your work just doesn’t cut it. Not all people who reject you and your work are true gatekeepers.
I have often been described as a gatekeeper from when I was an art director, creative director, magazine editor and now as a podcaster. To me this is ridiculous as I see myself as a gate opener. Someone who can give people an opportunity to speak and have their work seen. Of course I choose those people but this is not gate keepeing it is curating. My choices are based on what I think my audience will be interested in and the creation of a balance of voices and images.
My choices are never based on purely personal likes or dislikes. I aim for an objective curation without prejudice. However, that will not stop people from seeing me as a block to their ambitions.
The power of the gatekeeper has been greatly reduced by the democratic nature of social media. Work can now be shown and shared globally by anyone who downloads an app. The impact that this has had on traditional print publishing and the gallery space has also weakned the gatekeepers power. These are or perhaps were the true gatekeepers in my opinion. Those who constituted the establishment and who worked to maintain that establishment through nepotism and an agenda based on self-protection. This was certainly the case with the traditional photographic magazine. How often did the same photographers appear month after month whatever the quality of the work being produced? Friends of the journalists? Maybe. Lazy journalism? Perhaps. A lack of ambition to find new work? Definitely.
This is where the sense of conspiracy comes to the fore. The idea of a secret cabal of gatekeepers in darkned rooms supporting each other in the creation of a heavily defended world that only the chosen few can enter.
We all know that these exist but to describe it as a conspiracy is I think an over reaction. As I have suggested I don’t think anyone is that organised or insentivised to go to that trouble. A conspiracy takes time and collaboration to come to fruition. The photographic establishment have never been that focused or organised. The truth is that it is a ‘safety-first’ envirnonment where risks are seldom taken. The old and established are easier to promote if such promotion has worked previously.
The reality is that you may have to accept that some doors may be closed to you, some may not be the right doors for you to knock on but there are now many new doors that will welcome you. The responsibility for you is to work out which is which, to ensure that you don’t waste time, effort and money attempting to get into somewhere that is never going to let you in. In addition you need to ensure that you don’t see rejection as failure. Where once there were few options today there are many and some of those traditional outlets are far less important or influential than they once were. So, don’t waste time complaining about gatekeepers or promoting the idea of secret cabals and conspiracies. Find the friendly gates or build your own. Its not easy but it is possible.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I am not aware of any creative practice that doesn’t have its dark side or should I say practitioners within the darkest corners of life. Sexual assault, paedophilia and sexist bullying are just some of the practices that we know take place and that have destroyed the lives of those abused and the careers of those discovered to be practitioners of such vile crimes.
It often takes time for such crimes to be revealed and in the meantime creative work is completed and shared. The abuser is exalted, rewarded and revered whilst the victim suffers silently. Over the last decade there has been no shortage of recognised names charged with such abuse. Some have faced prison sentences, others have cheated the courts through death but all have faced public humiliation. The theatre, television, film and music industries and art world have all seen prominent figures within their communities revealed as the people they really are or were aside from their successful careers. Photography has been no different.
Your knowledge of who these people are within the photo world will depend upon your geographic location, level of engagement with the medium and areas of interest. There is no doubt that social media has had a role in sharing these stories and that is a good thing when such accusations are founded upon rigorous journalism or criminal investigation. It is the platform where I have seen the most accusations against numerous photographers and photo world participants.
However, the names often mean little to me if I have not met those mentioned or if I am unaware of their work. You may be the same. Of course I am as disgusted as anyone else would be and should be when I hear of such behaviour but no one can remember everything they hear or read or know of every photographer. And yet not knowing or forgetting seems to be seen by some as a validation of the abuser. This is of course ridiculous, offensive and borderline libelous in the UK but it raises another issue that I have heard, seen and read debated elsewhere.
Is it possible to still enjoy the music of Michael Jackson? The films produced by Harvey Weinstein? Or films featuring Kevin Spacey? The comedy of Bill Cosby? Is it possible to admire the photography of Mario Testino, Bruce Weber or Terry Richardson? After the truth about these people has been revealed or their behaviour questioned? For me the answer is no. I know that there are others within the photo community that have also been revealed as sexual predators, bullies and abusers. I just can’t remember all of them. Can you remember the valid controversy concerning the photographer David Hamilton, the historic photographic practices of Guy Bourdin or the criminal conviction of Barry Lategan? Are you even aware of these?
This thought process also forces me to consider the complicated concept of redemption. Can a prisoner who has served their time be accepted back into society? Can someone who has been found guilty of sexual harassment ever be accepted as being either remorseful or safe to work amongst others again? These are personal subjective decisions for each of us to make, decisions that may be impacted upon by our own personal experiences and our connections to the offences or people involved. What I do know is that we cannot attack people who make decisions we do not agree with. I don’t and I would hope that others felt the same within a democratic society. Lack of knowledge or memory, or a different opinion concerning redemption does not automatically make you complicent or accepting of a crime. That is subjective opinion not fact.
This raises the issue of cancelling and the potential or not of uncancelling. Social media has a long memory and once cancelled there are many online warriors who continue to remind others of the reasons for cancellations and to ensure that new cancellations take place. As always with social media this can have both a negative and positive aspect. If strict, rigorous, legal professional publishing etiquette is followed then good can come from such exposure, light is shone into the dark corners. However, when this is not the case and accusations are subjective and ill-informed then bullying becomes the norm and the negative impact of such outcry can lead to devastating outcomes for those unfairly or inappropriately named. Social media at its worst.
I am sure that nothing I have said here is new or revelatory. I am certainly not defending the actions of those that have committed crimes. I chose to write this article to clearly identify where I stand on such issues. And as I always say, you don’t have to agree with me but at least you can see that what we do and say here always comes from a good place.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 315 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the small and big things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.
Mentioned in this episode:
https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/events/british-photography-in-the-1990s/
Image: Juergen Teller, Self portrait, London 2015. © Juergen Teller.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I often hear photographers refer to themselves as artists. Others talking about photographers use the term. There are many heated discussions concerning the accuracy of such a description but one thing I think we can all agree with is that to make photographs you need a camera. A box with which to capture light. Unlike many artists the photographer does not have the option of choosing different implements to make their art.
Artists can literally use anything to express their thoughts, emotions and observations. The photographer cannot. In this sense the photographer is a forced specialist. They are tied to a piece of technological evolution that exists and develops for pure commercial profit. A piece of equipment the photographer must master, not purely from a photographic perspective but also from one of technological understanding. Firmware, software and hardware are all essential to the contemporary photographic practitioner.
The photographer has to be a specialist when it comes to using their camera of choice whether it is digital or analogue but they also have to be a specialist when it comes to their subject matter.
If you want to photograph food, you need to understand food, if you want to photograph sports you need to understand those sports, etc, etc, You need to have a passion, interest, knowledge and a sense of inquisitiveness about the subject you are photographing to raise the level of work above that of the ‘casual snapper’. Not a phrase I like, but one that seems appropriate here. In short you need to be a specialist in your subject matter not just how to use your camera.
None of these are a requirement of the artist. They may be considerations but they are not requirements. You don’t have to only use one medium, clay, water colour, oils etc, etc.
The photographer documenting the universal needs to gain knowledge before and during the documentation they are engaged with, but so does the photographer addressing the personal. This sense of creative introspection has long been the foundation of creative expression and is often the reason for photographers describing themselves as artists. The artist does what they want but the photographer does what they are told for money.
I make this statement because I hear it so often, however it is not one I agree with or believe. It is too basic, too didactic and too diversive. It is also not true.
The photographer that is perceived as a specialist is employed for their expertise across all the aspects I have outlined here. They are given freedom to collaboratively create work with and for clients. It is only the generalist that adopts the role of a finger for hire.
I am no fan of labels. I see no need in describing myself as a photographer, an artist or in fact anything at all. The closest I ever come to finding a description of what I do is ‘visual communicator’ but that sounds too pretentious to use. Instead I aim to be a specialist in whatever I choose to do because I know that is what I admire in other creatives. The ability to be good at what they do. However, I also recognise that specialisation is a broad concept. It includes multiple transferable skills, both soft and hard, and that is the basis of photography. So the next time someone asks you what you do for work or fun why not try to avoid the word artist and use the word photographer, after all that is your specialism.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 314 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the need for change, and explains how the podcast will be evolving now it is coming from a garage and not a shed! He aslo reads a short extract from his latest book Inside Vogue House: One Building. Seven magazines. Sixty years of stories…
Plus this week, photographer Holly Revell takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length for the last ever answer to the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’
Holly Revell describes herself as an artist photographer who makes collaborative portraits with fellow queer folk exploring transforming identities. They have been working on their current project ‘People Like Us’ since 2017, recording trans, gender non-conforming and non-binary identities and experience, which will be published as a book this year. Other projects include ‘DARKROOM’; a series of photo-booth installations at art & club events (2010-14), ‘Transformations’, photographs made with performers reflecting the transition from drag to self in one long-exposure (2016), a book titled ‘David Hoyle: Parallel Universe’ (2017) and DARC which stands for documentation action research collective 2016-19). Holly has made a significant contribution to the documentation of queer performance and its icons in London, creating a record of a specific movement and the community surrounding it, which is archived at the Bishopsgate Institute. www.hollyrevell.co.uk
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 313 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of being professional and not egotistical when working with clients and discovering who you really are through photography.
Plus this week, photographer Tria Giovan 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?’
Tria Giovan was born in 1961, in Chicago, Illinois, raised on St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Now she is a New York based photographer who is drawn to subjects that intertwine the personal and the observational. The in-depth and long-term nature of her projects is driven by curiosity, emotional connection and a desire to create images that reflect an informed and humanistic engagement with the external world. Often working with material from her archive spanning across decades, she investigates concepts of preservation and legacy by creating visual testaments with her photographs. Her diverse subject exploration has ranged from New York City’s Lower East Side to an ongoing photographic journal of her family and ancestral home in Rhode Island, to a six-year project photographing 1990s Cuba, as well as a dedicated decade of site-specific images of the coastal shores of Long Island. She is the author of four monographs to date: Loisaida New York Street Work 1984 – 1990, 2023, The Cuba Archive Photographs 1990 – 1996, 2017, Sand Sea Sky, 2012 and Cuba: The Elusive Island, 1996. He work has been exhibited in the US and internationally, and her photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress, the Museum of the City of New York, and the New York Public Library, among others. Giovan’s work has appeared in Aperture, Harpers, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, and many other publications. www.triagiovanphotography.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on where the magazine industry and editorial photography are today from the photographer’s perspective.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.
Mentioned in this episode:
Patrick Witty: https://patrickwitty.substack.com
Amy Wolff: www.amywolff.com
Adeolu Osibodu: www.adeoluosibodu.com
Verena von Pfetten: Instagram @gossamer and @vonverena
Michael Young: https://mjyoungphoto.com
Jonas Cueinin: www.blind-magazine.com
Tag Cristof: www.tagchristof.com
Fiona Hayes: Instagram @theartdictator
Recommendations:
On Instagram:
@insomniamagazine
@timetobehave
@amareazul_
@magnificomagazine
@artofvisuals
@gordonparksfoundation
@c__l__o @theindependentphoto
@mr.oldschool_
@Thegourmand
@Buffalozine
@wildsam
@diezeit
@deardavemag
@texasmonthly
https://www.rouleur.cc/pages/subscribe
Texas Monthly story featuring @richard_sharum’s photos: To Live & Die in Dallas
© Grant Scott 2024
I recently saw a news item announcing the winners of a local camera club competition. The images were very accomplished, a little ‘twee’ in their concepts and obvious in their subject matter with children, dogs and birds featuring amongst the winners. However, they were very well done. The issue for me was not the quality of the photographs but the fact that they had little to do with ‘real life’ and everything to do with ‘fake life’. Post-production life.
The post-production was so extreme that the aesthetic of the photographs was similar to that seen in AI images. I commented that this was a shame and I was met with one comment stating that AI was against the club rules, completely missing the point of what I had said, and a further comment by one of the photographers challenging me to do better and to visit them and explain how to do better. I had obviously ruffled some digital feathers. I commented that I did have a little ‘skin in the game’ and was told that in that case I should know better.
It is just a fact that many camera club members are advanced in age and often retired. They have the funds to invest in expensive kit and spend many hours learning and polishing their post production skills. Sadly, the result of this often results in technically polished images that lack passion, emotion or originality. These are then entered into club competitions and revered.
The problemfor me is that too often the final image has little or nothing to do with the original capture. Photoshop consumes whatever was photographed replacing imperfections with surface perfection and honesty with fiction.
This is not my approach to what constitutes successful photography, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is when this work is awarded prizes it sets a marker for future work. It sets a judging agenda that encourages the replication of the approach. For me that is the problem. Such work fills the pages of the amateur photo magazines (at least those that survive) and at one time much of Flickr. You can also find it on Instagram. It is all around us, but its sense of falcity opens the door for an acceptance of AI imagery the ultimate destination for manipulated imagery.
With so many photographers speaking out against AI and with camera clubs constructing rules to prevent its use it seems strange to me that they appear to be so open to its aesthetic and eager to defend that aesthetic even though it has little if anything to do with photography.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 311 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on looking back and looking forward, the failure of AI photography and the importance of visiting local photography exhibitions.
Plus this week, photographer Chantel King 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?’
London-based Chantel King’s work focuses on beauty and portraiture. She completed her art foundation at Middlesex University and then completed a degree in graphic design at Buckinghamshire New University. King worked as a photo assistant, before progressing to producer and studio manager. She describes her photographic style as being cinematic, dreamy and intimate. She has been commissioned by brands including Revolution REHAB, Fable & Mane and magazines such as Stylist, Grazia, Departures, Hunger, Tush and Schon! as well as Guardian Saturday, and The Sunday Times magazine. www.chantelking.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
There are photographers who never make work in colour, from conception to showing, but there are also many who only make images in colour with the belief that the final choice of how the image should look can be decided through a software package.
You used to have to make this choice when you loaded your camera. Black and white or colour film, a choice based on decisions other than just aesthetic. Cost was one, the ability to self-process and print another. Practical decisions. As a commissioned photographer I always used colour film and a pro lab, but I always had a couple of rolls of black and white loaded just in case that made sense on location. I used a specialist black and white lab and printer for that work. I saw them as different ways of seeing and working and I still do with my digital work.
I have one camera permanently set up for black and white, whilst my others are set for colour. That change of camera body forces me to think differently. To concentrate on light, shadows and mid-tones. Of course I consider all of these with colour photography but the removal of the consideration of colour aspects within the composition places a greater importance on them.
To make colour images and convert them to black and white in post-production removes this essential understanding at capture. That is just a fact. I have no issues with this form of image conversion but the lack of depth in the reasons for such change does raise questions.
I am sure that you have all seen someone post two images side by side on social media, one colour, one black and white, asking which is best? Such a question suggests further questions. The need for validation is clear but so is the lack of the photographers intention in making the image other than to seek approval through aesthetic judgement.
I often hear photographers giving the reason for making images black and white in post. These include that they look more moody, more classic, more serious, more retro, more interesting, more photographic. You get the picture! All are surface descriptions, they offer no sense of photographic foundation to the work.
Those who work in black and white and colour at capture have that foundation. They are not merely dealing with the surface. If you don’t believe me let’s consider what William Eggleston said about his use of colour, “The way I have always looked at the world is in colour. And there is nothing we can do about that.” And some words from Walker Evans, “Colour tends to corrupt photography and absolute colour corrupts it absolutely.” Two ways of seeing both as valid as each other. A difference to be respected if not necessarily agreed with. Not one to be ignored.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
There are many things that cannot be seen in photography and they all begin with the photographer. The photograph may be the physical/digital artifact of what was seen but it is the unseen photographer who made the image that carries the weight of far more than just a camera everytime they press the shutter.
No photograph exists without the photographer making a decision about what is important and what is not. The editing process in photography begins when the photographer decides what to include and what to dismiss within the frame. This of course illustrates the importance of decision making within photography, a process that requires confidence.
The confidence to know what makes a successful composition, a successful image, an important moment, a compelling photograph. The nature of what that success means also requires the photographer to be confident in their intention and expectation. Not arrogant but confident.
Some people seem to be born confident, others are given confidence but it is also possible to gain confidence through personal endeavour. Just as anxiety can be self- produced so can confidence. However, the subjective nature of all creative arts challenges the makers ability to retain confidence in the work that is made and potentially shown. This is a problem but one that can be overcome.
How? Essentially by placing yourself and your work within a context of work previously and currently being made. Too often I hear of photographers claiming that by looking at the work of acclaimed photographers that they feel inadequate. This is to misunderstand the importance of inspiration but context is different from inspiration because it is a mistake to compare your work with the images you aspire to create.
Personal honesty is required to understand that context, but so is the understanding that photography is not easy. Many think it is, but photography is more than making photographs with technical proficiency. That is a relatively easy process of learning compared to the learning required to understand yourself, and it is that understanding that will give you the confidence you need and perhaps desire. This learning will take time, resiliance and commitment but it is achievable. Just read the back stories of the photographer’s whose work you admire to see that this is true.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 310 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the need to regularly replenish your cretivity and inspiration source and he reads from his new book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories.
Plus this week, photographer Kyle McDougall 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?’
Kyle McDougall is a documentary photographer from Ontario, Canada, currently residing in the United Kingdom whose work is driven by a fascination with rural environments, quiet spaces, history, and time. After graduating from film school in the early 2000s, Kyle spent the first ten years of his career working as a cinematographer and director in the television industry, as well as running a commercial video production company. In 2017, he and his wife sold their house, left their jobs, and took off on a year-long road trip across North America, which ultimately inspired a new creative direction in his career. His focus has now shifted towards pursuing long-term photography projects and sharing creative and educational content through his YouTube channel. His first book, titled An American Mile, is a culmination of five years spent exploring and documenting small towns in the American Southwest and currently, he’s working on two projects—one documenting the Slate Landscapes of North Wales, the other focusing on the history of the Royal Air Force in WW2 and its lost airfields. www.kylemcdougallphoto.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I never make a subjective decision when sequencing photographs for a book, exhibition or published article. I always let the photographs speak to me and if I listen hard enough they give me the answer. The decisions I make are then objective rather than subjective and remove any concern I may have about the positioning of the images. Of course all final decisions have an element of subjectivity within them but the foundation of a pagination should always be led by the images and not the designer or photographer taking on the role of designer.
I first learnt this forty-two years ago when I begin laying out photographs at Elle magazine. I learnt the rules that have remained with me ever since. What makes a double page spread and how bindings impact on that choice, what makes a right and left-hand page. How to deal with scale when positioning images against each other. The impact that bleed has on an image. Seeing narratives that form when two images come together. Looking for compositional structures and elements that complement or distract from an opposing image. Defining a narrative across a series of images. I have focused on all of these aspects of photo sequencing over four decades and my photographic listening ear has become pretty well tuned.
But if you are new to the process how can you start to refine the skills I have just outlined?
Firstly, I would suggest that you write down the aspects for consideration that I have mentioned. Those are the guidelines that you will have to consider. Next, I would recomend that you get the images off your computer screen, and get them printed cheaply so that you can throw them on the floor without a concern for how you treat them. If that means findng a bigger floor space than your home then do that. See if you can use a garage, a local hall, whatever and wherever you can find to give you space to step back and look at your work. That sense of distance is going to be essential.
Now put the images into groups, with each group being defined by a constant within a selection of images. These could be defined as still-life, portraits, observational or images that look and feel similar. Then edit each group individually removing the least successful images in each group. Then bring together what you have left. That process may occur a few times. Dont think you have to get it finished in one stage.
Identify the two most succesful images and place these first and last in your sequence. These are the capital letter and full stop to your sentence. Then start to build your sentence seeing your images as words that need to make sense in the order in which they are placed. If the sequence is for a book consider partnerships. Look to see if images talk to each other, do they make sense and in coming together make the two become a stronger one.
You should also look for natural left and right-hand pages. To do this consider that the right-hand page is the most important as it is the one the western world turn to first. Look for negative space within an image that could be lost into the gutter (the centre of the book). Think about quiet images working with louder images.
These are the first steps and of course they will take time to understand and implement. Research will help you with this, looking at books you admire, reflecting and analising their success. You cannot look at enough photo books, both good and bad to learn the skill of image sequencing. However, when you do start to see what I am outlining here you too will find the whole process easy when the photographs tell you where they want to go.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 309 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the universal availability of post-production software, the siloed nature of photography and the continued thinning out of experience amongst photography commissioners.
Plus this week, photographer Mandy Williams 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?’
London based Mandy Williams uses photography, video and sound to expand traditional representations of landscape. She studied for a Graduate Diploma Communications Film, at Goldsmith’s College, a BA (Hons) History of Art, Warwick University and a MA Photography at LCC, University of the Arts London. Williams approaches socio-political issues in an experimental, aesthetic style, seeking to comment on urgent narratives through unexpected, diverse visualisations. Her project, England, examines the exclusionary politics of contemporary England through the metaphor of landscape and includes video, a photographic series and a free newspaper with fold-out posters and interview texts. In the sequence of black and white photographs coastal landscapes are merged with alien geographies accessed from NASA, representing a landscape that has become unstable, and which causes harm. While some projects reference personal history, memory and the passage of time, others reflect on contemporary socio-political and environmental concerns. This includes her ongoing photographic series, Disrupted Landscapes, and video, Chalk, both of which explore contemporary politics in England through the metaphor of landscape, specifically focusing on the landscape of the Kent coast. https://mandywilliams.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I’ll start this by being honest in admitting that I have no interest in nature. I grew up in South London and the urban environment is my happy place. I don’t get the appeal of long hikes across fields, up hills and down dales. However, I recognise that many photographers get excited by such endeavours. So excited in fact that they become the foundation of their photography.
Others, turn to the drama of the street. Urban environments feed their need for subject matter. Coffee shops, cars, street furniture and pedestrians combine to create unexpected everyday tableaus.
Some even seek out the bleak, urban landscapes of decay and economic decline. Focusing upon compositions based on observations of what once was and the generic industrial estate planning of the past thirty years.
I hear a lot of photographers these days talk about walking. Photo walks seem to be a popular thing. There are even podcasts devoted to the subject. I even see photographers exclaiming that all you need to do to work out what to photograph is go for a walk! But the photo walk can take many directions physically, spiritually and intellectually. It is not as simple as just stepping outside your front door.
Like any journey it’s useful to have some idea of a route or destination before you start. This can come in the shape of a photographer’s influence gained through a book or exhibition. But it can also come from the personal interests of the photographer. These are usually connected. Either way, you need to have some sense of intention in my opinion other than just making photographs. Otherwise how can you bring some form of sense to the images you make other than personal satisfaction. You don’t need to set off with a sense of narrative but you do need to be able to assess your work after it has been made and identify themes that may present narratives for further exploration.
I think this is why you can ascertain the passions of the photographer on the basis of where they walk. The photographs are the physical proof of the intention to walk but also of where the walk has taken place.
The difficulty is in finding places to walk that present opportunities to make work that has a reason to exist with a sense of originality. In my opinion photography should never be about making images that look like the work of other photographers (although that may occur accidentally) but photographs that are true to you. I see a lot of street photographers making work that looks generic and boring just as I see the same from many rural landscape photographers. Travelling the same road can often present repetitive creative options.
This presents the photographer with a creative challenge in interpretation and outcome whether or not the whiff of fresh country air or urban pollution fills your nostrils. I believe that this is the true challenge of all walk based photography. To do something different, previously unseen and challenge the viewer’s perceptions of a genre of work. To avoid cliche and repetition. To create a new path. Now where are my boots...
IMAGE: © Grant Scott 2024
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I receive many emails asking me to recommend photographers from people who need photographs for their businesses. Probably at least one a week. They come from different people asking for different kinds of work but they all have one thing in common.
That is their elevated pitch that suggests that the job they are offering, but cannot pay for, will be ‘good’ for the photographer’s portfolio. I have had people looking for wedding photographers, to photograph social events, create images for social media and photograph live bands all using this tactic.
My response is similarly consistent. I explain that their suggestion is not only disrespectful to photographers but also an indication that they, the client, are not recognizing the importance of professional images to their business. This will come as no surprise to many of you reading this but it obviously does to those sending me the emails.
Occasionally my responses are ignored. Sometimes they are met with a polite thank you and nothing more, but I am also regularly met with a sense of indignant incredulity.
How could I reject such a great opportunity on behalf of others? How dare I suggest that such work should be paid for at a reasonable rate? Surely photographers would jump at such a chance. Who do I think I am to get in the way of their business plan? In short, they often get angry, aggressive and defensive. At this stage I stop responding.
You might think that I am acting as an unappointed gatekeeper who should let the photographers make their own decisions, but I respect the photographers I rate too much to put them in that position. People often contact me on the basis of the A Photographic Life podcast or this site. It is on this basis that they assume that I will help them. They don’t research my background as an art director (this is not hard to do) or find out that I am also a working photographer. A lack of care and respect that also indicates to me that they would not be a good client.
Over the years I have developed a well tuned antenna when it comes to clients. I can spot a bad one in a matter of minutes. They may as well be carrying a big banner stating ‘This Will Not End Well!’ My experience tells me that any client that begins with this kind of pitch is to be avoided at all costs. So, if you receive the kind of email I receive so often, I recommend that you take the opportunity to inform the sender of the reality of employing a photographer whilst making it very clear that you are not who they are looking for.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on where the magazine industry and editorial photography are today from the photographer’s perspective.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
Jake Chessum: https://jakechessum.comwww.farringdonprintshop.com
Instagram: @jakechessum
Erin Patrice O’Brien: www.erinpatriceobrien.com Instagram: @erinpatriceobrien
Chris Buck: www.chrisbuck.com Instagram: @the_Chris_Buck
Matt Weinberger: Instagram: @mweinbergerr
Arnold Newman: https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/12/04/bill-jay-archive-arnold-newman-a-personal-appreciation/
Elliott Erwitt created an alter ego, the beret-wearing and pretentious “André S. Solidor” (which abbreviates to “ass”), ” a contemporary artist, from one of the French colonies in the Caribbean, I forget which one” to “satirise the kooky excesses of contemporary photography.” The work was published in a book, The Art of André S. Solidor (2009), and exhibited in 2011 at the Paul Smith Gallery in London.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 307 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photography and the 1990s, keeping ethemera that may or may not be important and the importance of making mistakes to creative success.
Plus this week, photographer Michael Robinson Chávez 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?’
Michael Robinson Chávez, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, who became seduced by photography after a friend gave him a camera to take on a trip to Peru. A native Californian who is half-Peruvian, Robinson Chávez is now based in the Washington DC region. He worked for the The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and Associated Press before working as a staff photographer for fifteen years at The Washington Post. He has covered assignments in over 75 countries including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the collapse of Venezuela, violence in Mexico, California’s historic drought, the Egyptian revolution, gold mining inPeru, climate change in Siberia, life in Brazil’s favelas, and the US led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Robinson Chávez was named an iWitness Fellow, is a frequent lecturer and has taught photographic workshops with the Leica Akademieand Foundry among others, in over twenty countries. https://chavezphoto.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
I recently posted on Threads the most recent cover of British Vogue stating my disappointment in its failure as a cover. Some questioned my position on making such a comment ( I have previously art directed Elle and Tatler as well as designed many magazine and book covers over the last forty years) but the majority of comments focused only on the chosen photograph.
This was missing the point as although subjectively I saw very little merit in the image I was commenting on the cover as a whole. In that sense my comments were objective and based upon the contextual requirements of a magazine cover in the UK. The photograph was an element of the overall design and therefore needed to perform a role within the cover design. The UK is a newsstand dominated environment where a cover is everything to the magazine’s success. It needs to grab a person’s attention, draw them towards it and encourage them to pick it up. It needs to appeal to the regular reader, the occasional reader and the ‘never’ reader if it is going to be successful in selling the issue.
The cover lines, what they say and the way in which they are presented are also key factors in the cover’s success. They must provide inspiration, aspiration and information. They must promise entertainment and education. To do this they must be clear, concise and legible. They must work with the image and create an aesthetic whole. There are many ways to do this. There are rules to be considered and rules to be broken but designing a successful magazine cover is not easy. It requires confidence, experience, creativity and understanding. The designer’s/art director’s art is in bringing photography and typography together to make each stronger thanks to their new relationship. This is why they should be respected and paid appropriately.
The cover I identified and which I have included here fails in all of these requirements. That’s not because I don’t like it or because I am too old to understand new practices, it is because it fails to meet its requirements to appeal to the reader. How do I know? Because sales figures at newsstands are plummeting. Further proof of this is clear in the price of the issue in question which is the first issue ever of British Vogue to be produced without an editor with printed magazine experience. The new editor, Chioma Nandi, has the title Head of Editorial Content and comes from a primarily website based background. The price was a reduced £2.00 in my local supermarket, and not the usual £3.99. A smple and obvious tactic to improve newstand sales.
It brings me no pleasure to raise the issue of a magazine cover that fails so dismally to perform its basic function. I love magazines and spent ten years of my life art directing and designing covers in the very building that British Vogue was once made in. Vogue was always more than just a fashion magazine. It was a home to great writing and photography. Under different editors and art directors it challenged what constituted magazine design and content but now it has left the building that was it’s home for six decades it seems that it has left behind its understanding of what makes a successful cover. Sadly, the inside of the magazine was confused, poorly designed and unfocused. Perhaps, in this sense the cover was an accurate relefection of its contents.
Photography that has a function requires those that work with it to understand that function. It is the photographer’s name that goes alongside the image and if it is poorly chosen, used or presented those decisions directly reflect on the photographer and their work. The designer and art director’s names will appear on the masthead but not next to the work they are responsible for.
In the past such knowledge was passed from generation to generation amongst journalists and designers. I learnt from those who gained their experience in the 1960s and 70s, I passed on that knowledge to those who worked for me in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. Unfortunately, that sense of creative baton passing ended as our current century progressed and now we are left with is what we see here.
There is still strong work being produced by editorial designers within the independent magazine sector and internationally where newsstand sales are not as commercially critical, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the mass market publishers in the UK no longer care, know or understand how or why the design of a magazine cover is an art form that is dying alongside their magazines as is the needed showcase for photographers work they once provided.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 306 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on finding creativity, the royal family and image manipulation, why you should undertake an MA in photography and he reads a listener’s email!
Plus this week, photographer Xavi Bou 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?’
Xavi Bou was born in Barcelona in 1979. He became interested in natural sciences at a young age, during walks with his grandfather in the wetlands of the Llobregat Delta and graduated in Geology from the University of Barcelona before completing his studies in photography. Bou dedicated fifteen years to advertising and fashion photography, after which, he focused on his true passion of nature. His project, Ornithographies, started in 2015. After being showcased in numerous exhibitions around the world and widely featured in numerous international publications, it was published in book form by Lynx Edicions. Today, Bou has multiple projects in progress that explore multiple creative formats and outcomes all attempting to raise environmental awareness. https://xavibou.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 305 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the democratization of photography preventing the challenge of the new, the process being less important than the outcome and he reads some listeners letters. This episode is dedicated to the memory of photographer Stuart Pilkington.
Plus this week, writer, editor and curator Deborah Dash Moore 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?’
Deborah Dash Moore was born in New York City and is the former director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and a Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Dash Moore earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Brandeis University and continued her education at Columbia University, receiving her M.A. in history in 1968 and her Ph.D. in 1975. She taught for many years at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and wrote and co-edited numerous books, articles and collections. Her first book, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews was published in 1981 and her second To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L. A. in 1994. In 1997 her co-edited two-volume Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia was published. In 2004 her book, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation, was awarded The Washington Post Best Book of the Year. In 2008, she published American Jewish Identity Politics a collection of essays and in 2011, her book Gender & Jewish History was awarded a National Jewish Book Award. In 2012, NYU Press published a three-volume series edited by Moore, City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York. In 2016, she was named Editor-in-Chief of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization and in 2023 her book Walkers in the City was published which draws on the experiences of and photographs by a generation of young Jewish photographers who belonged to the New York Photo League. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/deborahdashmoore/
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the death of the magazine industry and editorial photography.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 304 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed speaking with master printer Bob Tursack about all aspects of photographic printing including photo books, fine art printing, digital, analogue and lithographic. They also discuss photographer expectations, good practice and the photographer/printer relationship.
Bob Tursack, is the CEO of the high-end printing company Brilliant Graphics. He is a third-generation printer who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs who became interested in photography when he was in junior high. He had his first darkroom in sixth grade and attended the Ansel Adams workshops in Carmel, the Maine Photography Workshops, and other photography courses. Tursack’s father founded Tursack Printing, commercial printers, in 1959, and Bob began training on the small press as a teenager. But his real passion was for fine art prints, and he ultimately sold the company in 1998. Tursack started Brilliant Studio in 2000, in his basement, planning to make prints for artists and photographers as a one-man band. But the business quickly grew, and he soon founded Brilliant Graphics, to produce brochures, catalogues, posters, and books. The company now has 72 employees. Tusack has worked with photographers including Sally Mann, Ralph Gibson, George Tice, Steve McCurry, Emmett Gowin, Mark Seliger and institutions including The National Gallery, Washington, DC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, The Hermitage Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Yale University Press, and The Andy Warhol Foundation. https://brilliant-graphics.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
Stuart Pilkington is not a ‘big name’ in the world of photography and yet he was important to anyone who knew of him and his initiatives. We are used to marking the passing of the greats of photography but the lesser known names are seldom written about. Those who worked selflessly without payment to make things happen for the good of photography and its sometimes fractious community. Those who have no ego, no desire to build follower numbers or ‘in-your-face’ marketing strategies when it came to social media. Stuart was a person who existed outside of that noise and yet his influence within the UK photo community far belied his name recognition.
I first came across Stuart when he contacted me some ten years or so ago. He wanted to talk about setting up a photo competition and bounce around some ideas. That was very Stu. He listened and become informed. Subsequently he established ‘The Swap’. A very simple concept in which on two separate days two photographers would photograph each other and create two portraits. On day one, person one was the photographer and the other became the subject and on day two they swapped roles so that the photographer became the subject and visa versa. He believed that the idea of being in front of the camera was abhorent to a lot of photographers but for those who were willing to take part it was an opportunity to create something collaboratively. The photographers were encouraged to sprinkle their magic and be creative with their images. These were Stu’s words. Once both images were ready they were sent by e-mail to Stu and published on the Swaps website. Each set of images were given at least three days on the welcome page and then archived for all to see https://www.theswap.info/photographers.html. The amount and quality of photographers Stu connected with through this project is a testiment to his character and commitment to sharing the images of others. The BBC even did a news story on it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-30176410?fbclid=IwAR0hT71mGV6XWrQUOHFZceEF_ZY6hq-dIDNFMR7aQEZ0JGZLOzJqoGy4cEQ
Stu was full of ideas and was constantly working on new projects and initiatives and even when a stroke dramatically impacted on his life at an early age he continued connecting through Facebook, posting images and saying hello!
He never stopped making images even from his motorised wheelchair and these images became small self-published photo books. Like him they were modest, considered and enigmatic in their image choice and production. He sent me two, one titled Strangers in Paradise and the other Ball Games. I treasure these even more now that he is gone just as I do the note he included in the second book.
Rest in peace Stu, I know that wherever you now are you will still be making images. I dont think anything can stop you from doing that. I also know that you will not be forgotten by those who knew you. You may have died but you have left something very special in the world of photography, your spirit.
You can post your own memories of Stu and read the memories of others here https://www.facebook.com/stuart.pilkington.7
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 303 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on confusion between post-production and AI, professionalism and creativity and accepting that old labels are no longer relevant.
Plus this week, photographer Mark Chapman 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?’
Here is a link to the advertisement made by Julia Fullerton Batten mentioned by Grant in this episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJf26fPBhoc
Mark Chapman is an award-winning filmmaker and artist from North East, England whose moving-image work has been screened internationally across narrative, documentary and experimental contexts. Chapman’s hybrid documentary short CAMREX had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival and has been screened internationally and nominated for over 30 international awards. His short TRANS, was also screened around the world. He was one of the 17 filmmakers selected for the BFI NETWORK@LFF 2017, which sought to identify original new voices “taking risks and breaking new ground in narrative and form.” Chapman is an alumnus of the industry development programme Berlinale Talents at Berlin Film Festival. His photographic work has appeared in numerous group gallery shows and magazines such as ID and Aesthetica. He is currently developing his debut drama feature TRUANT. This project was one of 12 European projects selected for the UK-Italy development programme Feature Expanded, where he was mentored by Oscar-nominated & Cannes-prize winning producer Yorgos Tsourgiannis. Chapman was recently selected for the BAFTA Connect scheme and is an associate member of Directors UK. He is a Lecturer in Film & TV Production at the University of Greenwich, and has a PhD in film practice. www.mark-chapman.co.uk
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 302 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on selling houses with a smartphone, whether a there is such a thing as a ‘real’ photograph and more concerning the long form photographic project.
Plus this week, photographer Michael Robert Williams 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?’
You can find out more about the webinar mentioned in this episode here www.brookes.ac.uk/open-days/postgraduate/ma-professional-photography-webinar
Photographer Michael Robert Williams grew up in the small town of Congleton, just south of Manchester in North West England. He moved to London with his camera, a photography degree, enough money to live on for a few months, and whatever would fit in the back of the car. Still based in London, today Michael is known for his portraits of musicians including The Killers, Oasis, Damon Albarn, Ian Brown, and Interpol as well as other celebrities and figures from the worlds of music, film, sport, and politics. His portraits have featured in many publications, including Clash, Filter, Time, Die Zeit, and NME. In addition to portraits for magazines Michael has produced artwork and promotional images for record labels, artist management, and commercial clients including adidas, Microsoft, Philips, JCPR, and American Rag Clothing. www.michaelwilliams.co.uk
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the long-form photographic project.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
Erinn Springer
@springerinn
https://charcoalpress.com/shop/dormant-season
https://erinnspringer.com/dormant-season
Rich Frishman
frishphoto.com
@richfrishman
Richard Sharum
https://richardsharum.com
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/to-live-and-die-in-dallas-a-year-inside-the-citys-homicide-unit/
Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters: Video
Marc Wilson
www.marcwilson.co.uk/book-print-sales/p/awl
Steve Pyke
www.pyke-eye.com
Stephen Gill
https://www.stephengill.co.uk/portfolio/portfolio/nggallery/album/the-pillar/thumbnails
© Grant Scott 2024
In episode 280 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the need for photographic education, how having heroes does not have to be negative and a new event concerning photography and the commonwealth. Plus this week, photographer Ave Pildas takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than […]
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the photographic pivot. How to move from one area to another, utilise transferable skills and build a professional practice for the 21st Century.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Condé Nast Have Left The Building: Six Decades of Vogue House will be published by Orphans Publishing in the Spring of 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
Bill Owens: https://kochgallery.com/artists/bill-owens/
Roger Stowell @roger.stowell.35
Sean Gallagher @Imseangallagher
Laura Kleinhenz @docuvitae
Phil Toledano @mrtoledano
© Grant Scott 2023
I am happy to admit that I have not bought a new camera since 2006. I still have those cameras. Two Canon 5Ds that I continue to use for commissioned work. Why wouldn’t I? There great! But my photographic history is filled with other brands. I’ve owned Hasselblads, Nikons, a Pentax 6 x 7, one Olympus OM1, one Ricoh GR, a Lumix Panasonic GF1, Rolli’s, Fujicas, Leicas and one Yashicaflex. All of which I have bought secondhand.
Today, my camera bag only contains those original Canons and one Leica. That’s it. There are three lenses. All prime. I travel light. To use a clothing metaphor it is like having a good pair of jeans, a white shirt, a good classic cut jacket and a pair of well made shoes. A capsule wardrobe that works wherever you are.
I have never had a problem with any of the cameras I’ve bought and all have been sold-on via eBay or a specialist dealer. Maybe I’ve been lucky, I don’t know, but what I am aware of is how many people buy cameras and never use them.
I have been made even more aware of this recently as I have been looking out for a camera for my eleven-year-old daughter. I’ve been looking on Facebook marketplace which is full of good value options in excellent condition. Cameras made over the last ten years or so have all been pretty competent. They do what they claim to do comparatively well and you can easily get one with its box for less than £150. Maybe a Canon, a Samsung, a Fuji or a Lumix Panasonic. You may get lucky and find a highly sought after model but you are more likely to find one you have never heard of.
Despite this the chances are that a review was written by a magazine or website when it was released and that review will be available online. And my experience of finding these reviews has alerted me to some really cheap gems out there.
These are digital cameras which have been replaced by the smartphone in most homes and are now sitting in cupboards collecting dust. Interestingly analogue cameras that are far less useful to most photographers today are being sold at vastly inflated prices with the idea that old must be valuable! Again, I am not talking about the Formula 1 models here but those cheaper models and brands that the serious collector would not be interested in.
I am interested in getting people engaging with photography at all levels without the barrier of cost raising its ugly head and with the cost of new cameras reaching stratospheric heights it seems to me to that buying second hand kit is the obvious solution. It makes sense to re-use, to re-cycle and prevent more plastic in landfill and it makes sense for most photographers at most levels of interest. So, why not take a look at marketplace and see what you can find, you may just be surprised. You may find a Ford Ka rather than a Ferrari but it will still get you where you want to go!
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
Scott’s next book Condé Nast Have Left The Building: Six Decades of Vogue House will be published by Orphans Publishing in the Spring of 2024.
© Grant Scott 2023
The history of photography is filled with transitory style choices. I don’t mean clothing choices but aesthetic decisions concerning the image itself. So often these are led by technological developments. Who remembers the vivid reds and blues of 1980s cross processing? Or the hideous fakery of digital high dynamic range? Or the desaturated portraits of the past decade? Transitory choices based on aesthetics that soon pass into history placing them into a box marked ‘Dated’.
I have always tried to avoid this in my own work and spoken/written continually of the need to avoid falling into the warm embrace of a filter or plug in that makes your work instantly relevant for a month or two. Fashion is to be avoided, language is to be evolved.
The reason I speak out about this is that I have been involved with professional photography for over forty years now and over that time I have seen fashions come and go but I have also seen photographers who have stayed true to personal vision survive. The fashion hunters have had a tendency to drop out of the game the moment their work is no longer ‘of the moment’.
The great fashion and portrait photographer Paolo Roversi once told me that it is better to stay on the river bank watching the stream that get stalled up in its current. I agree and see what he means. If you look at his work you will also.
With the growth of computational photography and the rapid evolution of AI. The aesthetic has become a dominant factor in many peoples understanding of the medium. Or perhaps I should say misunderstanding. Making something look like something else has now become a goal for many. This is of course a mistake.
Filters and plug-ins are available to all. Adopting them as a central aspect of your work just puts you immediately into the soup. The same as everyone else. It doesn’t make you different or relevant it puts you in danger the moment an original thinker comes along and changes the direction of the contemporary popular aesthetic. Once that happens all of your work needs to respond, the moment you sign up to this way of working.
I have recently seen a rise in the dominance of the colour yellow in images. Not photographing yellow but utilising filters and post-production that raises the yellow profile. This is a dangerous game to play. Why? because yellow is a difficult colour to control when CMYK printing. The process most client will use. It has a tendency to flatten an image, forcing an increase in black (Key) to provide contrast and red (Magenta) to ensure the increase in black does not make an image look ‘dirty’. In short it is extremely hard to print. It may look great on your back lit screen but you will only be disappointed when it is printed and so will your clients.
My advice? Beware of following the crowd. Stay true to what you believe and make work that steps out of the stream. Be like Paolo, get yourself a deckchair and just watch it flow by.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
Scott’s next book Condé Nast Have Left The Building: Six Decades of Vogue House will be published by Orphans Publishing in the Spring of 2024.
© Grant Scott 2023
I recently attended a group photography show featuring approximately eighty images by eighty photographers. The work was competent, well printed, professionally framed, technically proficient but boring. There were some landscapes, some looking straight at the camera portraits, some conceptual stuff, observational everyday life and a smattering of macro insects and underwater images.
The problem for me is that I had seen it all before. I was also able to see the influences for the work too clearly. The photographers who had made the work had done a good job but it all lacked soul. There was no evidence of any personal visual language. In a world where photographers are fearful of the oncoming affects of AI the images exhibited showed why they should be afraid.
The argument against AI is that it can only produce from what has already been created, therefore to make work that breaks no barriers in subject, approach or aesthetic clearly falls into the lap of the skilled AI creator.
The problem is that these photographers appeared to be creating work to meet the expectations of others. To create work that conforms to widely understood set of rules, as to what constitutes ‘serious’ photography in 2023. The work would have looked very different in 1993, 83, 73, 63 etc etc. The approaches would have been different, the themes would have been different, the subject matter would have been different. If you don’t believe me just look at any of the photo annuals that used to be produced featuring a selection of the ‘best’ photos of the year. You can often find these in charity and second hand book shops.
I have never been a believer in the process of learning photography by slavishly copying the work of another photographer. It makes no sense to me. Why would I want to learn what someone else did to improve my own work by copying their approach and aesthetic? I know this is a common practice amongst some photography teachers but it is a process which is reliant on technical repetition not creative experimentation. It aims for safety and not risk.
Well presented, technically proficient well-lit exhibitions are fine. But. Do they excite or inspire me? No! And surely the reason for creating and showing work is not to achieve a grade or meet the approval of our fellow photographers. Surely it is to provoke, inspire, question and challenge. If we are not doing that why are we doing it?
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
Scott’s next book Condé Nast Have Left The Building: Six Decades of Vogue House will be published by Orphans Publishing in the Spring of 2024.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 278 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on not getting bored with photography, photographers obsessed with kit of all kinds, the slow death of the NFT and finding new ways to say new things with a camera. Plus this week, photographer Massimo Leardini takes on the challenge of supplying Grant […]
In episode 277 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on understanding and promoting contemporary landscape photography, when clients are made redundant, and what a photographer leaves behind.Plus this week, photographer Nicholas Sinclair takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he […]
In the third of three special episodes UNP founder and curator Grant Scott looks at where we have been over the past decades with photographic practice to help identify themes and recurring issues that have formed the foundation for where photography is today in the 21st Century. Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United […]
In the second of three special episodes UNP founder and curator Grant Scott looks at where we have been over the past decades with photographic practice to help identify themes and recurring issues that have formed the foundation for where photography is today in the 21st Century. Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United […]
Have you ever looked back at your family history? Do you have albums and boxes of un-notated prints? Small yellow boxes of transparencies or envelopes filled with soft focus prints yellowing from time. Hard drives and folders filled with images identified only by numbers and letters? Do you want to know who the people are […]
In the first of three special episodes UNP founder and curator Grant Scott looks at where we have been over the past decades with photographic practice to help identify themes and recurring issues that have formed the foundation for where photography is today in the 21st Century. Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United […]
I am often asked to give advice to photographers of all ages either informally or formally in my role as a lecturer in the medium. The questions I am asked vary little and my answers are similarly formulaic if not repetitive. The reason for this is that at its heart photography has a few simple […]
I ask this question because I recently saw someone use the term, one I have not previously seen, read or heard. Had the writer I saw using it, made it up? Or am I just naive? Well, if like me you are unaware of the use of the term here is an explanation. ‘Photo Guilt’ […]
In episode 273 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the death of editorial publishing, the rise of Threads by Meta and the natural process of ageing based on digital evolution.Plus this week, photographer Andrew Macpherson takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes […]
My youngest daughter recently left primary school. A tradition at her school is that each year the parents come together to arrange a series of secret events for the children. Fun games, mocktails, silent disco, face paint, pizzas and ice creams all featured this year. In addition to this there was a call for photographs […]
Any experienced photographer will be aware of the importance of an identifiable personal visual language in their work. A visual language that allows images to be immediately recognised as the work of just one photographer. This is not easy to achieve, it requires dedication and commitment but it also demands courage. The pioneers of photography […]
In this ‘Photo Collecting’ episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed connecting with Peter Fetterman in Santa Monica to discuss all aspects of photo collecting, including pricing, selling, archives, keeping true to your vision, the art market and the photography gallery. Born in London, Peter Fetterman has been deeply involved in […]
In this ‘Photobook Special’ episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed connecting with Mary V Swanson in Arizona and Darius Himes in New York to discuss their book Publish Your Photography Book and all things ‘photobook’ related. You can find out more about Mary and Darius’s book mentioned in this episode […]
I can see both the positive and negative aspects of social media. For me the positives include community and communication, both of which provide support and an audience to photographers. However, we also know that there are many negatives based on how social media platforms are used and understood or perhaps I should say misunderstood. […]
In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on photography and artificial intelligence in a rigorous discussion dealing with the impact AI is and will […]
In episode 269 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the slow death of the ‘old school’ photo festival, publishing archives, feedback that is too nice and his inability to use AI.Plus this week, photographer Julio Mitchel takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 […]
I know the answer to this question is subjective but I think there may be an objective approach that is worth considering. I’ll start by suggesting one word to consider, and that word is intention. In so many aspects of our lives success is measured by the ability to achieve and demonstrate an outcome that […]
In episode 268 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on snake-oil salesmen, the importance of an attention to detail over concept and the issue of quantity over quality.Plus this week, photographer Edward Thompson takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which […]
I know that many of you have enjoyed the writing of Pete Silverton on photography and photographers posted on this website. As you may know Pete recently died and we marked this by reading some of his writing on an episode of the A Photographic Life podcast. Well, typical of Pete he wrote some thoughts […]
In episode 267 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of editorial photography and its demise, fashion photography in the Metaverse and how established lens brands are viewing the future of the smartphone.Plus this week, photographer David Baker takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no […]
In the eighth episode of this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on photography and artificial intelligence in a rigorous discussion dealing with the impact […]
I often write about the importance of an open minded approach to photography and life. A desire to listen and learn, to debate and be challenged, to evolve opinions and be able to admit mistakes. The artists, writers and musicians who inspire me and whom I read about display all of these qualities. However, photography does not always seem capable of adopting this approach.
Every time it is challenged by new functionalities, technologies and practices the photographic community seems to adopt a defensive attitude. A ‘not in my yard’ mindset that puts up a negative force field fence around what it knows and feels comfortable with. If you don’t believe me or feel that I am trading in hyperbole here then take a look at the different responses to the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence and photography. The doomsayers and the evangelists, with few searching for the middle ground of understanding, acceptance and integration. The premise of these issues are discussed rigorously with my good friend Bill Shapiro on the A Photographic Life podcast Episode 266, so if you are interested in hearing some rigorous discussion coming from two different perspectives that one is for you.
However, Artificial Intelligence is not the only aspect of the new that the photographic world seems to be dealing with poorly. The rise and fall of the NFT last year saw a similar response but I feel with good reason in that case. It was built on sand from my perspective, however there are other challenges that the photographic community needs to face that it seems to be turning its back to. The Metaverse is one of these and another vision of the future Bill and I spoke about on the podcast a few months ago. Did you know that this year saw the second ever Metaverse Fashion Week? It attracted big international fashion brands eager to be connected with the next big thing but few attendees. But that is not the point. There is huge investment being made into these initiatives. Much more than is being made into traditional camera equipment!
There is much debate around the semantics of language around photography. There always has been. So, let’s take the lazy but perhaps most accurate first step in understanding what photography means outside of what photographers making photographs think it means.
One definition is “the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (such as film or an optical sensor)” another “Photography is the skill, process of producing photographs.” Here is another, “The word Photography literally means ‘drawing with light’, which derives from the Greek ‘photo’, meaning light and graph, meaning to draw. Photography is the process of recording an image – a photograph – on lightsensitive film or, in the case of digital photography, via a digital electronic or magnetic memory.”
Nowhere in those definitions does it say that a photograph has to exist as a print, be put in a frame and hung on a wall. Nowhere, does it say that a photograph has to be a form of specific final artefact to be named a photograph. I have made this argument before but it seems worth returning to at this point as the biggest issue I hear with new forms of ‘photograph’ is the description of something that has not been captured by a photographer being called a photograph. I have suggested that it should be called digital art, but I will be ignored, and for the moment I will stick with that but my thought process is fluid and my opinions may change.
My concern for photography is that it will get too hung up on definitions to recognise that we are experiencing a seismic change that makes previous understandings of roles and practice redundant.
I recently saw film footage of a robot in California that can cook fried chicken, flip burgers and fry chips. The robot is leased to restaurants for a monthly fee and the robot can handle up to ten orders cooking at the same time. Food chains such as White Castle and Wimpy amongst others are already on board with this. The reality is that the robot is cooking the food, does it matter if we call it a chef or a cook? Of course not, the terminology is irrelevant.
At the moment this is how I feel about photography. I believe that it is in danger of eating itself whilst the world moves on. There is no doubt that photography as a creative and communicative medium faces many challenges over the coming years but those issues will be discussed, debated and resolved across a much broader spectrum than just that which affects photographers and photography.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
Scott’s new book Conde Nast Has Left the Building: Six Decades of Vogue House will be published in the Spring of 2025 by Orphans Publishing.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 265 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the dangers of photography becoming too introspective, the importance of recognising when you hit a ceiling and the realities of working as a commissioned photographer.
Plus this week, photographer Tom Bowden 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 Bowden is an American Photographer recognised internationally for his street portrait work.
Influenced early in life by the work of Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, his street portraits are often accompanied by the stories of the people he meets and works with on the streets. When he was 15, he saw the Diane Arbus image, Child with Toy Hand Grenade in a High School Library Book. After that, he was obsessed. Bowden’s work as a photographer and producer have taken him around the world and his work has been collected in two books Love Street and Encounters, Portraits of Americans. His work has been published in The Guardian, FotoMagazin, L’Oeil de la Photographie amongst many other publications. www.tbowphoto.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 264 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the growing issues of wellbeing amongst photographers both young, old and those in-between. He also marks the passing of UNP contributor Pete Silverton.
Plus this week, photographer Alessia Rollo 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?’
*You can discover more of Pete Silverton’s writing on photography as mentioned in this episode by putting his name into the website search bar.
Alessia Rollo is a visual artist born in 1982 in Southern Italy where she lives and works. After earning her undergraduate degree in visual communication at the University of Perugia, she completed a master’s in creative photography at the EFTI, Spain in 2009. For Rollo, rather than explaining or documenting a situation, photography is a medium that permits myriad metaphors. In her projects she questions photography a a tool of representation and deliberately mixes a documentary approach with a fictionary one. Her work focuses on the Mediterranean area to question relevant topics in main stream storytelling and visual stereotypes, whilst seeking to expand a sense of community through re-appropriation of histories, memories and visual material. Her work has been exhibited in many international exhibitions in solo and group shows. www.alessiarollo.it
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 263 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the definition of the personal project, how you describe what you do if you are a photographer, and he updates listeners on upcoming episodes.
Plus this week, photographer Tamara Saade 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?’
Born and raised in Lebanon, Tamara Saade is a journalist and photographer currently based in Beirut. She mainly covers Lebanon’s ever-changing political landscape, focusing on human rights, with a documentary approach, through photography, writing, and videography. Working with different photographic formats and artistic platforms, she uses the intersectionality of the medium and the message to highlight her stories. She has worked with The New York Times, The Washington Post, the UN, Vice International, Al-Jazeera, and Megaphone amongst others. She has exhibited he work in the US, France, the UAE, Norway, and Lebanon. https://tamarasaade.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I know that stock photography has been dying since the late 1990s but I wonder if AI is ringing the final toll of its existence. Here’s a spoiler alert! I do!
In 1999 I was employed to travel the world and give talks on the future of stock. My thought process was that in a coming digital world where everyone would have access to making images of technical quality, stock would have to be more creative and aspirational to survive. This was not a message that was universally accepted or agreed with, particularly in the US. In the States I met photographers who had devoted their lives to stock making big money just as they had done for years. There was a simple formula that many of them were following. Each Summer they would take a Winnebago and their families on a road trip and make photographs along the way. Lifestyle images that were dictated by a list of ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ supplied by the stock agency. When they got home they would process the film, label it and send it off. They would then wait for the monthly cheques to roll in.
Digital photography saw this formula fail. It was too slow for a rapidly changing digital world and piles of analogue images were too expensive to digitise. Agencies started to accept images from anyone who had a camera they considered ‘professional’ and the old school stock photographers found their market swamped by newcomers keen to ‘make a buck’. The problem was that ‘a buck’ was all they started making.
An over supply of images saw a drop in sales revenue and many photographers walked away from supplying stock. When I say stock what I am referring to is generic imagery used to illustrate a multitude of articles, and provide visual content for companies from accountants to plumbers. I am not talking about syndication here. Stock photography has always been a numbers game, the more you submit the more chance you have of getting lucky and making a sale. The issue is that if everyone plays the same hand there is less chance that your hand will take the pot.
For years the best selling stock image was of two peoples hands meeting and clasping. A sign of connection, trust and collaboration. “Find a new way of photographing that and you will make a fortune!” I was once told. I think I may now have that formula.
There is much talk about how AI based image making is the end of photography, that the truth is under attack and once out of the bag those images may never be placed back in. I cannot see any argument against the latter assertions but the first cannot be true from my perspective. I am old enough to remember the same arguments being made concerning the post-production powers of Photoshop. Issues did and will occur but they can be addressed.
Photography competitions re-wrote their entry conditions and created new categories to accept, absorb and explain images that had been post-produced. In turn such images became easy to recognise and such a manipulation become an art form in-and-of-itself. I expect the same to be true of AI generated images.
Photographs will still be made of people, places and objects that need to be accurately and faithfully recorded. Photographers will still be commissioned to do this. However, I do believe that stock photography will be replaced or at least impacted by AI created images that fulfil generic client needs. This may be a fashion, a trend, or a style for a while, it may become an aspect of stock photography that some clients are drawn to alongside ‘pure’ photography. Or it may go the way of HDR images, and remain a quick sugary fix based on technology that appeals to some happy to engage with obviously created digital art.
The AI conversation is ongoing within all aspects of our life and its affect and effect on our lives is both obvious and inevitable. It is therefore no surprise that we are talking about its impact on photography. However, there are some practices that cannot be taken over, at least so it seems at the time of writing this. I am not aware of an AI hairdresser, or an AI tradesmen who can climb under my bath to fix a leaking pipe, or an AI farmer that can deliver a baby lamb or an AI photographer who can travel to a location, meet someone, engage in conversation, identify and make a series of successful photographs of that person, edit (in its correct sense to choose the strongest images) the images and deliver them to a client.
Stock requires none of this. An agency ‘wants’ list and the ability to navigate an AI image making platform is all that is required. So what does this mean for stock agencies? Well, if its easy enough to do, just as companies now use website templates to create their own websites there is nothing to suggest that they will not be able to make their own images, they will not need to buy them from a traditional stock agency. The generic will be easy, however just like in 1999 the creative and the aspirational will still be required by those clients looking to stand out from the crowd, and that is where the photographer steps in. AI can easily meet the client need if that need is a visual answer to a generic problem or a cheap fix. Two hands meeting? Sure, not a problem, a group of happy office workers, of course we can do that, a smiling child reaching out to the sun, no problem with that either. This is classic stock and it will be replaced. However, classic stock is not all photography and just like a haircut a ‘pure’ photograph requires a photographer to make it. A living breathing photographer.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
My good friend Pete Silverton has died but why should that be of any interest to you? Well, let me tell you why. I first met Pete twenty-three-years-ago. He was one of the best writers and most interesting people I’d ever met. We never worked together but we stayed friends and when I was made Editor of Professional Photographer magazine I saw an opportunity to commission Pete.
That commission was to write pen portraits of iconic photographers. Each month I would suggest someone and a week or so later a piece of beautifully written, immaculately researched text would be delivered. I also sent him to be photographed by Rankin and to report back, I sent him into the photographers bear pit at the end of the catwalk at London fashion Week and he survived. His articles and columns were funny, informative and insightful, they were everything Pete was. When Cafe Royal Books published my body of work titled Crash Happy: A Night at the Bangers, Pete supplied the text. Again in just a few words he said everything that needed to be said and implied everything else.
When I launched Hungry Eye magazine, I took Pete and his writing with me and when I founded the United Nations of Photography I began to post those archive articles here. Just put the words ‘Pete Silverton’ into the search bar to find them and further examples of Pete’s writing on photography.
Pete has gone but his writing is still with us. The stories he told remain with me, I am honoured to be able to share just some of them with you.
Peter ‘Pete’ Silverton
Silverton had been a journalist for over 30 years. He started as features editor at Sounds in 1976, covered Punk, went on the Anarchy Tour bus with the Pistols and Clash and later wrote Glen Matlock’s autobiography I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol and Essential Elvis. Silverton also worked as an editor at Time Out, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Express, Mojo, and the Guardian, and written for practically every music mag and newspaper in the land. His book Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing was published in 2010. http://petersilverton.blogspot.com/
For Pete’s music writing visit https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Writer/peter-silverton
Portrait of Pete by me.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
You need a camera to record an image but not to see an image. Let me explain. The great art director Alexey Brodovitch was responsible for mentoring many great photographers including Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Hiro, Tony Ray Jones, through his evening classes and summer schools as well as a commissioner of photography. He worked in a pre-digital age before the LCD screen when book and magazine layouts were sketched and collaged, when the process of pressing a camera button had financial and time based consequences. His answer was simple, to learn to make photographs before ever picking up a camera.
To learn to frame and compose an image within a rectangle he suggested that you cut a rectangle into a sheet of card, to remove the shape to leave you with a card frame and then to use the frame to frame the world as you see it using no other lens than the ones you were born with. It’s a simple suggestion but sophisticated in it’s application.
Without understanding how to construct an image from its constituent parts there is no basis to the making of the photograph. Luck becomes the dominant factor and the chance of creating a successful image is greatly reduced. By removing the camera you remove the pressure to succeed. Now you may consider this to be pointless, after all what is the point of you have nothing to show for your time spent looking and composing. But I will argue that what we are discussing here is the process and the importance of that process.
Before we look through the camera we visualize the potential for making a photograph, we consider what will be the central focus for the image, what we will include and what we will exclude. This is the first step in making an image, the second part is looking through the camera lens to refine, resolve and make a record as a photograph. This is common sense and no revelation but it is surprising how many photographers I speak with who spend little time on step one placing total reliance on step two. Brodovitch didn’t think this was a good idea and neither do I.
So, why not save some time and remove some anxiety by starting to frame the world with a piece of card it may not be as crazy as it may sound.
Image: Alexey Brodovitch with Richard Avedon.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 262 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of serenity now! What to do when things go wrong on a commissioned shoot and making a small difference.
Plus this week, photographer Pippa Healy 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?’
Pippa Healy is a photographic artist based in London whose practice is primarily diaristic and concerned with themes of loss, longing, violence and grief. She had a successful career in television before embarking on her photographic journey, working for Reuters on their news desk as well as on documentaries and factual programmes such as Dispatches and Cutting Edge for Channel 4. Healy studied at Central St Martins for a Post-Grad Certificate in Photography and then an MA in Photographic Studies at Westminster University. She then expanded her photographic practice with an MA in Printmaking at UAL Camberwell graduating in 2020. Her handmade ‘Zines’ are central to her practice. Healy has shown work at Festival Circulations in Paris, Les Rencontres d’Arles and Format Festival (UK) and her work has been widely published in magazines and exhibited internationally and her zines are part of the Tate Galley, Martin Parr Foundation and MEP in Paris. Healy was the recipient of the 2020 Bainbridge Studio Prize and a finalist for The Signature Art Prize in 2021. She is currently studying for a Doctorate in Fine Art from The University of East London where she also lectures in Contextual Studies on the BA Photography course. www.pippahealy.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In the seventh episode of this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the personal project including when to stop, expectation, collaboration, rejection and how and when to receive feedback.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Mentioned in this episode:
Greg Miller @gregmillerfoto
B.A. Van Sise @b.a.vansise
Book: Invited to Life
Marcia Bricker Halperin: @Marciabrickerphoto
Book: Kibbitz & Nosh
Lisette Model: www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/lisette-model?all/all/all/all/0
© Grant Scott 2023
The audio recordings collected within this archive are curated by Dr.Grant Scott and were originally broadcast as part of his podcast series A Photographic Life. In the podcast Scott asks photographers to answer a simple question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ in less than five minutes. The process of broadcasting the answers to this question continues but as the podcast developed it was clear to Scott that an invaluable archive was evolving.
The intention of this archive is to act as an information and inspiration resource, providing insight into a multitude of different photographic practices and to foster understanding of photographic intention, impetus and outcome. In addition to the contributions from photographers answering the question set by Scott this archive contains informal conversations with photographers and those engaged with photography that deal with issues of photographic practice that face the medium and its practitioners in the 21st Century.
You can access the archive here: https://photographyoralhistories.co.uk
You can listen to the A Photographic Life podcast at www.unitednationsofphotography.com and all podcast platforms including Spotify, iTunes and Google podcasts.
In episode 260 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on digital art, the AI debate and reasons why student degree shows exist.
Plus this week, photographer John Haynes 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?’
John Haynes started taking photographs in 1963 after seeing Cartier-Bresson’s book The Europeans. After working for two years with The Sunday Times, he decided to specialise in theatre photography. He was the in-house photographer for The Royal Court Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, and Michael Codron Ltd, from 1970-1994 , and between 1970 and 2006 photographed over 200 productions for The National Theatre. His most well-known images taken during his time were of the playwright Samuel Beckett. In 1986 Thames & Hudson published a book of Haynes theatre photography, called Taking the Stage: Twenty-One Years of the London Theatre, which was accompanied by an exhibition of his work at the National Theatre which later moved to the Colnaghi Gallery in New York, and then to The Moscow Arts Theatre. In 2003 Cambridge University Press published Haynes next book, Images of Beckett, with text by Samuel Beckett’s biographer James Knowlson. https://johnhaynesphotography.net
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Forgive me in advance for staying this but it seems to be necessary before I continue. Three words have as much implied meaning to photography and photographers than ‘The Decisive Moment’ attributed to three other words Henri Cartier Bresson. We all hear it regularly used, often lazily, occasionally fervently but in my opinion incorrectly. The common understanding of those there words is “capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.” Street photography and street photographers appear to placed great store by Bresson’s three words.
Cartier-Bresson’s1952 book that began this misunderstanding, was in French titled Images à la Sauvette or in direct translation ‘Images on the Run’. It’s title when directly translated is I think informative. He did use the term ‘decisive moment’ in his writing, with specific meaning, but the term was then appropriated as the title of the book in the English translation and the myth was established that has led to generations of photographers adopting the phrase that I believe misses the point entirely.
Bresson said this, “If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of form must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality… In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it. But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.”
It maybe my lack of understanding as I am not a Bresson scholar but I cannot see any mention of street photography or rules aligned only to making photographs in urban environments or outside or non-commissioned or not in a studio in these words. What I do see are some sensible guidelines that outline the importance of composition to photography.
He does comment on his own photographic practice making images on the street, “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to “trap” life — to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize, in the confines of one single photograph, the whole essence of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.” But are we to believe that his sense of importance in a photograph was then dismissed when he created a portrait, or an image of a celebrity or someone of note? Something he did often. I think not.
Bresson’s guidelines or thought process can be aligned with any and all aspects of photographic practice. They are not owned by street photography and they do not only relate to that area’s understanding of what is and what is not acceptable to those engaged with it. I have worked with still-life, fashion, portrait and interiors photographers all of whom are on the run within a space looking for the composition that works for them, searching to bring order to chaos. Their decisive moment is defined by when they press the shutter just as any street photographer’s is.
This may be described as photographic blasphemy by some, I may be decried as being ignorant by others, it has happened before and I am sure that it will happen again when I choose to question photographic holy relics. But to those people I put another question. Why do you feel that it is so important to build fences based on labels to describe work? Are you suggesting that there is an order of importance or relevance to different areas of photographic practice?
If that is the case then I suggest that you reconsider your approach to photography and your fellow photographers. Open your mind as well as your eyes and embrace all forms of the medium as being convergent with each other. As Bresson said, “In whatever picture-story we try to do, we are bound to arrive as intruders. It is essential, therefore, to approach the subject on tiptoe — even if the subject is still-life. A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye — these we should all have.”
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In this special episode the first of an irregular series of talks with non-photographers involved with photography, Grant Scott speaks with founder/curator/artist/publisher Craig Atkinson about his publishing project Cafe Royal Books. They discuss the pressures of the long form project, publishing decisions, marketing and the impact Cafe Royal Books has had on British documentary photography.
Craig Atkinson/Cafe Royal Books
Based in Southport, England, Craig Atkinson is a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Central Lancashire. He founded Café Royal Books in 2005 and new booklets are published frequently, typically one per week and in short runs of 250 copies which are sold both directly and through bookshops in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia, Japan, Canada and Switzerland. The booklets have a consistent print quality, paper and layout, laid out to a grid system, of usually 36 pages in length, slightly under A5 size and predominantly black & white and affordable. The booklets predominantly document social, historical and cultural change, including themes of youth, leisure, music, protest, race, religion, industry, identity, architecture and fashion, using both previously unpublished work and photographs from archives. It has published work by over 100 photographers, including John Benton-Harris, John Bulmer, John Claridge, John Deakin, Ken Grant, David Hurn, Chris Killip, Daniel Meadows, Tish Murtha, Jim Mortram, Martin Parr, Simon Roberts, Homer Sykes, Ed Templeton, Arthur Tress Janine Wiedel and Grant. In 2022 Café Royal Books held a retrospective exhibition titled Café Royal Books, Documentary, Zines and Subversion of 500 publications and 127 prints of work from those books at the Martin Parr Foundation. www.caferoyalbooks.com
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I get a lot of people contacting me to offer their services as teachers on the undergraduate and postgraduate courses I lead. Some are experienced hands as professional photographers, others have little experience and are completing BAs, MFAs and MAs. Both make the same mistakes and therefore I thought it would be useful to identify those mistakes here to aid those approaching academic institutions in the future.
Interestingly the first mistake is the same mistake many students make when applying to study on any course in higher education. That is a failure to research the course and those teaching on the course before making contact. Not the university but the course.
Every photography course is different, even if its name is generic. It’s ways of teaching and what it teaches is based on who wrote the course and who leads and teaches the modules that form the course. There is no national curriculum within higher education, therefore to assume that your experience and practice will suit any course is naïve. An example of this is that I regularly receive emails from photographers identifying their analogue practice as a positive to me despite the fact that it is something we do not teach on the courses I lead. I instantly know that the correspondent has undertaken no research and that is foolish and disrespectful.
So, research the course and staff. This is easy to do as every university has a website with a full course structure including all of the module names and details of staff experience, research and interests. This should be your first step, if you don’t fit the course you shouldn’t contact that course, instead you need to find one you do connect with.
This leads me to the second most common mistake. Courses are constructed of set complimentary modules and those who lead courses look for people to teach those modules to meet the learning outcomes that have been agreed at university levels of expectation. Listing your interests and skills with no understanding of this does not make you relevant to the course but it does show once again a lack of research and understanding of teaching at this level.
So, look at your experience and see if it relates to the modules on the course. If it does reference this in your email but before you do look at the experience of others on the staff and see if the course already has that area covered. If it does see what else you could bring to the teaching team.
The third most common mistake is stating that you live nearby and giving this as a reason as to why you are getting in touch. This connects to the previous two errors of judgement in that it shows a lack of ambition and care in making a choice as to who to contact. Many academics travel an hour or more to get to work using buses, trains, coaches and by car. I myself have a ninety minute commute at best and leave home at 5.30am to miss traffic and to claim the rarest of items, an on campus parking space. Living nearby may be useful for you but it means little if anything to the course leader.
You also need to consider the difference between being a visiting speaker and a module lecturer. The former suits many photographers looking to talk about their work on a one-off basis but the latter requires a weekly time commitment. Modules will last a minimum of eleven weeks and will take place on the same day for the same period of time every week. These teaching sessions will be built into the students schedules to fit in with other modules and their independent learning alongside their life commitments. They are not scheduled to fit in with lecturer availability on a weekly basis. They are scheduled for an entire academic year and you will have to fit in with that schedule. Teaching will have to come first even if an amazing high-paid advertising commission comes in. So, before contacting any course leader make sure you really want to teach and make this commitment.
The idea of the academic year also raises another point to consider. It starts in September/October and finishes in May/June. Therefore, a course leader will need to make decisions as to who is teaching which modules in late Spring for the coming year before they try to get a Summer holiday. The decisions made then will be for the whole following year and unless something goes wrong during the academic year they will stick with those decisions until the following Spring. There is therefore a very small window of opportunity to contact those making those decisions. The same window also tends to be the busiest period of job changing, retiring and for those leaving teaching. This is when the majority of paid positions are advertised and interviews take place. Positions do become available during the academic year but management are far more likely to try and get through those periods with existing staff and wait until the end of the academic year to employ new staff when budgets are set and student numbers for the coming year are confirmed.
I have written previously about the requirements of entering education as a teacher and I have put links to those articles below*, they may answer questions you may have that I have not covered here. Teaching of any kind is demanding, it will stretch the patience of the most patient, the creativity of the most creative and the empathy of the most empathetic but it can be incredibly rewarding for both student and teacher. It is not something to take lightly or to consider as an easy step to take even from the most successful professional practice or those with the most intellectually rewarding education. The journey into teaching is one that many photographers consider but when making that journey it is essential to begin at the right departure point.
*Further reading:
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2016/04/20/im-a-photographer-let-me-in-opening-the-door-to-photo-education/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2023/02/02/what-is-the-future-for-photographic-education/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/06/04/you-are-a-photographer-not-a-teacher-yet/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/06/09/should-photography-only-be-taught-by-photographers/
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 258 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on post-photography photography and how fakery has nothing to do with documentation of reality.
Plus this week, photographer Paul Hansen 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?’
Paul Hansen is a photojournalist based in Stockholm, Sweden. As a staff photographer for the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter his assignments and self-initiated projects, take him all over the world covering events in Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan as well as in Sweden. There is always one common denominator that links his work together and that is empathy. His visual storytelling has been awarded many domestic and international prizes and honours, including Picture of the Year two times and Photographer of the Year in Sweden nine times. He was also awarded Photographer of the Year Newspaper in POYi 2010 and 2013, World Press Photo, 2012, a second place in Photographer of the Year in POYi 2015 and a second place in General News by World Press Photo 2016. In 2017 and 2018 he had two major exhibitions at the Fotografiska museum in Stockholm. In June 2019 he exhibited his photographs at the Sundsvalls museum in Sweden. www.paulhansenphotojournalism.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I recently visited an exhibition of non-camera based colour photography with my wife, father and youngest daughter. For those not engaged with contemporary art practice it could be seen as a challenging experience. The gallery space was similar to any other. High ceilings, white walls, large spaces, well framed and presented work. The kind of exhibition any photographer would aspire towards.
The work was presented as projects under an umbrella title that gave a containing theme to the images created over many years.
The first floor confounded the family. They didn’t understand what they were looking at, why it was being lauded and why it was being described as photography. I could see images that I found interesting but I too was confused by the juxtaposition of images that confronted me. However, the exhibition continued on the next floor so we traipsed up the staircase to see how the theme developed.
The next floor was filled with large colour prints similar to those on the ground floor but focused on different colour relationships. A comment was made that the colors worked better on the ground floor and then my father questioned “What are they for? I didn’t know what to say or how to respond. I instantly thought of explaining the purpose of art but just as quickly realized that this would be both condescending and impossible. Before I had a chance to say anything he said “I could see them in an office to help relax people.” Again I was thrown. I asked whether he thought they were relaxing and he replied “Yes!”
I suggested that maybe this is what the photography we were looking at was for. I was met with a shrug.
I am sharing this experience with you because I am always more interested in the reaction of people with no formal engagement with photography seeing work in exhibition spaces than those who are more experienced or formally informed. Such responses are pure, unadulterated by prior reading, dogma or theory and as such have a directness and honesty that can challenge understanding without an agenda. The comments my father made forced me to think about the images I was looking at in a way that little of the writing on photography I have read has done. I like to be challenged but I don’t want to be preached to and that sense of preaching is often present in photographic writing in my experience.
I am still thinking about my father’s question, I think it’s a good one. It will stay with me as an ‘ear worm’ tickling my conscience whenever I look at work. Maybe it will for you also. If that’s the case then let me know. However, if his question doesn’t resonate with you that’s fine. You may already have your own answer that you are happy with. If this is the case I suggest that you do what I did and take a family member not interested in photography to an exhibition and listen to their reaction, you may just find your own new question to answer. One that you have not considered before.
The exhibition referred to in this article is Garry Fabian Miller:Adore at the Arnolfini, Bristol https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/garryfabianmilleradore
Image: The Colour Fields, Golden Yellow Encloses the Softest Pink, 2021 Garry Fabian Miller light, water, lambda c-type print Courtesy the Artist and Ingleby Gallery ©️Garry Fabian Miller
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
My mother has advanced dementia and my father and I are looking to move her into a new care home, as the one she has been in is no longer up to the job of providing her with the support she needs. Whilst in conversation at one of the prospective homes a care home manager asked us if we had a photograph of my mother that they could put in her room to aid her memory. My father and I laughed and looked at each other with a knowing look. Do we have a photograph?
My father has albums after albums, boxes upon boxes of primarily colour prints documenting our family over the past six decades. “Photographs are what we do!” He said.
He was not talking about my job but his passion. Not for photography, he knows of no photographers, cameras or photographic history but for recording memories. After we left the meeting he began in the car to talk about ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as a form of memory collection and Italian frescoes. How he saw these were connected to photography and the photographs he had made over the years of my mother. I should say at this point that my father was bought up in a Catholic orphanage, received little if any formal education and left school aged fourteen. He has been a bricklayer all of his life and is not a traditional academic although you could describe him as an academic of life.
He has also never read any of my books or articles where I have discussed exactly what he was proposing. His understanding of photography is informed but untutored.
I was taken aback by his response and the question the care home manager asked. I assumed that most if not all people had a collection of photographs of their parents, but of course this is a naive assumption. We have few photographs of my father because he was always behind the camera. We have many photographs of my mother because we had a photographer in the family, someone who would never describe themselves as such.
I am in a similar position. I have many images of my wife and daughter but few of me. Those I do have are taken by others usually for work related reasons.
If the time were to come that I need the support of a care home in the future and my wife was asked if she had a photograph of me she would have few to choose from and certainly none printed and ready to frame. The photographer is rarely photographed and this photographer remains in the shadows.
When asked what photography means to me, the question I regularly ask of others, I answer history, personal and universal. History is memory and dementia strips us of both to the outside world. Despite this it is the photograph that remains. I think I will agree to be photographed more often, it may be useful in the future for others and for me.
Main image: Grant Scott by David Eustace
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In the seventh episode of this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the personal project.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Mentioned in this episode:
Richard Sharum: @Richard_sharum
Dr. Greg Gulbransen: @gulphoto
Gulnara Samoilova: @gulnara.samoilova & @womenstreetphotographers
Mary Ellen Mark: www.maryellenmark.com
Mark Steinmetz: www.marksteinmetz.net
Matt Black: www.mattblack.com
Dorethea Lange: www.moma.org/artists/3373
Ralph Gibson: www.ralphgibson.com
© Grant Scott 2023
You may already be bored of hearing these letters, hearing that they are the future or the end for the photographic medium. There is much hand wringing and doom mongering amongst those prophersizing the end times, just as there appears to be a new church of blind evangelism praising a new world of digital manipulation. The fact that I have included NFTs in the title of this article points to this sense of popular extremism.
There was a time when NFTs were the devil and the Messiah, now they are rarely discussed, hit by crypto currency crashes and fears. I know that many still believe in them but the panic seems to be over. The discussion has moved on to AI. Where once my social media feeds were full of chimps and bad digital art now it is full of smooth skin recreations of documentary images by Bruce Davidson, the Pope as a white coated rapper and soft-focus portraits harking back to the 1930s.
Are these the end of photography? I don’t think so. I am sure that they will be used as controlled fixes by some brands to sell products, just as Levi’s have already announced, but that is not the end of the medium. It is an evolution of how digital imagery is created and used.
In a sense the current use of AI is ‘Photoshop Plus’, post-production on steroids. Just as photo competitions once had to set new rules concerning image manipulation, today they are being forced to address image creation. New rules will have to be set and no doubt new categories will be created just as they were for the moving image and ‘post-truth’ image.
Commissioners will have to decide if they want an image that is an idealised version of what exists or a more realistic representation of that object, place or person. It would be naive to think that they will always choose the first of these two options. This may mean less work for some photographers but it doesn’t signal the end of photography.
It is a similar case with CHAT GPT the written word AI option that is sweeping through education establishments causing much consternation amongst educators and short-term joy amongst students. I also know of marketing professionals and ‘journalists’ also using the platform to write generic text, quickly and easily to meet the undemanding needs of clients.
I have heard artists and academics discuss how excited they are about the possibilities it offers to be creative and include its possibilities into their practice. That’s fine but none of that points to the death of creative writing. The truth is that teachers will change the nature of essay questions to outwit the CHAT GP product. Software packages will appear to identify its use just as they did to find online plagiarism. Times will change and times will change in response to that change. This is nothing new.
The difference today is the speed of change and the challenge that presents to respond without panicking. This requires a sense of inquisitive investigation but not a requirement for immediate adoption. I am not a ‘tech geek’ or an early adopter I have been around too long and seen too many false new dawns to jump on every passing bandwagon. However, I am a keen observer and questioner of change, hence this article. I never believed in NFTs but I looked into them, I joined some forums and left before my mind turned to jelly. I have looked at Midjourney whilst it was still free, I attempted to make an image but was not impressed. I have asked CHATGPT to write an essay which was adequate but nothing more than that.
I am not dismissive of new technologies but I also think before I jump. I am not prone to making rash judgements or getting too anxious about what might or might not be. I have no idea of what the future holds for visual communication but I am not fearful. These new technologies will impact upon photographic practice but I do not believe that they will replace it. Some photographers will embrace new ways of working, others will not. That’s okay, but photography will survive, of that I am sure.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I recently suggested on Twitter that studio photography was just photography in a room and that street photography was just photography outside. Inevitably this caused some responses from people needing to attack me for speaking what I hope we can agree is just common sense. Common sense that is if you are not deep down in the trenches of street photography.
Perhaps the strangest, most aggressive and most revealing response I received came from someone who felt the need to question my ability to teach photography if I did not understand that photography outside was all about Cartier Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment’ and that studio photography was all about control. Such black and white narrow focused comments reveal more about the commentators than the comment they are commenting on. Another commented that “those that can do and others who can’t teach” obviously seeing me as a teacher and not a photographer of over twenty years who has had books published of his work and an extensive client list. Someone else said that this is a “bad take” another said that my comment was “obvious nonsense.”
It’s strange to me that such dogmatic positions are held when the case can be so clearly argued and questioned.
Of course decisive moments occur in a room or a confined space, whatever you call that space. Every space can be a studio, it doesn’t need to have artificial light, an infinity cove or in fact anything to do with photography in it to be the location for a photograph. Street photography by its very description occurs outside. End of my argument.
And yet pre-conceived understandings of both seem to inform and dictate the sensitivity of some.
Another photographer also responded, but politely, asking me what his images made in galleries should be called. I jokingly suggested ‘Room Photography’ but in reality I see no reason for the word ‘Room.’ It’s photography, nothing more and nothing less, with no need for a label in my opinion.
This comment also raised the issue of what is a gallery? Just like a studio it can be any space you want it to be. Hang some work in a space and it becomes a gallery, but that’s not just my thinking, the dictionary definition of a gallery is “a room or building for the display or sale of works of art.” The definition of a studio is “a room where an artist, photographer, sculptor, etc. works.” Rooms seems to be the constant here.
Maybe, I am not wrong here, misguided or misinformed. Maybe, I am informed enough to teach and work as a photographer. Of course, none of us should ever take comments on Twitter too seriously and taking them personally is not something I have ever done. However, sometimes they can point to a bigger issue. Street photography had its place in the sun a few years ago but it still maintains a strong level of engagement. Why wouldn’t it? It’s accessible to all and requires little investment, other than time and commitment. Yet, for some reason it has also attracted people who seem determined to construct rules as to what street photography is. I don’t mean discussion concerning the issues surrounding post-production but issues concerning the where, the why and the how.
Street photography takes place outside. My street is different from your street. There is no ‘one’ street. It should be able to exist anywhere outside from city street to country lane. If that is not the case then call it city photography or better still just call it photography and forget about the label. There is no need to fear the simplicity of language. It is not as if we need a label to explain an image. A caption maybe, a label never.
Photography is observational whether it takes place in the city, the suburbs or the countryside, inside or outside. The photographer seeks to capture a moment or construct a moment, manipulate a situation or document a situation wherever they are or whatever they see. We are all attempting to work with light to capture an image inside and out. The outside has the sky as a roof, a room has a ceiling, in effect neither are of any relevance.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I was speaking with a photographer the other day who explained to me that her answer to this question was both. Yesterday I spoke with someone who explained how their father connected with the medium based on the later. I know many photographers who would lean towards the former. Others are vociferous in stating that you cannot be a photographer without a heavy dose of the later.
My personal connection has an element of the former but none of the later, however I maybe unusual in this. Such conversations are important in understanding our own beliefs and instigations. I started to think about my connection with photography and settled on the idea of meeting people. That is my connection with the medium. Of course I am interested in the final results, that they have some aesthetic qualities that appeal to me, that they meet some form of primeval urge I may have to express myself creatively. However, this is not my driver within photography.
I do not feel a need to be creative over a need to communicate.
This may seem strange for someone who has studied at art school, teaches photography at university and whom has spent the last forty years working with and as a creative, but my creativity does not exist within a vacuum. It is a means to an end just as photography is the tool, the instrument I use to achieve that end.
The technical is of no interest to me. I have no interest in cameras, in digital trickery, darkroom mastery, lenses, styles or fashions in photography. I have no time for labels, pigeon holes or genres. I do have time for conversation, listening and storytelling. That does not make me a documentary photographer, a social documentary photographer, a portrait photographer or any other description that some may choose to plaster onto my work. I am a photographer, plain and simple.
There is nothing wrong in seeing creativity or process and kit as your drivers, your connectors with the medium. We are all different, and that is how it should be, however that difference is not always appreciated. I am no lesser a photographer than someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of process or a stratospheric creative passion. I have a little of each, just enough to enable me to do what I want to do. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less but I am good with that. I am not in a competition and neither should you be.
A leaning too far in each direction can create a creative imbalance that results in dull, repetitive, generic work or self-indulgent images that fail to connect with any audience other than that of the creator. Balance is always good. Master your tolls but don’t be controlled by them, develop your creativity but do not be consumed by it.
However, you connected with photography I expect that the initial reason has evolved, it may still be there but it will probably have been added to, grown, mutated into a fuller and richer understanding to support you through the trials and tribulations of working as a photographer. If it has not I will suggest that it would, could or should have done.
The two conversations I had recently made me consider the three questions in the title of this article, I hope that what I have written has had a similar affect on you. If not, no problem but think twice before falling into a trap of thinking that different approaches and views concerning the medium should be based on a right or wrong answer. I am not giving answers here, just posing questions.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 256 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on two photographers who have recently passed and the reality of being commissioned by a national publisher.
Plus this week, photographer Dennis Dimick 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?’
Dennis Dimick is an American journalist, photographer, presenter and educator who grew up on a sheep and hay farm in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. He holds degrees in agriculture and agricultural journalism from Oregon State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and served for years as executive environment editor for National Geographic magazine, and was a picture editor for the National Geographic Society for more than 35 years until retiring in December 2015. He now serves in a consulting and reviewing role for the Society’s story-telling grant programme. Dimick is particularly interested in making visual the effects on earth of humanity’s expanding presence in the emerging Anthropocene epoch and has written on these issues, and at National Geographic guided several major magazine projects on this idea. Between 2008-2012 he co-organised the Aspen Environment Forum and presented at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival and in 2015 moderated panels at the World Economic Forum in Dalian, China. Dimick has been a faculty member of the Missouri Photo Workshop for 23 years, and in 2013 received the Sprague Memorial Award from the National Press Photographers Association for outstanding service to photojournalism. His picture and environmental project editing has received many awards from Pictures of the Year International and the Society of Environmental Journalists, where he served on the board from 2016-2019. Dimick has served as a juror for the Heinz Foundation Awards, and the Pare Lorentz Award for the International Documentary Association and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Center of Photography. http://dennis-dimick.squarespace.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In this special extended episode 251 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed speaking with photographer Matt Black. They discuss the tradition of the American road trip, the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone, politics and photography and the ethical responsibility of the visual storyteller amongst many other aspects of the American photographic tradition.
Matt Black lives in California’s Central Valley, a rural, agricultural area in the heart of the state. His work has focused on themes of geography, inequality, and the environment in his native region and in related places. Between 2015 and 2020, he travelled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project and subsequent book American Geography, named as one of TIME Magazine’s top photography books in 2021. He is a member of Magnum and his work has appeared regularly in TIME magazine, The New Yorker, The California Sunday Magazine, and other publications. Back has been honoured three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, including their top honour for journalism, he has received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award for Humanistic Photography and was named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. www.mattblack.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I speak to many young photographers looking to study the photographic medium and without doubt the most common answer when asked why they want to become a photographer is to travel. The desire to explore and expand horizons is strong in many of us in our late teens. I believe it is a desire to be encouraged but you don’t need a camera or a knowledge of photography to travel.
When questioned further it is clear that little thought or consideration has been given to the initial answer. Who will pay for this travel? Where will you go? Why would you go there? What will you photograph and where will those photographs appear? What stories will you tell?
These final questions are the ones a photographer needs to address that the traveller does not need to. Anyone can go travelling but not anyone can be paid to travel or sell the work created on those travels. To do either of these needs an understanding of storytelling.
To understand storytelling you need to read, to listen to narrative in all its forms. To understand how to research and construct a body of work that respects the subject, whilst acting as a bridge between those being documented and those who are viewers. This is not travel!
The desire to travel as a reason for being a photographer also raises additional ethical considerations. Issues relating to the ‘parachute photographer’, the ill-informed outsider ignoring the foundation of a story in favour of ‘powerful’ images created to please a client or competition jury. The role of the photographer has long been one of the observer and documenter, but times have changed. We cannot look back at the past for ethical arguments on how to act based on previously accepted practice, although we can look back to identify how to act as a response to mistakes and misapprehensions of the past.
Travel was once the preserve of the wealthy just as photography was easier if funds were not an issue. Today, both have become more affordable, it is easy to make photographs and to jump on a plane, but this does not mean that it is easy to combine the two with meaning and purpose. There is a big difference between holiday snaps and a body of work. There is a big difference between going on holiday and travelling with purpose.
So, my advice to young photographers wanting to travel, is to go! Go travelling, exploring and discovering but do not confuse photography with travelling. They are not the same thing, one can and does exist without the other. However, if you want to bring both together be aware that the story comes before the flight ticket, the map comes before the journey and research comes before a plan.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 254 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the seven ages of the photographer, making a photo book and photography’s relationship with mindfulness.
Plus this week, photographer Juan Fable 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?’
Juan Fabuel studied photography at the University of Valencia, Spain and is currently studying for a PHD at the University of Murcia. His work uses different mediums such as photography, video, ceramics and installation to speak about movement, home and representation instigating dialogues between disciplines such as anthropology, politics, archaeology, physics and neuroscience. He has been exhibited in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, USA, Taipei and across Spain. It is also collected by museums and foundations across Europe. www.juanfabuel.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
We are very sorry to hear of the passing of Mik Critchlow on the afternoon of his 68th birthday. As our mark of respect to Mik and the incredible body of work he has left us with here is the audio contribution he sent us for inclusion in Episode 162 of our A Photographic Life podcast explaining what photography meant to him. Rest in power Mik.
Mik Critchlow was a social documentary photographer based in the North East of England who worked on long term community-based projects for over forty years. The son of a miner, he has worked within the community with a deep-rooted empathy for the townsfolk, and the area he documents. Critchlow left high school in 1970 at the age of 15 years without academic qualifications and went straight into the workplace two days after leaving school, gaining full-time employment as a tailor’s trimmer at a local clothing factory. From there, he went straight into the Merchant Navy as a cabin boy and worked his way through the ranks to become a Steward/Cook, whilst being active within the National Union of Seamen. In 1977, he enrolled on a two-year course at his local College studying Art History and Graphic design as a mature student, it was while at college that he picked up a camera for the first time and immediately fell in love with the medium and process of photography. On seeing an exhibition of paintings by the ‘Pitmen Painters’, he realised the value of art as a social document and in the same year, he began a long-term photography project which documented his home-town of Ashington, Northumberland. In 1979 he received grant funding from Northern Arts (Arts Council of England) to produce documentary photography work in the area. In 1980 he was commissioned by Side Gallery, Newcastle and was introduced to fellow photographers Chris Killip, Graham Smith and Sirkka Liisa Konttinen, who were also producing long term projects on the working class communities of the North East of England. For the past 42 years, Critchlow has photographed the town, people and surrounding areas of Ashington, the town in which he was born, educated and lived. His work is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited widely. A book of his work Coal Town was published in 2019. www.mikcritchlow.com
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 253 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the mistakes made when staging a photography festival, the importance of developing a thick skin as a photographer and honesty in the world of generated photography.
Plus this week, photographer Landry Major 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?’
Landry Major’s childhood summers were spent on a family dairy farm in Nova Scotia. Her ongoing series Keepers of the West takes her back to fields at dawn, and the family-run ranches of the American West. She believes that visions of the American West have long been central to our culture, but the way of life of the cowboy and the family-run ranch is fast disappearing as over half of all family owned ranches in Montana are run by people over 65 and many of their children are not choosing to remain in ranching. The images she creates are made up of the places, people, and creatures that have welcomed her into their world to remind us of the arresting moments of grace and beauty found in a life lived under the wide-open western skies. Major’s work has been widely exhibited including at the Griffin Museum of Photography Winchester and the J. Paul Getty Museum and she has received multiple awards. www.landrymajor.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In the sixth episode of this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the role of the photo mentor, the importance of mentorship, what to expect and how to successfully find the right one.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Mentioned in this episode:
Maggie Steber: Steber is an American documentary photographer whose work has documented a wide range of issues, including the African slave trade, Native American issues in the United States, natural disasters, and science. www.maggiesteber.com
Raghu Rai: Rai is an Indian photographer and photojournalist, who was a protégé of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who appointed Rai, then a young photojournalist, to Magnum Photos in 1977. Rai became a photographer in 1965, and a year later joined the staff of The Statesman, a New Delhi publication. https://raghuraifoundation.org
Alex Harris: Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1949, Harris is an acclaimed photographer, Duke University professor, and Pulitzer Prize finalist for River of Traps. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.
https://alex-harris.com
If you would like to read Bill’s story about and with Raghu Rai and his photographer daughter, you can here: www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a40288478/raghu-rai-avani-rai-photographer/
© Grant Scott 2023
Magazines are in trouble. Circulations are down, advertising revenues are down, paper prices are up, printing costs are up, distribution prices are up and retailers are closing. They are cutting back to avoid closure, not all magazines but many magazines. How do I know? Well, through a combination of personal anecdote and factual evidence.
The personal anecdotes come from friends and family that work in magazines. I also am a photographer who works for magazines. The facts from the magazine publishing audit numbers, the ABCs that indicated actual sales, free magazines given away and year on year sales. You can see these for yourself online. What they show is an obvious decline. Not all magazines submit to the ABCs, it is not compulsory but it is used by advertisers as a trusted source before they invest in advertising with a title. Small independents don’t submit and neither do magazines who want to keep their progress secret.
Magazines have been a source of income for photographers since the latter half of the nineteenth century, photography transformed them and newspapers, the two became intrinsically linked. All forms of photography, travel, documentary, art, news, portraiture and landscape, figurative, modernist, conceptual and realist.
Magazine photography has never been restricted to meeting client needs without creativity as it is often believed and suggested. Photographers have always used the editorial commission to experiment, tell stories, build bodies of work and develop a profile whilst being paid to do so. If you believe that ‘art’ photography is harder, more important or more personal than a magazine commission then think again and consider the photographers who have begun and continued their careers thanks to magazines. Not just photography magazines, they have little if any relevance they don’t pay! I mean magazines covering all subjects from Vogue to Picture Post, from National Geographic to Life, from Interview to The Sunday Times Magazine. You can fill in the blanks.
Without magazine photo commissions photographers lose an important revenue stream, an essential showcase and an opportunity to meet and photograph people and places they would have no access to. However, they are disappearing.
The rise of personal work being created is a result of this. Photographers are taking the initiative and making work from a personal perspective which is to be encouraged. Unfortunately such work is not only self-motivated it is also self funded.
I have been involved with magazines and photography for forty years, I am passionate about both, but despite my optimistic nature I see no future for magazines. At least the printed magazine or the magazine that photographers can look to as an employer. I hear of many that will publish images for no payment and others that even ask photographers that to pay to be published. Neither of these are respectful or sustainable.
I am always writing and speaking about the need for today’s photographer needing to be flexible and light footed in their expectations. Tangential thinking is required to monetize a photographic practice today. However, I think it is rapidly coming to a point at which the magazine commission will no longer be one of the viable options.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
There is a renewed interest today in created photography and the world of spirits, ghosts and the supernatural but physical proof of such entities is rarely evidenced. A fascination with photographing the after-life and manipulated photography can be traced back to the early days of the medium, when Victorian photographers claimed to repeatedly capture proof that those that had passed remained among us. In this special episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott uses research first completed by Bill Jay to explore the world of those photographers who claimed to photograph those that we cannot see.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
All music written and performed by Professor Laura Ritchie © Laura Ritchie 2018
Image:“The Haunted Lane,” a stereograph showing a ghost frightening a boy and a man. Created in 1889 by Melander and Bro.
© Grant Scott 2023
The majority of photographers are on the outside, so are writers, artists and journalists. Outside the comfort zone of a secure company position. The freelancer has no choice but to try and connect with those within who hold the power to commission, support and encourage, but no matter how often you knock many choose to not be at home.
This is of course a metaphor. They are at home, but not to you. Not to your emails or polite requests to engage in some form of conversation. It is hard to ignore a telephone call and so telephone numbers are made hard to find. Emails are easy to ignore, but direct email information is also difficult to secure. When found emails sent are too often ignored.
This is a reality that many of you already know, it happens to me and I know that it happens to you. I am writing this so that you don’t take being ignored personally. It is not about you, it is about them.
Why it happens I don’t know. I hear that people are too busy, but that’s not true, no one is too busy to acknowledge an email. No one is too busy to pick up a phone in the creative industries. Maybe it’s just bad manners but can so many people be so badly mannered? I don’t think so. Is it that COVID has left people with a fear of social interaction? Maybe, I have seen this, but how can this continue in an industry based on communication?
I don’t have any answers. However, what I do know is that we should do to others as we wish unto ourselves. If we don’t like being ignored we shouldn’t ignore others, if we are struggling we should support others who are struggling and if we keep finding a closed door in front of us we should speak up and ask for it to be opened.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 251 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of magazine photography, finding subject matter, respecting popular culture and possibly the first ever touring exhibition of contemporary photography in the UK.
Plus this week, photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn 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?’
Carolyn Mendelsohn originally trained as an actor and director, before moving into filmmaking, and then photography. Her practice is rooted in telling stories and amplifying the voices of those who are not always heard. Mendelsohn is recognised for her portraits, including her portrait series and 2020 book, Being Inbetween, and is the founder of Through Our Lens, a workshop and mentoring programme that enables people to tell their stories through the medium of photography. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo and group exhibitions in national galleries across the UK and Europe, and has been published by the BBC, in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, La Monde and the British Journal of Photography amongst many others. Mendelsohn’s awards include BJP Portrait of Britain 2017, 2019 and 2021, and she was the winner of the Single Image Award for Open Wall Arles. She was the Finalist in the The Kuala Lumpa International Portrait Awards 2021, The Royal Photographic Society International Photography exhibitions RPS IPE 159 gold and finalist for RPS IPE 160. In 2020, Carolyn was named winner of the Portrait Series category for the 15th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. She is the Artist in Residence for Born In Bradford and a Nikon Europe Ambassador and an Ambassador for the Royal Photographic Society. www.carolynmendelsohn.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 250 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on making photography accessible, buying cheap cameras, encouraging the photographers of tomorrow and entering AI images to photo competitions.
Plus this week, photographer Luke Stephenson 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?’
Luke Stephenson was born on New Year’s day, 1983 in Darlington, North-East England. Life in Britain and the British psyche are at the core of Stephenson’s work, which ranges from prize budgerigars to the World Beard and Moustache Championships. He graduated in 2005 the same year he was awarded the Jerwood Photography Prize and in 2006 he was selected as one of ten photographers to showcase their work at the International Festival of Fashion and Photography at Hyeres, France. His work has been published in a variety of publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Foam, Art Review and Wallpaper. Stephenson has published four photo books to date; his first Show Birds published in 2012 and the second published in 2014 a series exploring the wonderful world of the ’99-ice-cream’. In 2019 he published a book looking at the English Rose from the esteemed grower David Austin and his most recent book British Record Fish* was published in 2021. www.lukestephenson.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
There used to be a plan, a template, a blueprint that could be used, that could be followed, that led to a career in photography. Study, assist, go solo, build a client base, make money and keep going for as long as you can. A simple series of steps that were hard, but achievable. However, that plan started to creak with the arrival of digital capture and the subsequent drop in commissioning budgets, but the basics stayed true. Now I hear from many photographers that the plan doesn’t work.
The majority of photographers work on a freelance basis, a form of employment that breeds insecurity. Every photographer know this, but it doesn’t make the reality any easier. A sense of order can help with the feelings of anxiety that insecurity encourages, however when that order breaks down there is little left to support the independent worker financially or spiritually.
The photography industry has been in a state of flux for nearly two decades now and that is a long time. Such flux is demanding and tiring, it drains even the stiffest resolve. It has disrupted the plan, breaking it forever. Such disruption is seen as exciting for some keen to write and speak about the creative opportunities amongst chaos, but the majority of photographers see no positivity in the disappearance of a clear plan to follow.
The issue today is that without a plan, misinformation becomes the common currency. Some remain hopeful that the old plan will reappear, others believe that it is still in place, others promote and believe in new yet untested plans. Such photographic ‘Chinese Whispers’ can lead to further anxiety.
I believe the truth is that there will be no new plan and that the old plan will not return. The photographic marketplace is now saturated with photographers wanting to be seen, heard, published and paid. The old plan worked when it was less competitive and when photography was less accessible but today any plan would need to take into account the proliferation of photographers alongside the ease of image sharing in the 21st Century.
So what is the answer? I think it is to be light footed to be willing and able to evolve, but on your own terms.
To be aware of what is happening, but not to feel pressured to engage in everything you see, hear or are told. To create a practice that is true to you but that also meets your expectations, whilst ensuring that those expectations are realistic and well researched. This does not only mean making photographs. The new potential for the role of the photographer is a more multi-faceted one, than it was in the past. If you are in the game to only make photographs you may find this suggestion sacrilegious. I get that, however, I can only reflect what I see.
As a photographer you may not want to hear that writing, speaking, moving image, digital manipulation, publishing, computational photography, research and digital art maybe part of your future alongside a multitude of transferable and soft skills that photographers did not have to previously contemplate, but that is a reality. I cannot count the amount of times I have heard that photographers make photographs and that is where it begins and ends. If you believe this then that’s fine, I don’t! So, we may have to agree to disagree.
I am by nature an optimistic realist. My glass is always at least half full, but I don’t expect it to refill itself. I am not an unrealistic optimist. Therefore, I remain positive about the future of photography, if photographers take responsibility for creating their own structures for their own futures. In a sense this means making your own plan that works for you, a personal plan, not a universal plan, just expect it to require you to do more than just make photographs.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 249 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the self-taught photographer, announcing a new Photographers Archive, and talking about the ‘Photo Book Vandal’.
Plus this week, photographer Greg Hunt 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?’
Jonathan Richmond and The Modern Lovers as mentioned by Grant in this episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNXWp4hfhI
Greg Hunt is an American filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist based in Los Angeles who began making photographs in the mid-1990’s as a professional skateboarder when he was given given a Minolta X-700 and two lenses, a 50mm 1.4 and a fisheye. Shortly after he began making stills he began experimenting with motion picture film, eventually transitioning to work behind the lens full-time. Greg has since created some of skateboarding’s most seminal films, along with a multitude of documentaries, commercials, and music videos. Two books of his stills have been published Ninety-Six Dreams, Two Thousand Memories in2018 and 20th Century Summer in 2021. The Ninety-Six Dreams, Two Thousand Memories and his Between the Lines bodies of work were exhibited in Tokyo in 2020. www.huntfilmwork.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Big question, big subject. I’m not the first to ask it and I won’t be the last, but neither of these realities are going to stop me asking.
In a 1973 issue of the British Journal of Photography eight pages were dedicated to answering this very question. I know because I have read them. Experts from different areas of photographic education put forward their perspectives eager to not offend but keen to have their beliefs clearly understood. What were those beliefs? Well, there were two clear themes, two standpoints and they were the same as they seem to be today despite the passing of nearly fifty years. That teaching photography can only fall into two categories, ‘professional’ or ‘liberal’.
I started teaching ten years ago and came from the ‘professional’ camp. I’d spent thirty five years working with professional photography as an art director and photographer. I had not studied photography, I had learnt on the job and by looking at books. Not ‘how to’ books, or manuals, but books of photographs.
Today I have a PHD, a teaching qualification and I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Senior Lecturer and leader of an undergraduate degree in photography at Oxford Brookes University. I’ve also written a Masters in photography that will launch in 2024. Despite this I remain a working commissioned photographer. But, this article is not about me, I just want you to know where I am coming from here.
In my eyes there is as big an issue with photographic education as there is with the photographic industry in 2023. The role and understanding of a photographer within the creative industries is not what it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Anyone engaged with professional photography today knows that. If you are not then you may be ignorant to this change safe in your belief that how it was is how it is. This is a problem if you are in a position to teach and prepare young photographers for today’s creative environment.
Being involved in photographic education I am aware of how it is sold to students and the main sales pitch is ’employability’. Study with us and you will be employed when you leave. This is understandable when an institution is attempting to get someone to hand over thousands of pounds, from people who expect a return on their investment. However, it can also appear deceitful to many photographers struggling to find work and sustain a financially viable photographic practice.
Why study photography? To be a photographer? Yes and no! In my opinion the idea that the studying of photography is the process of creating a photographer is both outdated and unrealistic. Yet, it is not perhaps surprising that this remains a dominant belief amongst many teaching today and applying to study the medium.
The opinions voiced in the 1973 issue of the BJP were informed by the teaching of photography in the 1960s and 70s. Those opinions remained entrenched through the 1980s and continued into the 90s. Those who were taught either the ‘professional’ or ‘liberal’ approaches continued to become teachers who taught what they were taught and believed. Those that went on to work as commissioned photographers rarely taught, until perhaps they gave up on being commissioned. The ‘professional’ approach remained process focused and in line with the Higher National Diploma requirements of the time, whilst the ‘liberal’ belief remained theory based, an approach more appropriate to some peoples thinking when studying for a Degree, MA or MFA at university.
Those that studied in the 80s, 90s and 00’s are the teachers of today.
With the increase of opportunities to study photography at degree level, the courses have had to give students a reason to study the medium. Initially this was not a problem with analogue photography requiring a high level of expertise in the darkroom, technical mastery of the camera and understanding of film. Combine this with study of the history of photography and you have a solid and rigorous set of reasons to spend three years dedicated to learning what it takes to become a photographer. It has never been easy to earn a living as a photographer, but the dedication that was required to master at least the basics saw the pool of students willing to make this commitment dwindle as the began to enter the work environment. In short, during the analogue days it was far less competitive a marketplace.
The rise of digital photography and the subsequent ease in making pictures saw the basics of photographic learning change. However, many courses remain true to what they have taught for the past two decades at least. A collection of varied skills and approaches to ensure that the student leaves them with a general base of skills to be a photographer, including darkroom practice. An argument is made for this, I have heard it many times but let me just give you an insight into why I believe this is no longer relevant or appropriate.
In the past a student could fine employment as an assistant and spend a few years learning their craft, finding their feet and identifying an area of specialisation. They would be paid whilst doing this and that would help them build a portfolio with which to seek commissions. After a few years they would strike out on their own. Very few photographers ever went straight into paid photographic work straight from education.
The reduction of budgets has meant that it is now less likely that clients will pay for assistants and the ease of working digitally has meant that photographers no longer see an assistant or two as a necessary requirement. The opportunity to assist is no longer available to most of the students leaving university today.
For years as an art director students would come and see me with their portfolios looking to get commissioned. They would have a selection of work with no set idea of an area of specialism within an area of practice. The images would be evidence of technical competency. They would say that their teachers liked the work they were presenting and that they had received good grades. That may have been true, but the problem is that they were non commissionable as photographers. As a client I needed to see their area of specialisation, to see what they were interested in, how they would represent the brand and their understanding of the commissioners requirements. I needed to see a specialist whose work demonstrated what I would get back if I risked making a financial decision of giving them a commission.
It is not good enough today to leave photographic education as a generalist, you need to be a specialist. To be really good at one thing, and so good at that thing that someone will pay you to do it. Your work can evolve over time, and you have the rest of your life for that to happen, but it is unrealistic to think that a portfolio on having education will evidence you being good at everything.
I see a lot of student work, and I speak to a lot of people commissioning photography today and their feedback on what they see aligns with mine. That too much of the work coming out of universities is self-regarding, insular and non-commissionable. That subject matter, approaches, influences and presentation of work has become generic. That the work has been created by the student with no understanding of how it sits with the world outside of academia and gaining grades. This could be described using the same parlance of 1973 as being ‘liberal’. However, it achieves the same outcome but from a different place to the ‘generalist’professional’ approach. Work that could be seen as art practice but which struggles to ever be accepted by an art market desperate for the new, challenging and saleable.
This exploration of photography and the self is not something that I am rejecting or deriding. Great work has been produced from this perspective. However, it does concern me that so much of the work that I see conforms to such limited interpretation of the exploration. It is also an issue if the students making the work are not made aware of the lack of commercial potential the work may have. This is a particular issue when students are leaving education with debts of £30,000 upwards.
Whenever I speak with students beginning a photographic education I always ask them if they intend to earn a living from the medium, in ten years, I have never had someone say that they do not want or need to earn money from their photography. I believe that it is therefore a morale requirement to be honest with the students about the work they are making and where that work will lead them both creatively and financially.
So, where does that lead us? Well, from my perspective the future of teaching photography is clear. Firstly, it should not be divided into warring factions. It is not ‘professional’ or ‘liberal’, ‘practice’ or ‘theory’, ‘commercial’ or ‘art’. It can be all of these things, without labels attached. A balance needs to be met where both sides respect the importance of all aspects of learning, the practical and the theoretical. Photographic education should not be about creating photographers, but people who can interact and work with photography across the creative industries. It should not produce generalists, but specialists and that specialism should be based on the passions and interests of the students outside of photography. Students should be given freedom to explore those passions and interests with their camera from the first moment they begin their journey with the medium, not forced to explore areas they have no interest in because that is how it has been done in the past.
Rather than spending time in the darkroom they should be in the lightroom (not the Adobe version) learning transferable and soft skills that will be useful to them as human beings, as creative members of society. The ability to talk, present and write, to engage, listen and instigate. To collaborate and lead. Empathy and inclusivity. Skills that lead to employability.
What is the future for photographic education? I believe that photographic education needs to respond to where photography is today not where it once was, it needs to teach photography as a visual language that has global reach and recognise its place within all forms of visual communication and that includes moving image and computational photography. It needs to redefine itself as being broader and more democratic in its intentions, to not only make photographers but also visual communicators and readers. The future for photographic education could and should be bright, but only if it has the confidence and ambition to embrace tomorrow rather than cling on to yesterday or 1973.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In the fifth episode of this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. In this episode they reflect on what makes a successful website for a photographer and a client.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Mentioned in this episode:
Saul Leiter: was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognised as the New York school of photography. www.saulleiterfoundation.org
Art Streiter: Art Streiber is an American photographer known in particular for his portraits of entertainment and sports personalities. www.artstreiber.com. You can listen to Art’s contribution to the A Photographic Life podcast here https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/01/05/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-191-plus-photographer-art-streiber/
Amy Lombard: Her bold and colorful work has landed her editorial clients from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post to companies like Puma, Google, HBO and more. www.amylombard.com
Jesse Adler http://jessieadler.squarespace.com
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 247 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed picking up some odds and ends concerning social media, engagement, truth versus fiction and hanging photographs.
Plus this week, photographer Deborah Parkin 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?’
Deborah Parkin lives with her family and animals in the wild North Pennines, Northumberand. Her work is rooted in family life and her environment utilising a variety of mediums, from large format to digital and traditional alternative processes such as Wet Plate Collodion, Bromoil, Albumen, Cyantotype and Silver Gelatin. Before becoming a photographer and mother Parkin spent many years in academia researching for a Ph.d in Women’s War Writing and teaching as well as gaining an MA in Holocaust Studies. Her passion for photography started in earnest with the birth of her son as his arrival prompted a need to record the life of her new family. Parkin’s photographic work has been exhibited and published worldwide including Japan, U.S. U.K, Bulgaria, Iran and China. It is also held in private collections, museums and galleries including the Fox Talbot Museum (UK), the Centre for Fine Art Photography (U.S) and the Charlet Gallery (Paris). www.deborahparkin.co.uk
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 246 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the issues facing photographers in 2023, the fragile nature of social media and the return of classic American documentary photography.
Plus this week, photographer Richard Sharum 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?’
You can find the Bob Dylan videos Grant mentions in this episode via these links:
Not Dark Yet Version 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t2su8xEDEU
Pretty Saro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSdVOEKW5YA&list=RDuSdVOEKW5YA&start_radio=1
Richard Sharum is a documentary and project-centred photographer who grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. Mainly focusing on socio-economic or social justice dilemmas concerning the human condition, his work has been regarded as in-depth, up-close and personal. In 1996 he moved to Dallas where he still lives and started experimenting with photography. In 2005 he enrolled at Northlake College and took one introductory class in black and white film photography, and I was set on being a documentary photojournalist. In 2015 he initiated the Observe Dallas project where he hung eight photographs on five different buildings in downtown Dallas for two months to highlight the lack of public art in one of the biggest cities in America and In 2019 he became an Eddie Adams Alumnus. Sharum’s book Campesino Cuba published in 2021 resulted from a period of four years spent travelling across rural Cuba, exploring the lives of isolated farmers and documenting their relationship with the land. His images have been added to private and public collections across the world, with exhibitions in Kyoto, Japan, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Reggio Emilia, Italy, New York, and Dallasand he has been commissioned by The Meadows Foundation, Centers for Community Cooperation, Harvard Law School, Student Conservation Association and the Children’s Cancer Fund amongst others. His work has been published by The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Huck Magazine, El Pais (Spain), The New York Times Lens Blog, and the International Business Times Weekly. https://richardsharum.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I could just as easily have put David Bowie into the title of this article, or Paul McCartney. I could have included Mick Jagger, or Madonna, icons of the music industry who have had iconic photographs made of them. There are many other iconic musicians, but few have had so many iconic images made of them repeatedly over the years as Bob Dylan. A fact that presents a particular challenge to the next photographer on the taxi rank.
I chose Bob Dylan because of his continually evolving persona and continued sense of mystery, even now aged 81 – Bowie had similar qualities, but is obviously no longer with us – two elements that are both attractive and disconcerting for any portrait photographer. I have always believed that iconic images are most likely a result of creative collaboration between the maker and the sitter and I cannot imagine Dylan doing anything that he didn’t want to do. He is in control of his image and therefore the photographer not only has to respect that intention, but also to work with it. From his early days being photographed by Richard Avedon, W. Eugene Smith, Art Kane, Rowland Scherman, Elliott Landy, Ken Regan, Barry Feinstein, Lisa Law, Daniel Kramer, Don Hunstein and Jerry Schatzberg, amongst many others, Dylan recognised the power of the photographic image. Rarely photographed in the photo studio – the Jerry Schatzberg ones being most notable – the images that were published and widely seen were made on the street, in other peoples houses and whilst sound checking, playing and recording. Dylan as a restless spirit, always on the move setting the photographer the challenge of catching his thin mercury persona.
Through the 1960s and 70s Dylan remained a fleeting figure, his physical appearance and costume changed as his music confounded his fans, but his willingness to avoid the photographic studio remained in place. Although, both Lynn Goldsmith and Annie Leibovitz managed to coax him into the studio during the late 1970s. Coincidence that they were both female photographers?
The ability to spend time hanging out with a musician, making images in a relaxed and informal setting is my idea of the perfect situation to create strong work. Images that provide an insight into the musicians life without artificial pretence. If you have ever had to photograph a musician in a space defined by an infinity cove and/or a white/grey/black Colorama you will know what I mean. A blank space can be seen by some photographers as the perfect blank canvas on which to experiment with props, lighting set-ups, costume changes and conceptual ideas. But this needs to be part of a collaborative partnership and for this to happen there needs to be a mutual creative meeting of minds that is rare in my experience. Bowie was certainly someone who did this.
The 1980s saw Dylan finally agree to be photographed in the photo studio – as his record sales dropped – and fall prey to bad 80s fashion, over-lit portraits, excessive hairspray, make-up and awkward poses. Many say that he was lost musically and that he was struggling to find his place in the era of glossy production in both music and photography. There are certainly albums from that decade that suggest that was the case, but there are also photographs that act as evidence of photographers trying too hard to make him look ‘relevant’.
David Bailey tried in the 80s, so did Aaron Rapoport in 1985, Annie Leibovitz had a go in the 2000s and Bill Hayward in 2012 and Jake Wangner in 2020. William Clayton had a go at creating an iconic studio image of Dylan as did Mark Seliger. But these images fail to bring anything to the history of images previously created. Dylan is too often seen in these portraits as moody, disconnected, looking off-camera bored. Groomed and presented in his image of the time, but reduced to a mannequin for the photographer to record.
Photography is important to Dylan. He has allegedly overseen the design of his album covers since the late 1980s and he has included worked by both Bruce Davidson (Together Through Life 2009) and Ian Berry (Rough and Rowdy Ways 2020) as the main cover image. Recent videos for his bootleg releases Not Dark Yet Version 1 and Pretty Saro are constructed montages of classic documentary photographs including work by Eugene Smith, Bruce Davidson, Robert Frank and Paul Fusco amongst many others.
This love for documentary photography may go someway to explain why the most successful images of him have been created in this way. Add this to his famous lack of willingness to ‘perform’ for an audience and you have a good explanation for why the studio based images fall flat.
In an increasingly PR controlled environment it has become difficult for photographers to just ‘hang out’ with musicians documenting those moments in-between, when the mask slips and the true person behind the marketed image emerges. You could argue that pop stars today are doing this themselves on Instagram, and in a way that may be true, but many of these ‘captured’ images are highly controlled and made by the stars own on-salary photographers. This is a shame. Over control stifles creativity.
I have used Bob Dylan as my example here, but you could use other artists to come to a similar conclusion. The iconic image can be a constructed image and exist as a timeless graphic symbol of a period in that artist’s work, just think of Duffy’s cover of Alladin Sane for proof of that, you can also hear Duffy talking about how that image came together here https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2018/10/10/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-24-plus-brian-duffy/ But if you are looking for the images that capture time, place and person you need to spend time getting to know that person in an environment where they feel comfortable, where they can be themselves. That can be a formal portrait, it can be an observed moment, but it has to be more about what that person is wearing, their hair and a background colour.
I’ll leave the last words to Bob, “Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed,
Dignity never been photographed.”
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
As a child the most difficult creative decision that you have to face is what to draw. When faced with that piece of blank paper that challenges your intentions and ability, the choice of subject matter can be crushing, offering too many possibilities to comprehend. The solution? To draw a house, maybe with some grass around it and the sun in the sky. A camera can offer a similar challenge.
What to photograph is as difficult a decision as what to draw. The difference is that you can’t just make up an imaginary domestic scene. The camera not only challenges you aesthetically, but intellectually, it questions your ability to think and do, to commit and succeed with the push of a button. Photography is not easy.
Investment is another pressure. Cameras are not cheap and neither are the associated pieces of kit. Once you have invested in both there is a feeling that you must make the most of your financial outlay. But how and on what?
You can go for a walk and see what you see, photograph your friends and family, document your daily life, your interests and your passions. All good options for the photographer looking to create images that please themselves, but what if you want to take your photography further?
That is going to take a solid foundation of understanding of what you want to do and why you are doing it. I don’t mean an academic foundation, but an intellectual one based on a desire to use your camera to tell stories. The truth of photography is that what to photograph, your subject matter, comes from a desire to tell stories. To document a place, space, object, person or people that you want to explore and share.
A photograph does not come from divine inspiration, but research and inquisitiveness. If you are facing the photo wall, lacking inspiration this is where you need to start. The American photographer Tod Papageorge said that if you want your photography to get better you need to read more. I agree with Tod, but I would also add the need to listen to music, the radio, talking books and podcasts, go to the cinema and theatre, attend talks and visit libraries, galleries and museums with no clear intention. In short, look outside of photography for your photography.
These will give you the inspiration and creative tools you need to chip away at the photo wall that is preventing you from making images that mean something more to you and create a potential audience for the work away from pretty pictures or photographic trickery. It will also support you in defining a personal visual language, stepping away from imitation and too often repeated formulas. Photography is not about investment in kit or the fear of failure. These are the factors that prevent you from making work and are the bricks in the photo wall that feed insecurity and anxiety.
My suggestion is to not worry about what camera you have or the photographs others are making. Look at them, but don’t see them as competition or unachievable heights of attainment. Explore your passions and interests outside of photography to find your subject matter. If you are stuck with your photography, don’t get stressed, have fun, press the button and don’t worry about the outcome. Fail more than you succeed and be happy with that. The truth behind the photography wall is that you had a hand in building it and only you can dismantle it.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In episode 245 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the centenarian photographer, when the sitter takes control and learning photography not facts.
Plus this week, photographer John R.J.Taylor 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?’
John R. J. Taylor was born in Scotland in 1958 and studied art and photography at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Scotland and photography at the Royal College of Art in London. His book Ideal Home was first published over thirty years ago in 1989 and quickly began to influence photographers and students as to what was a suitable subject for an image, opening up the possibilities of exploring the ordinary, everyday objects of life in a new way. Once a cult book, it is now considered a ‘modern classic’. Ideal Home is an almost forensic photographic record of his sister’s north London suburban house. Working his way methodically around the house, Taylor documented the rooms, table tops, ornaments, interiors of fridges, cupboards, garden – as many aspects of the domestic interior of the home as possible. Taylor has continued to work on numerous projects ever since and his images have been collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of London and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Texas, USA, exhibited throughout Europe and once in the USA. www.johnrjtaylorphotography.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
I have spent the last forty years looking at photo portfolios and the last twenty creating my own. On one side of the desk I was looking to commission, on the other to get commissioned, two different outcomes from the same artefact.
The one word that brings them together is expectation, that of the commissioner and of the prospective commissioned photographer. I speak so often about expectations because they seem to be so rarely discussed and yet they are the defining factor in our understanding of success and failure. They are also the key to a successful portfolio.
A portfolio is not for you. Just as a website is your shop window, your portfolio is a selling tool, a portable exhibition used to convince others to buy into your work. That may be to commission you, invest in you or buy images from you, but whatever its purpose, the expectation of that purpose should inform its construction.
Let’s get down to the details of that construction. Firstly, all prints must be the same size and be of high quality, a quality that should be consistent across all of the work you are showing. How many prints? I always say between fithteen to twenty maximum. A portfolio should be your greatest hits not every album you’ve ever made.
There was a time when portfolios were all heavy and expensive leather bound books with clear sleeves in purpose made bags (I still have mine) and some photographers still use these. However, today you don’t need to. A print box with your prints in clear acetate sleeves is fine and in certain situations more appropriate. Either way you will need to invest in both prints and a physical portfolio.
Now for some simple tips. The first image should be your strongest. Think of it like a cover of a book introducing you to the work. Be prepared to discuss the image, giving context to the work that follows. The final image should also be one of your strongest. It closes the book and may be the image that is looked at for the longest time as you talk with your potential client.
One of the biggest mistakes I have observed is photographers including work that they are not sure about. If you can’t defend or be positive about the work it should not be included.
The clearest way of seeing a portfolio is as the next step on from your website. Someone sees your website, is impressed/interested/intrigued and wants to meet you in person and that is when the portfolio comes into play. Therefore, it does not have to introduce your work to the client, but it does have to compliment and consolidate the website. It needs to show the quality of the images seen on the website in print form and act as a physical support to your personality as a photographer. In that sense the portfolio is the online made real, just as your name and online persona will become real in a face-to-face meeting. If you think about the portfolio in this way it will be obvious that it should connect with the portfolio section on your website. The same images, in the same order.
Now, you may say that you no longer need a portfolio as you get all of your work from your website or from your social media accounts and that may be true. However, as the old adage states, fail to plan and plan to fail. You may not need a portfolio all of the time, but if someone asks to see it (and in my experience this will happen), you will need one and it is at that point that you will realise the importance of having a well considered and presented portfolio at hand.
Images: ©Grant Scott 2023
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Just as with writing the process of editing photographs is a process of rejection that leaves only the essential to be seen. However, an emotional attachment to the images or words can often result in bad choices being made. Editing requires a sense of detachment to ensure objective decision making, which is why it is so much easier for someone not attached to the work to provide an objective edit. However, if you don’t have that person at hand you are going to have to edit your own work, a skill that can be learnt, but which is not quick to master. I always say that the more work you look at by others the better you get at editing your own work and I think that remains true today.
Whether you are editing one day’s work, a body of work or a collection of work for a portfolio or website for me the rules remain the same. There is a process that I follow and it is one that I have been implementing in editing since the late 1980s as an art director and photographer. It is simple and methodical and I am going to share it with you here now.
Step 1: Look through all of the work and identify themes. These should be broad themes associated to approach (close-up, mid-length, full-length), format (portrait or landscape), aesthetic (colour, black and white). You can add your own themes based on subject matter.
Step 2: Move these images into separate folders each named with the theme you have chosen and place these folders into an umbrella folder titled ‘Edit’.
Step 3: Edit each theme on the basis of technical and compositional success. This does not mean that you should reject images that evidence grain, movement, light flare etc, just images that don’t work within your own visual language. Then move the most successful images into a new folder titled ‘Edit 1’, ensuring that you do not fill the ‘Edit 1’ folder with lots of images that are too similar; reject repetition. This process needs to be honest and in a sense brutal, rejecting images that you may ‘like’ but not necessarily for the right reasons. Financial and emotional attachments to an image must be put aside at this stage.
Step 4: Consider the images in the edit folder on the basis of narrative and intention. Reject images at this stage that do not fit into the narrative or meet a client/personal expectation. It is at this point that you should begin to see the images as a cohesive body of work.
Step 5: Create a new folder titled ‘Final Edit’ and place the remaining images in this folder. You can always return to the ‘Edit’ or ‘Edit 1’ folders at a later date if you want to reconsider your edit and return to the theme based folders if you feel the final edit is missing an image you intended it to have. However, do not add images to your final edit just because it is missing something. If you have rejected all of your close-up images for example by rejecting what you have, you know that what you have is not good enough and that you will have to improve in that area of your practice.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Images: © Dafydd Jones
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is a well worn statement with a large dose of truth within it. The creative industries rely on personal recommendation, friendship and connections to find and employ photographers. However, few of us are born with that social network, we have to build it. That network is our database, an evolving source of contacts based on a specific area of practice created through research. This is a process available to all, one that is not dependent on your economic situation, school or perceived privilege, but defined by your ambition, dedication, imagination and resilience.
Now, I am not going to say that nepotism does not exist, I have worked with many people who are the sons and daughters of successful people who have found their journey to success considerably easier than my own, but that is life. I don’t have an issue with this. Is it fair? No. Do I resent it? No, because I know that it is possible to get where you want to go if you understand how to play the game, and it is a game.
I see the word ‘privileged’ used to describe those who are successful in the game and assertions that it is only wealth and family contacts that have created that success; that give access to the creative industries. To accept this we would also have to accept that every person from a ‘comfortable’ background has friends throughout the creative industries and the media, happy to put in a ‘good word’ to make the wheels of employment spin. It happens, but it would be naive and blinkered to think that it is the only way. It was not the way for me, my wife or anyone of my friends, colleagues or collaborators. This is not anecdotal, but fact.
If you are reading this and have built a career within the creative industries, have you achieved what you have through hard work or family friends? And do you find the assertion that ‘privilege’ is the only reason for your achievements offensive?
We make friends through life, some within a work environment and others outside of our chosen careers. Friends are a vital support mechanism for our lives and are chosen, not given, unlike family. Those we collaborate with as photographers can also become friends, it should not be an aim, but it can be a result of shared experience and mutual respect.
It is only natural that we will want to work with people who we like and admire, but photography is a business and friendship can only take you so far. Whoever you know, the reality is that good work is expected.
So, how do you build a network if your family and friends do not have connections? Well, I do not believe that your background should be a defining factor in your career ambitions so here is my template* for how to build your database and how to make friends and influence people.
1. Decide on a database format. It could be hand written or typed using a software package such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Whatever is best for you is okay, but the template you create must have distinct columns with clear headings. These are: Name, Company, Address, Role, Telephone, Email, Social Media, Contacted, Notes/Comments.
2. You should try and fill out these columns as well as you can. The phone number maybe a switchboard number and that is okay. If you can’t find a number try and find a direct email address. Include social media tags and platforms as potential contact information. The contacted column should have the date first contacted and subsequent contact attempts. If you don’t get a response to two attempts, move on to someone else. Don’t see contacting purely as sending an email. Consider cards, letters, phone calls and social media DMs. My wife, the editor of a magazine receives approx 800 emails a day!
3. To find people when you first start look at the front of magazines for the masthead (sometimes called the ‘flannel panel’) and make a list of the people who commission (usually art directors, art editors, stylists, photo editors and on smaller magazines editors). These will be the foundation of an editorial focused database. If you want to consider working with brands and agencies look at the photographers you admire and research who they work for and who handles those accounts, the art buyers, art directors and commissioners. This will mean some time Googling, but as part of the process you will find additional names and clients to consider.
4. Research social media accounts of the people you want to work with or those photographers who work in a similar area to you and see who they follow. Follow them and start to build your social media network on this basis, then add those you consider worth contacting to your database.
5. Continually add to your database and update it as people get promoted, change jobs and move companies. It is a living breathing thing and the more work you put into it the more beneficial it will be to your progress.
6. Each month put some time aside to contact people on your database, let them know you exist if it is a first-time call, update people with examples of recent work and news if it is someone you have contacted previously. Just like any friendship your network will require work to get established, but also to keep going. Always be polite, respectful and empathetic in your communications and never come over as being needy, aggressive or pushy!
The idea behind the database is to help you build your own network, to provide you with introductions and help you get established. The simple truth is that that anyone can contact whoever they wish, you will not always get a response, but that should not be a reason to not try. Never forget that the secret of getting ahead is getting started and that the best way of making new friends is to speak with people you don’t know.
*I have written this template and used it in my teaching for the past ten years based on my forty years working within the professional photography industry as a photographer, art director, creative director and editor. It has proven to be very successful for my students whom have come from a broad range of social and economic backgrounds.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Photography is a business. Let us not forget this simple four word reality. It can be many other things to many different people, but at its heart it is a business. There are many ways in which it is a business and you will interact with at least one of them whatever your engagement with the medium is or how you perceive your engagement with it.
Obviously, the selling of cameras is a business and of course the associated ephemera is part of the same business. You need a camera if you want to make photographs so let’s put that to one side for the moment, it is the gateway to the business. Instead let’s think about all of the add-ons you are encouraged to buy that you may or may not need. Of course you need a lens, but how many you need is a mute point dependent on your needs, however, selling lenses is part of the business, just as camera bags, straps, memory cards, filters, lens hood, tripods, mono pods and every photo related accessory is.
If you are shooting analogue you are in the business of buying film, darkroom equipment and chemicals. If you work with digital you buy computers, screens, hard drives, plug-ins. Some you need and some you don’t. Desire often overcomes need.
Paying to enter photography competitions is a business, as are pay-to-play portfolio reviews. You could certainly avoid both of these in my opinion, however, if you don’t you will be part of the gambling business. If you sell prints or self-published books of your work you are part of the retail business. If you are a commissioned photographer you are part of the advertising and editorial business. If you receive bursaries and funding you are part of the art business. If you work for NGOs you are part of the charity business.
If you post images on social media you are part of that business, as a content provider for global entities you have no control over, in which you play the role of a creator of wealth that you will never benefit from. In this case you are in the business of likes and followers, the marketing business.
If you exhibit your work you are in galleries or in festivals you are past of the event business and maybe the entertainment business.
If you create podcasts or films for Youtube you are part of the broadcast business.
If you run workshops, you are in the travel and education business. If you work within academia you are in the teaching business.
However, we may want to believe that our work sits outside of the commercial reality of business the truth is that it cannot and does not. My suggestion? Photography is a business, deal with it!
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
In this extended episode, editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro and UNP founder and curator Grant Scott suggest some photographic wishes for 2023 reflecting on mentorship, open access photography, Instagram, archives, and young and not-so- young photographers. Grant also marks the passing of the photographers we have lost in 2022.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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 foto8magazine, 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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Those We Have Lost in 2022
Aisha Bada
Steve Schapiro
René Robert
Kohei Yoshiyuki
Larry Herman
Brent Renaud
Hiram Maristany
Sumy Sadurni
Doris Derby
Tim Page
Harold Chapman
Dirck Halstead
Hiram Maristany
Maksim ‘Max’ Levin
Patrick Demarchelier
Jerry Uelsmann
Mantas Kvedaravicius
Doris Derby
Letizia Battaglia
David Leeson
Denis Straughan
Ron Galella
Kurt Markus
Steve Gonzales
Jimmy Fox
Lourdes Grobet
Natalia Lach-Lachowicz
Tsuneko Sasamoto
Fred Lyon
Sandy Sharp
Neil Kirk
William Klein
Roger Bamber
Melvin Sokolsky
Roxanne Lowit
Lisetta Carmi
Brendan Farrell
Dave Caulkin
Eamon McCabe
Stan Kistler
Rodney Graham
John Gaps III
Peter Eleveld
Martin Evening
© Grant Scott 2023
How many times have you heard a grizzled, dyed in the wool, battle scarred photographer refer back to the halcyon days of their career, the good old days with a small nostalgic tear in their eye? Those days when commissions rained down like a tropical storm, when budgets were as plump and rich as a good red wine, when expenses were as flexible as Stretch Armstrong. I was working during those days with photographers, setting budgets, giving commissions and checking submitted expenses and I can tell you that they were not quite as are being remembered.
I started working on Elle magazine in the UK on the 6th January 1985 and I can confirm that photographers working for the magazine got a good deal. Creative freedom, no rights grabs, good budgets and a day rate of £750.00. That is a good fee today, but it was a very good fee then, especially when you add on the accepted mark-up on film and processing. The art director received boxes of alcohol from grateful photographers every Christmas and a sense of the good times was in the air. Maybe these were the good days.
Despite this, photographers still complained, particularly when we introduced the idea of the half-day rate of £350.00 and the AOP now, then the Association of Editorial and Fashion photographers suggested we should be boycotted. Perhaps this was the end of the brief good old days.
The 1990s saw the beginning of budget cuts and accountant interference in how a magazine was run. Economic turmoil combined with Desk Top Publishing bought the coin counters into the art departments. They thought design was easy, photography was to fill boxes and therefore both should be cheap and easy. I spent the next ten years at Condé Nast fighting on the photographers behalf concerning fees, budgets and creativity, but as life became more expensive income started to lag behind for photographers used to a good life.
Fast forward to the digital revolution – which I pin firmly onto 2006 and the launch of the original Canon 5D – and we find the client no longer willing to pay for film and processing or wait for a lab to process, print and deliver their commission on a bike they would pay for. It has been sixteen years since I worked with analogue for a client. Were those the good old days?
Since then fees have stagnated or dropped, budgets have been restricted or disappeared. Clients need everything immediately and the opportunity for creative risk has been replaced with a desire for conformity.
Despite all of this I am sure that some photographers will look back at this time many years in the future as their own good times. Many of you reading this may find this hard to believe, but experience suggests to me that this is the case.
We are nostalgic for many things in our lives, it’s a human condition, something we cannot escape, particularly as we get older. However, such nostalgia can be destructive if not recognised as memories rather than realities. The reality of photography today is that it has never been so democratic and yet so under threat from its own development. Such a threat requires an open mind and a sense of vigilance. Developments and new possibilities require reflection and analysis, but not necessarily immediate adoption. They similarly should not be derided from a position of fear of change.
You don’t want to go down with the wreckage, but you also don’t want to jump onto the wrong lifeboat. A simple understanding, but one that is not easy to implement. I regularly hear photographers talking about how things have changed for the worse from their perspective and yet they are unwilling to change themselves to meet new challenges. Change in their thinking and actions.
We cannot be involved in a technology based practice without accepting that technology will evolve and that evolution will impact on how, where and how that practice is undertaken and perceived. The good old days were not quite as remembered, just as today is not as bad as it may appear to some. There is a future for photography, it just won’t be the same as it was. Is that a problem? Yes, if you cannot accept that, no, if you can, either way those good old days will not return, but they may just be replaced with some good new days.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2023
Some people are open to information, others spend time looking for it, there are some who feel that information, particularly challenging information is not for them. Information can come in many forms, but in photography, information most often comes in the form of suggestions or feedback. Outside of the camera manual few solid facts are relevant.
Information is important, it’s part of our learning loop, it’s what helps us grow intellectually, spiritually and emotionally and yet some information seems to provoke some photographers towards defensiveness and occasionally to attack the giver of the information. This is a short article looking at why.
Please be clear that I have used the word ‘information’ here and not ‘facts’. Information can be useful, it can be unreliable, but it invariably comes from a good place.
The broader the experience that informs the information hopefully the more informed the information is. A willingness to share that information will hopefully evidence a desire for others to learn from mistakes made or situations encountered preventing others from wasting time, money or effort in travelling the wrong road. Nothing to disagree with there I would suggest.
Some information comes in the form of advice. This can be even more useful even though it may come with an additional ‘should’, rather than a ‘could’. ‘Should’ suggests that the information/advice if acted upon will bring a positive outcome. A ‘could’ gives the option to consider, but may also lead to a positive outcome. Again I can see little to dislike.
Despite this, there are photographers who seem to have a problem with the sharing of information that suggests it should be undertaken or at least seriously considered. Maybe this is because they have been taught in a rule based atmosphere which they feel the need to rebel against. Maybe they have had a bad experience of photo education and can’t let it go or perhaps they feel that others are not in a position, whatever their experience to suggest anything to anyone. I don’t know, but what I do know is to rage against the kindness of others who share information for free makes no sense.
Information does not have to be listened to, but if the source is good I think it makes sense to take notice of it. When I teach photography I often speak of the importance of reflection and analysis, not unquestionable agreement with what is seen, heard or read, but taking time to consider why and who the information has been created or shared by.
Rejecting the opinions of others can often be an indication of insecurity, a feeling that many photographers recognise as being part of their relationship with photography. I get that. Photographic situations can produce a sense of fight or flight that needs to be conquered, which in certain situations could be excused or explained, but responding this way to some information shared to help you, demonstrates an insensitivity, that is beyond reasonable. It can also be seen as misplaced arrogance.
And that is where I think I rest my case. It is reasonable to want to help people, to share information and to pass on experience. Sometimes that information should be adopted, but it should always be considered. It does not matter if you don’t agree with the information. You can challenge it and question it, but do so politely and with respect and always remember that information may not be what you want to hear, however it may be what you need to hear.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
To answer this question we could turn to a dictionary definition, we could look at Wikipedia or we could have a stab at coming up with something ourselves. Unfortunately, none of these can help us come up with a conclusive answer. However, let’s give all three a go.
The dictionary tells me that a photograph when used as a noun is, “a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused on to light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally.” Wikipedia is not in any way a recognised academic research destination, but it is the one that most people use and therefore worth considering here. A photograph according to Wiki is, “an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. It also give us the etymology of the word, “The word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς (phos), meaning “light,” and γραφή (graphê), meaning “drawing, writing,” together meaning “drawing with light” before continuing to suggest a history of the photograph and various other interesting facts.
That’s the dictionary and Wiki covered, so what have we learnt? Well, I think it is clear that the key element in what constitutes a photograph is the capturing of light. There is no discussion in these definitions of specific types of camera, subject matter or process of capture.
However, before we continue with that thought process I would like to suggest a word that is commonly used today by photographers, but which no longer means what it once did. That word is ‘video’. Those of a certain age and whom grew up with the birth of the video will understand a video as being a chunky black plastic box filled with video tape on two spools that bought films to homes on demand via an even larger box called a video player. Video bought about a revolution in home entertainment and visual communication. However, its bulky nature and reliance on analogue tape saw its technology replaced with the disc format as a DVD, Blue Ray and Laser Disc. The video became old school and reminiscent of the past. Today, the growth of in-demand streaming and downloading has seen the DVD become as redundant as the video cassette and yet the word ‘video’ has been re-born to describe moving image content that has no connection with the original format.
Today, photographers are happy to describe the films they make as videos although they have no connection with the previous technology. Our definition of the word has evolved. Let’s consider that as we continue to think about what our definition of a ‘photograph’ is today.
I have previously spoken about the definition of the photograph with relation to post-production manipulation of the original photographic capture. I have suggested that through such manipulation the created artefact is no longer a photograph, as the manipulator will have distorted reality to create an illustrative representation of what was seen or what they wished to have seen. Such manipulation plays with the truth and can be seen as a sliding scale of manipulation from enhancement at one end to creation at the other. I stand by this belief and my previous thoughts and comments. I have no issue with such creative practice as long as the digital artist creating the work is aware and honest with the viewer concerning their intention and level of involvement in distorting reality.
However, in a recent conversation with photographer Jonas Bendiksen concerning his body of work The Book of Veles (https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/12/21/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-christmas-special/) I began to consider the impact Artificial Intelligence and the use of ‘stable diffusion’ is having on the creation of what many may consider to be a photograph in the future.
The idea that AI is creating images from stored images is an interesting discussion point from many different perspectives. I don’t want to go into them all here, but I do think it is worth considering the impact it may have on the evolution of the definition of what we consider to be a photograph. Perhaps this is already happening with the digital artists previously mentioned. However, I think this discussion is more nuanced than purely addressing manipulation. Proof of this has come with the amount of digital artists speaking out against the use of AI to create digital images similar to the work they are creating through an algorithm rather than a human mind and hand. The issue they say is that you cannot copyright a ‘style’, something an algorithm finds easy to replicate. Perhaps this demonstrates an issue with digital image making that is process driven, formulaic and bland, copying what exists, rather than creating something new. I will leave you to consider that thought.
In its most basic form an AI image is a collage, an image made up of constituent parts. It is not a photograph as we understand it today. It is not a single capture of a moment, person or place. That is clear. However, it is created in the back lit world of the LED screen and in that sense could be described as being dependent on light in its creation, similar to the pure digital photographic image captured by a camera, but seen on a LED screen. Light does not only come from the sun.
Many people today are happy to accept a heavily manipulated photographic image as a photograph. Perhaps, not the purist, or myself, sometimes, but the majority. The digital image is created by capturing light as the definitions tell us, there is no mention concerning the level of manipulation in those definitions, but lets not get bogged down in semantics. Let’s try and think about this as an evolution of language and practice.
There are many photographers today happy to describe themselves as such who are engaging with the medium, whilst embracing the potential of associated technologies as part of their practice. Using drones, DSLRS and Mirrorless cameras to make moving image, recording sound, applying post-production techniques, designing their own books, building websites, writing text, giving online talks, controlling their own social media, using smartphones to make images and of course to make traditional photographic stills. Are they correct in describing themselves as photographers? Should they reconsider the description they give themselves? Has the word photographer evolved?
I am not offering answers here, but thoughts and discussion points. Some of what I am saying is based on fact, some on my own reflections and analysis. This is a fluid situation.
What I hope we can agree upon is that the definition of the photograph is open to reinterpretation based upon technological development. The example of the word ‘video’ shows us how a visual artefact can evolve as technology does. There is no contradiction in evolving our understanding of what constitutes a photograph. The issue of course is personal. I know this because I was one of the people who had a problem with the use of the word ‘video’ when not connected with the technology of the past. Video created on digital devices should be called ‘moving image’ I wrote, it cannot be seen as a video I believed. I may have been right, but that doesn’t matter, the general consensus made my beliefs irrelevant.
I still believe that there is a difference between filmmaking and moving image, but that is a different conversation, however while we are speaking of filmmaking, there again we can see the use of the word ‘film’ evolve to describe both movies made on film and now through digital capture. The evolvement of terms used to describe image making is not hard to find.
The truth is that it didn’t matter what I thought about the use of the word ‘video’, technology and the use of the word to describe every piece of content added to Youtube confirmed the new understanding of that word. I think the same may well be the case for the ‘photograph’. You, me or others within the photo community may baulk at the use of the word ‘photograph’ to describe a manipulated image, but this may not matter. If it is generally adopted or perhaps hi-jacked to describe an AI created image we will have little or no say in the matter. I am open to that are you?
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 243 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed looking to the future whilst reflecting on the evolution of cameras, AI portraits and listening to photo talk.
Plus this week, photographer Gautier Deblonde 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?’
Gautier Deblonde is a French photographer, renowned for his portraits of key international artists and a practice that is situated between reportage and documentary. Born and raised in France, he moved to London in 1991 to work as a photographer. He works closely with his artist subjects, photographing their working spaces and in doing so their contributions to the art world. Deblonde’s subjects include Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, Antony Gormley and Ron Mueck. His book Atelier, published by Steidl, captured sixty-nine artist studios in panorama, providing a glimpse behind the scenes to the source of artistic creation, and his book Artists, published by Tate Gallery in 1999, brought together a number of his artist portraits. Projects have included True North (2009), a series about Svalbard in the High Arctic exhibited at Galerie du Jour Agnès B in Paris, and Still Life: Ron Mueck at Work (2013), a documentary film commissioned by the Fondation Cartier. Deblonde’s photographs of the creation and installation into the Millennium Dome of Ron Mueck’s sculpture Boy won a World Press Award and were published in 2001. His works have been exhibited in a number of museums and galleries including Le Petit Palais in Paris, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London. www.gautierdeblonde.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
In this special extended episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed talking with photographer Jonas Bendiksen about the future for photography, synthetic images, beginning projects, how to stay relevant, generic images, photographic confidence and the pressures of success.
Born in 1977 in Tønsberg, southern Norway at aged 19, Jonas Bendiksen started a one-year internship at the Magnum Photos’ London office. He made coffee and tea, ran to the post office, answered the phones and returned prints and slides to their correct places in the archive. He left Magnum and headed to for Russia to try to become a photographer and fell madly in love with the former USSR, spending several years there resulting in his first book, Satellites – Photographs from the Fringes of the former Soviet Union, which came out in 2006. He joined Magnum Photos in 2004. Fascinated by enclaves and people living in isolated communities Bendikson started another project in 2005 focused on the urban slum. His The Places We Live body of work became a three-year journey through four slum communities around the world, and in 2008 it became a book and exhibition featuring projections and voice recordings in a three-dimensional installation. In 2017 his book, The Last Testament, about people who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ was published. In 2021, his book The Book of Veles, departed from traditional photojournalism practice by creating a conceptual work about “fake news” which consisted of images that were “faked” using CGI to place humans and bears in scenes that Bendiksen had photographed devoid of life, mixed with excerpts from The Book of Veles (a forged ancient text), and AI-generated texts. The deception, initially not disclosed, escaped detection from his colleagues at Magnum and then curators and audiences at the Visa Pour l’Image festival, until Bendiksen revealed it on the Magnum Photos website. The work questioned the ability of the most visually literate people in the photography industry to tell real photos from faked ones. Some of Bendiksen’s clients include GEO magazine, Newsweek, the Sunday Times Magazine, The Rockefeller Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and many others. Since 2004 he has worked with the National Geographic Magazine.Bendiksen has received awards from World Press Photo, International Center of Photography, National Magazine Awards and Pictures of the Year International. Bendiksen lives near Oslo, Norway with his wife and three children. www.jonasbendiksen.com
You can read more about Jonas’s process of creating The Book of Veles* here: www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/book-veles-jonas-bendiksen-hoodwinked-photography-industry/
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
I am fascinated by those archaeological documentaries on television. You know the ones I mean: close-up of a hand brushing away at a piece of dirt and, then, voila, a tiny shard of pottery is miraculously uncovered. . . .
How do they do that? How did they know that a shard will materialize in the exact spot on which the camera was trained? How many times did they go through this process – sweep, sweep, sweep, nothing – until they got the right place?
. . . then the shard is reverently held up to the camera until it fills the frame while the narrator sonorously deduces from this itty-bitty piece of trash that the makers were the meso-cryptonites who lived in the lower Wahili three thousand years ago, buried sacred pigs with their dead, invented forks, married their sisters, constructed bamboo geodesic domes, worshipped nautilus shells, wove clothing from billiberry bark, believed their ancestors came from the stars (Alpha Centauri to be exact), laid the foundations for Greek philosophy, and suffered population depletion by hunting rhinocerii with sling- shots.
Well, excuse my skepticism but perhaps there is a slight credibility gap here between the actual historical truth and the ravings of an academic who has been on his knees too long in a hot desert without a sun hat.
But that’s not, exactly, what I wanted to talk about (although, God knows, there is enough nuttiness in academia to keep me going for years). No, I got started on the wrong foot. I want to explicate (which is the academic word for “talk about”) a few observations on the beginnings of art, modern culture and fine-art photography which may, or may not, have something to do with facing a charging rhino but which makes more sense.
It is this: we have been warned zillions of times not to interpret the past in the light of current states of mind because our ancestors were different from us. We abuse history when we view it from the vantage point of our own, presumably more sophisticated/intelligent/enlightened age. Personally I’m not so sure this cultural superiority is justified. What if the abuses occur because we assume the people of the past were different from ourselves? What if they were not, if you see what I mean. What if the people of the past, in every culture and period, were exactly the same as us – in temperament, personality, values, subconscious yearnings, dreams and aspirations, in every thing except their love of cellular telephones? The problem is solved if we look at human behavior of the past and assume it was motivated by exactly the same forces that operate today. “This,” as the saying goes, “changes everything,” with due credit to the commercial for a Dodge or some other vehicle.
It will soon become apparent that this is a clever segue, because if we need to discuss the truth of the past in the light of current motivations then we need to be clear about the present culture. It is all about advertising. Period.
At this point in my narrative I initially wrote a sentence about Them (those with something to sell) and Us (those who are potential customers) but crossed it out because it implies a confrontation. It is not. “Us” are complicit, even embarrassingly eager to cooperate, with “Them.” How eager? We will actually pay money to be in their service.
As a test of this pathetic need to pander, walk through any shopping mall and notice how many goods are emblazoned with the trade-names and logos of their manufacturers. These same companies pay millions of dollars to publish their names in newspaper/magazine advertisements and television commercials yet the public fights for the privilege of paying them (usually a premium) for the dubious distinction of appearing in public as an ambulatory billboard with logos and slogans plastered across T-shirts, bags, sneakers and baseball caps. Personally I think Nike should not only hand out free caps but also pay us hourly rates for advertising their company.
I feel the same when perusing my daughter’s fashion magazines, avidly bought by the public which pays for the privilege of being conned by a multi-billion dollar industry in clothes, accessories, cosmetics, hair products, diet programs and thousands of ancillary products and services.
When I last bought a vehicle I was perusing the sales manifest when I came across a charge of $50 for “publicity.” I was told that this was to help defray advertising costs. I responded by saying that I presumed the dealer would attach a sticker to my vehicle telling every one where I had bought it. Therefore, I said magnaminously, I would only charge $50 for the advertising space on my vehicle. The dealer was first uncomprehending and then flabbergasted. No one else had ever objected. Of course not. I’m a rotten misfit. If I get a bag or shoes or a camera strap with a logo then the first thing I do is take a permanent marker and obliterate the name. But I do wish I could be a coconspirator in the commercial arena and then I would not be so surly – it’s no fun being pissed off whenever I go shopping. (Footnote: this is such a blatant and squirrely plea for sympathy that it even makes me squirm . . . so let’s change the topic if not the theme).
During the past nine months (at the time of writing – and it’s still going on) the so-called news media have been saturated with the Clinton/Lewinsky nonsense.
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Do I believe all those pundits and politicians wheeled in front of the cameras to pompously and hypocritically drone on and on about justice, integrity, truthfulness, honesty and so on, ad nauseum, have the best interests of the country at heart, or even believe their own drivel? Not a bit of it. They love the scandal which they have manufactured, promoted and maintained with one purpose in mind: to advertise themselves, increase visibility and to transform attention into money (pundits) and reelection (politicians). The proliferation of talking head shows has created a demand for pundits to blather on about matters they know little about (and the accuracy of which is in hindsight abysmally low) but which is presented as if it was news.
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Of course, in this age of hype there is no penalty for being wrong, only for being boring. The effort to extract any hard facts from these programs is akin to watching a particularly inept scout attempting to light a fire in horizontal rain. And look at all those television programs that are about television programs, in a nepotistic, cannibalistic parody of information.
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And look at how popular they are. And what about the shameless selling which masquerades as programming, such as MTV, a highly successful channel which primarily consists of advertisements, comprising expensive little creative films, financed by music companies to promote the sales of their products.
My personal aversions aside, I’m not saying that all the above examples are unenjoyable, unesthetic or socially harmful. My point is that the divisions (themselves the most creative constructs of artists) between truth and fiction, altruism and commercialism, art and advertising, are meaningless. When I hear my colleagues pontificate on the purity of art versus the sordidness of advertising I have to wonder at their own grasp on reality. The boundary between art and advertising cannot be erected because there is no dividing line. This has always been true. Art, even so-called Fine Art, is no different in principle or spirit from advocacy. The chances are good that our ancient ancestors, like us, were equally complicitous in the selling/buying pact.
Recently I was reading a turgid tome speculating on the purpose of neolithic cave paintings, in which the authors were blathering about magic, spiritualism, ritual, psychic connections, shamanistic practices, empathetic resonances, on and on. It seems to me more than likely that Og, hoping to be elected a tribal elder and so have his pick of the meat and women, is boasting of his prowess with spear and bravery on the hunt, and in an effort to sell himself hires Ugh to produce some visuals on the cave wall which when lit by the flickering flames of the fire look like television commercials.
This is not far-fetched. Throughout most of history painters were artisans, paid by the square foot to promote the prince or church or other patron. They made commercials, in exactly the same way and for the same reasons as today’s film directors – Woody Allen, Spike Lee, David Lynch, John Frankenheimer, Ridley Scott, et al – make commercials to please their corporate paymasters. ’Twas ever thus. The only factors that have changed are: who owns the wealth to commission art and the ability of that art to reach vastly more viewers than those actually standing in front of the original.
That is why practically all art history textbooks are so ridiculous. They talk about solitary genius, iconography, stylistic movements and artistic influences, with only brief asides on patronage (Michelangelo) and politics (Goya). They all miss the important issue: money. The real history of art is its economic history. Art takes place when there is surplus wealth which can be spent on the promotion of an institution, product or person. It is no coincidence that the major centers of art production throughout history have been the centers of thriving commerce; it is no coincidence that in recent times New York has produced more “art” than Sarajevo; it is no coincidence that there are more art galleries in Scottsdale, Santa Fe and Santa Monica than there are in working class enclaves in the boonies. As the famous thief remarked when asked why he robbed banks: because that’s where the money is.
But photography “for the masses” changed all that, right? Wrong.
Forget the Beaumont Newhall text. Beaumont produced an important work of pioneering research but one which is based on the art-history model (like all those that have succeeded it), which is not surprising because he was a trained art historian. The invention and early history of photography is rooted in economics. Without the newly wealthy middle class in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution there would be no need for a substitute for oil paintings. Photography was invented, developed, made by and sold to those with surplus wealth, the nouveau riche of the Victorian Age. Which is the reason why the endearing but misguided attempts of multiculturalists are doomed to frustration: you cannot “balance” the ethnicity of early photography and this fact is not because of prejudice or discrimination but because people in a survival situation do not produce art or photography. They cannot afford to do so – and even if they could, there would be no market for the results. Only when there is enough surplus wealth in a culture (such as our own) can it afford to siphon off otherwise productive citizens and allow them to become fine artists in order to promote their own or someone else’s egos.
Such notions, I am aware, deserve expansion but I do not have the time, the editor does not have the space, and my guess is that you do not have the patience, so let us quick- cut to the present for a few examples.
One of the biggest myths of contemporary photography is that of the solitary, wayward, individualistic, non-commercial, art-for-art’s-sake spiritually minded genius who is in opposition to corporate money-grubbing.
The corporate world is way ahead of you. It has embraced rebelliousness and spirituality as slogans and created a climate where you can indulge a private fantasy about being a non-conformist if your dissent is confirmed by choosing to buy a specific product. Clever.
This idea of non-conformity as a sales device is so pervasive, insidious and suffused within the culture that it is ironic that rebelliousness against corporations is being created by market strategists.
Perhaps the most blatant and shameless example of the advertiser corrupting the idea of rebelliousness is Apple Computers’ ungrammatical “Think Different” campaign, parading before us the images of dead geniuses – Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, Amelia Earhardt – who, by association, are endorsing a product that did not exist while they were alive, as Richard Dreyfuss’ voice intones: “Here’s to the misfits, the rebels, the trouble-makers . . . while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.” It is irrelevant that many of the wayward geniuses had never heard of the personal computer. The product per se is not the sales message. So do what Apple suggests and think differently: is a picture of Gandhi any more appropriate for the sale of a computer than for a watch or refrigerator; is the sale of a computer more likely to be made because it is being touted by Picasso than any other dead genius? No. The connection between the sales message and the product has been pulled so far apart that it has been completely severed. Rebelliousness is not anti-establishment; it is the sales pitch of the establishment.
The Rebel is now the name of a camera by Canon; Burger King insists, somewhat cryptically, “sometimes you’ve gotta break the rules” (like, what, refusing to pay or running a red light?); Ford advises that “middle-of-the-road is for painted yellow lines” whereas rebels, I presume, are on the wrong side of the road; American Express celebrates a range of what look like ex-hippie misfits all of whom are grateful that the company never interfered with their lifestyles, to which the only response can be why the hell should they?; Nike co-opts the music “Revolution” by the Beatles and the image of William Burroughs, the most anti-corporate subversive of his generation, to sell sneakers; and the beat goes on. It is In to be an Outsider . . . (Hey, that’s a good slogan: it’s for sale to any advertiser who would like to buy me . . . it, I mean).
But what about spiritualism? Isn’t that the last bastion of the artist? Surely the spirit cannot be co-opted as a sales pitch. Campbell’s Soup is “Good for the Soul,” “Coke adds life” just like the Holy Spirit; “Seek the Truth” with a Heineken beer; “Inside me lives an eternal life force” if you drink Evian water; “Ignite the soul” by buying a Volvo; “They say the soul lives on. And it does” in a Chrysler car of all places; “If you sold your soul in the 80s, here’s your chance to buy it back again” with the purchase of a VW Beetle.
I know what you are thinking. . . you are saying to yourself that the photographs used in these advertisements were not made by artists but by commercial hacks. Or, if they were made by artists, then they were appropriated posthumously and, presumably without their approval (unless their souls emerged from the Chrysler to sign the OK).
That is true in some cases. If ever there was a non-conformist, spiritually-minded genius in modern photography it was Bill Brandt. After fifteen years of solitary creation he produced Perspective of Nudes, a landmark publication, which was almost universally panned by the critics. But the reviews did not disturb Brandt nearly so much as the fact that advertisers quickly stole the idea and imitated distortions to sell all manner of products. Now that he is dead, his actual nude distortions have been used in a British national advertising campaign to sell Levi jeans, appearing on posters in over 4,000 city-sites during 1993, the very year that the originals were on display at the Barbican, one of Britain’s most prestigious venues for fine art.
But it would be a mistake to suggest that fine-artists do not/would not sell their personal images to be used in advertisements. Examples are legion, from Ansel Adams’ wilderness image on a coffee can, Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Cod image selling Adobe Photoshop, Duane Michals’ sequence images selling everything from fashion to insurance, and the list is endless. Hundreds of fine-artists are daily pitching their art as advertising. And I am not talking about their willingness to sell their talents as moonlighting professionals; I’m talking about their personal art, once made, being coopted as advertising images.
A more insidious trend is for corporations to jump the gun and prepay the artists to produce art, hence aligning commercial interests with the rebel-artist syndrome. A recent example is the “Barbie” series of large-format Polaroid prints produced by David Levinthal. These have been exhibited, promoted, and sold (for huge figures, at least by photographic standards) by major art galleries throughout the nation. The exhibition can also be seen in book form, Barbie Millicent Roberts (Pantheon). Levinthal has a track record of photographing table-top figurines – soldiers, cowboys and Indians, glamor models, blacks – in order to make, as he and the critics seem to think, biting satires and critical attacks on social/cultural stereotyping. His Barbie dolls presumably fit the same pattern. Yet, lo and behold, the major funding, and promotion, for this series was provided by Mattel, the makers of the Barbie doll.
So what is wrong with this picture? Nothing. It merely illustrates that art and advertising are not as dissimilar as usually assumed. I have heard gallery directors (who are selling the Barbie series) actually say that Levinthal has perpetuated a crafty scam on Mattel: the lone artist cocks a snoot at big business by making art which criticizes a product while getting the manufacturer to pay for it. The implication is a sniggering “up yours” to Mattel while they themselves, the galleries, are also making money from Barbie. Self- deception and hypocrisy are deeply embedded in the game. And you do not think that Mattel is fully aware of these reactions from the art community? Of course it is. It fully embraces all the ideological, critical mumbo-jumbo surrounding the series; Mattel is now a player in the rebel-artist stakes, and reaping the benefits of all the free publicity.
Levinthal, by all accounts a serious worker and a nice guy to boot, has not been singled out for special criticism. He is merely a prominent example of the syndrome. Other artists are more than willing to aid and abet the advertising process. Indeed a special agency was created just for this purpose. The Swanstock picture agency took already completed projects by fine artists and sold the results for commercial purposes. So successful was the idea that the agency was bought out by Image Bank, one of the biggest commercial picture agencies in the world. Image Bank is owned by Kodak.
Swanstock had no difficulty in recruiting fine artists to submit their individual creativity for advertising.
But you are right in that there are many undiscovered artists out there who are pursuing their own visions without regard to such crass commercial interests. That is why they are unknown and likely to remain so. Remember the old definition of a liberal: a conservative who has not yet been mugged. The artist-photographer is an advertising photographer who has not yet been economically mugged, but hopes to be and will then, in a classic defensive posture, claim that he/she is cleverly subverting the system.
By now the conclusion must be clear: there is no intrinsic difference between advertising and art. We are so inured to advocacy masquerading as information in every aspect of our lives that we can no longer separate one from the other and therefore need to invent distinctions between the two in order to preserve a fantasy of individualism. Michael Jordan, the basketball super-star, said/was paid to say: “Recently, I bought my first piece of modern art.” When I read this interesting announcement I was not at all surprised or disappointed to discover that he was talking about a Philips flat screen television set. Or that John Updike, the literary guru, told the National Arts Club that advertisements were “the aesthetic marvels of our age.” It would be hard to disagree, and I say that not in anger, or sorrow but as a fact of life, then and now. It is a cliché to say that the best television commercials are incomparably better than the actual programs – but clichés are clichés because they are true.
The real anomaly is that we ever expected anything but irrelevance from art or advertising. The fact that “Coke adds life” means absolutely nothing or that a Volvo “ignites the soul” is patently absurd or that “Think different” promotes bad English while advocating brilliance or that art, advertising and news programming are all advocacies, is all part and parcel of our willing acceptance of image over substance.
So when the archaeologist deduces a whole civilization from a single shard, television sets are not switched off by the million to the sound of raucous jeering. Perhaps the Wahili residents would not have been wiped out by irate rhinocerii and could still be around to tell us the truth of their culture if they had access to television. A recent advertisement depicts a “native,” presumably in Africa, looking as if he is a prime candidate for credit rejection and a thousand miles from the nearest shopping mall, asking his colleague: “How do you keep a rhino from charging?” The answer: give it an American Express credit card. Ha. Ha.
References
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My award for the best newspaper headline announcing Clinton’s “confession” was in a British Sunday edition: “Clinton admits sex – but did not impale.”
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My award for the most sickening, non-stop blather of any television channel: MSNBC.
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In the interests of full disclosure, my favorite is E! channel’s “Talk Soup.”
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I know this because I’m a rebel genius since I wore my Nikes when driving to a Burger King in my Ford where I paid by American Express before typing this on a Macintosh.
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Now there is a clever switch: a right-wing capitalist remade into a tree-hugging environmental leftie.
First Published in Sun in the Blood of the Cat by Bill Jay, 2001.
Image: ©David Hurn: Magnum
© The Estate of Bill Jay
https://billjay.com
In episode 241 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photography now and how we got here, whilst suggesting advice on photographic practice from Jack Kerouac and Tony Ray-Jones.
Plus this week, photographer Mitra Tabrizian 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?’
As mentioned in this week’s episode:
Jack Kerouac’s Belief and Technique for Modern Prose in 30 points:
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside yr own house
- Be in love with yr life
- Something that you feel will find its own form
- Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
- Blow as deep as you want to blow
- Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
- The unspeakable visions of the individual
- No time for poetry but exactly what is
- Visionary tics shivering in the chest
- In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
- Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
- Like Proust be an old teahead of time
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
- Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
- Accept loss forever
- Believe in the holy contour of life
- Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
- Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
- No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
- Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
- Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
- You’re a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Mitra Tabrizian is an Iranian‐British artist and filmmaker whose photographic work has been exhibited and published widely and represented in major international museums and public collections. Solo museum shows include at Tate Britain in 2008 and the Venice Biennale, Iranian Pavilion in 2015. She was awarded the Royal Academyʼs Rose Award for Photography in 2013 and selected as one of Hundred Heroines: Celebrating Women in Photography Today, by the Royal Photographic Society in 2018. Her short film The Insider was made in collaboration with the Booker Prize Winner, Ben Okri and commissioned to accompany Albert Camus’ The Outsider, adapted for the stage by Okri. Screenings of her film-work include at the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Tabrizian’s latest photographic book Off Screen was published in 2019. Her critically acclaimed debut feature Gholam had a theatrical release in 2017 and is now available on BFI player, Amazon Prime and Itunes worldwide. Mitra is currently developing her second feature The Far Mountains with the British Film Institute. www.mitratabrizian.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
There’s something basically wrong with art exhibitions. To be more specific, art exhibitions of the type which have become commonplace today always leave me feeling dissatisfied, as though the effort of taking a shower, traveling to the gallery, making small talk with the other guests, is never compensated by the experience of seeing the images. For me, art exhibitions are a draining, de- energizing experience. Yet the best of art is always energizing. “Art”, as Ozenfant says, “tends to elevate us.” [His emphasis]
So there is a discrepancy here between the art itself and the exhibition experience. The only logical solution to the problem as I see it is that the environment and the atmosphere surrounding the art tends to dull its significance and drain its power. It is possible that I have become jaded over the years, and am suffering from ennui, a boredom with images, and that the surfeit of pictures in my past has produced an art-dyspepsia. I do not think this is true. I can still be immeasurably moved, excited, energized, angered and emotionally and intellectually charged by images in almost any other context than hanging in pristine splendor in a spartan gallery setting. I do not find the usual gallery ambiance very conducive to a personal relationship with a picture.
One reason for this state of affairs is that most modern shows are hung for commercial reasons – to sell pictures off the wall. I have nothing against this idea per se and it would be foolishly naive not to recognize the business of art. But I must admit that I feel (am encouraged to feel?) slightly guilty about the fact that I am there to (merely) enjoy the works and not buy any of them. Inevitably my appreciation of the images suffers unfairly because I am constantly reminded by the environment that these are commercial objects, and that although browsing is tolerated it is not wholly welcome.
I confess, also, to a feeling of intimidation in the average gallery. The environment reeks of wealth, privilege and preciousness. I am well aware of the efforts on the part of caring directors to obviate this anxiety in the gallery-goer, but the fact remains that galleries are inevitably associated with a small and favored class of society, one in which I suspect I do not belong. So I tiptoe around the hushed, empty space, staring with isolated reverence at perhaps a print, surrounded by acres of whitewash or fancy wall covering, as if in the presence of some sacred icon of Art. Anything the work itself might be saying to me is drowned out by the fear and guilt of being in the place at all.
I bet it was a lot more fun to visit exhibitions 100 years ago. Then, pictures were individually and often eccentrically framed, butted together from floor to ceiling, and competed for attention with floral wallpaper, gas fittings and furniture.
What a mess – but also what an adventure to find the memorable images! Of course the idea was usually taken to excess. I love the announcement of an exhibition of photographs held at the Royal Horticultural Hall, London, in 1907. 50,000 prints were on display for only three days. That would mean looking at just over 16,666 prints per day; a viewing of over 2,000 prints per hour, assuming an eight-hour day. Or approximately half-a- second for each photograph, and moving on to the next. I, for one, would welcome now and again the excitement, and even the mistakes, of a wall-packed, diverse and chaotic excess of pictures, in a multitude of styles and presentations and subjects – especially if the exhibition was held away from the gallery in a horticultural hall.
Perhaps this example is exaggerating towards the absurd. But the point of the story is sincere and it is this. The assumption that a small number of art pieces, isolated in wall space and with a presentation of rarified refinement is the only method of properly presenting art is equally absurd.
Over the years there have been many isolated experiments in alternative venues – in buses, projected onto the outside walls of buildings at night, on freestanding screens in shopping malls, propped against steps, trees and benches in public spaces, pinned to trees in parks, and a host of other creative spaces. When young photographers complain about the lack of gallery opportunities, my first reaction is that they lack the imagination to find alternatives.
Even establishment galleries can sometimes (but not often enough) expand their audience, and please me at the same time, by taking art into different environments. I fondly remember, for example, an exhibition arranged by the Eaton/Shoen Gallery. It wanted to celebrate the anniversary of its opening with a special exhibition featuring a large selection of works from its first eight shows. The exhibition was held in Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1957 desert home (known as the H. C. Price “grandmother” House) in Scottsdale, Arizona, although the gallery is based in San Francisco.
The art objects were hung on the walls, as if they belonged in the home, and sculpture was placed in the central atrium and in the surrounding desert. In the house, and unlike in a gallery, the art and all the accoutrements of a home came to a mutual understanding. The art did not proclaim itself like a prostitute in a hotel lobby, as it would have done in a sales place, but allowed the visitor to search out new friends in an atmosphere of relaxation and generosity. A Nassos Daphnis piece of plywood and paint was like an exotic plant of the future, placed by the atrium fountain – and perhaps it is no coincidence that Daphnis is also a distinguished horticulturist. A nice touch: an easy chair faced the Daphnis piece and looked out the garden to the pool. Similarly a large photo- mural by Keith Smith and Philip Lange was a folding screen which shielded the corridor to the bathroom. On a bookshelf nearby, what else, but artist-made books and Gathering Dust by Donald Lipski. The garden gazebo was in fact a cast aluminum, steel, wire and acrylic sculpture by Clarice Dreyer. And so it continued, each work of art complementing the environment, appearing naturally and inevitably a part of the home. They belonged.
A good example of this art/life synthesis was the set of photographs by Bernard Plossu. Not only do his images invite intimacy by the deceptive simplicity of his seeing, but their regular display down a corridor of the home gave the impression that the owner had proudly placed his own momentos of faces and places on the ideal wall. There was a similar inevitability about all the art works in the house. Because the art belonged there, so did the visitor. It was more than an impressive exhibition; it was an enjoyable, invigorating experience. And that, for me, is a rare enough event to be celebrated in these words.
Bill Jay: 1982
© The Estate of Bill Jay
https://billjay.com
An intriguing subject for speculation is that “photography” could have been invented, perfected – and forgotten – in previous histories, only to be re-discovered in Europe in the 1830s. Fascinating hints at such a possibility abound in many early writings from almost every culture. There is, as yet, no proof that photography existed in past ages but the number of myths, legends and suggestions in these old documents powerfully underline the notion that a direct transcription of reality was always a yearning dream.
A few examples picked at random will make the point.
One of the strangest legends concerns a Chinese emperor, who reigned about 1000 years B.C. He was shown a picture of an ox which exhibited a curious property. Every morning the ox came out of his frame, and went to graze in the meadows, returning at night, to resume his place in the frame, where he remained stationery until the next morning. The emperor sought in vain for an explanation of the mystery until an old priest remembered that the Japanese might have worked such a miracle. The Japanese, the priest explained, could coat oyster shells with various chemicals in order to capture colored images, which were invisible by day, but became visible by night. The priest concluded that the ox picture was made in this manner – and the fact that the image disappeared at daylight led to the belief that the ox had rejoined the flocks in the neighboring pastures. (1)
Another Chinese legend credits the sun with sometimes producing pictures of neighboring objects upon the ice-covered surfaces of lakes and rivers. (2) For the sake of historical completeness, however, it should be mentioned that a Victorian photographer D. Winstanley, did not consider this tale to be a legend, but a statement of fact. He had not only witnessed such ice-images himself, while wintering in Wisconsin in 1864, but also conducted experiments in the production of pictures by the action of cold. He termed these processes “thermography” or, more cumbersomely, “frigerography”. (3)
A similar phenomenon occurs in a French fable, Une Voyage Suppose, 1690, written by Francois Fenelon: “There was no painter in that country, but if anybody wished to have the portrait of a friend, of a picture, a beautiful landscape, or any other object, water was placed in great basins of gold or silver, and the object desired to be painted was placed in front of that water. After a while the water froze and became a glass mirror, on which an ineffaceable image remained.”
The most famous fictional account of a “photographic” process occurs in Giphantie (4), published in several editions during 1760-1761. Giphantie is the name of an idyllic island inhabited by supernatural beings. The hero’s guide explains how these beings make their “photographs” on canvas coated with “a most subtle matter, very viscous, and proper to harden and dry, but the help of which a picture is made in the twinkling of an eye.” The text continues with a detailed description of a process which is remarkable for its prophetic nature, even to the suggestion of the development of a latent image in a darkroom. The aim was “to fix these transient images” of nature without the intervention of the human hand. This is a fascinating passage for students of the pre-history of photography and extracts can be found in several history textbooks. (5)
More succinctly, a verse by one of the minor Latin poets, Statius (45-96 A.D.), included in a collection called The Silvae, describes a powerful mirror: “Do you only fix your glance upon it and leave your features here. Thus he spoke and he shut up the mirror with the picture trapped inside.”
Talking of mirrors, archaeologists at Olmec sites (6) have discovered highly polished concave mirrors of crystalline hematite which may have been used to throw images on flat surfaces. Perhaps these are ancient precursors to Alexander Wolcott’s little daguerreotype cameras, which used concave mirrors in place of lenses!
Other archaeological finds which aroused considerable interest in the late 19th century included a plano-convex lens, dated 720 B.C. (7), which is now in the Assyrian section of the British Museum. One year after this discovery it was reported (8) that digging operations among the ruined temples of Upper Egypt had unearthed an iron box to which was attached a glass object. Some of the more rash commentators pronounced that these items to be a camera and lens.
More intriguing and relevant, perhaps, is a document written by the monk Panselenus, c. 500 A.D., and claimed to be in the library of the Dionysian Convent on Mount Athos. According to Dr. Constantine Simonides, who drew attention to the document in 1864, the ancient monk described a “photographic” process very similar to the daguerreotype. Simonides’ conjecture is that Daguerre may have seen this document when he visited Mount Athos to make paintings for his diorama. (9)
Apart from China, Japan, Italy, France, Mexico, Assyria, Egypt and Greece, we must not neglect Russia and Germany as the possible repositories of photographic knowledge in ancient days. In 1857 it was reported that a manuscript was discovered which was a Russian translation of a German document 300 years old, giving a “very clear explanation of the principles of photography.” (10)
Whether or not there is any truth to these reports is, in one sense, irrelevant. Their purpose in this context is not to claim authenticity or even to suggest that photography was invented, and forgotten, in ages past. The point of these brief examples is this: irrespective of the truth, these dreams of “photography” in literature, myth, legend and archaeological speculation indicate that the desire for a direct faithful transcription of reality, unsullied by the hands of an artist, has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years.
My favorite story from the pre-history of photography is also one of the best documented; it is also one of the few examples which is accompanied by an illustration. In the collection of the Guimet Museum, Paris, is a Tibetan painting, Scenes from the life of Buddha. (11) A detail of the picture shows a painter coloring the image of Buddha which has been projected onto a canvas. The accompanying text describes the story.
A king of Tibet received a gift of a marvelous gem-covered suit of armour from a neighboring ruler. The king was at a loss to know what gift would be suitable in return for such a priceless treasure. So he visited and asked the advice of Buddha. Buddha’s reply was: draw on a piece of material my image and send it to him immediately. The king summoned the court painters and ordered them to produce the Buddha’s portrait. Unfortunately the painters were overawed by the Buddha and could not obtain a good likeness. The Buddha, noticing their difficulty, asked the king to provide some cloth. The Buddha then “projected his shadow” on the material, where it remained fixed, and said to the painters: now fill in the shape with colors.
It was clearly a miracle – and hence a fit subject to be included in Scenes from the life of Buddha. It is a delightful story (12) and hence a fit citation in the antecedents of today’s photography.
References:
1. Quoted in The Photographic News, 23 August 1889, p. 547
2. The History of Photography, W. Jerome Harrison, 1888, p. 11
3. “Pictures by the action of cold,” D. Winstanley, The Photographic News, 17 August 1888, pp. 517-518.
4. The title is an anagram of Tiphaigne; the author’s name being Charles Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche (1829-1774).
5. Including The History of Photography 1685-1914, by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, 1969. For those who wish to examine the original, The British Library collection includes several editions .
6. Most archaeologists believe the Olmec civilization arose along the Mexican Gulf coast, sometime before 1200 B.C.
7. The Amateur Photographer, 9 September 1892, p. 168. Sir David Brewster stated that this was used for magnifying purposes, but its actual purpose remains a mystery. 8. The Amateur Photographer, 16 June 1893, p. 396.
9. The Amateur Photographer, 16 June 1904, p. 466.
10. The Photographic News, 5 October 1860, p. 274
11. The archaeologist, Joseph Hackin, who studied the painting in 1913, insisted that the legend only dates back to 1734. Even if this late dating is correct, the story of a projected and “fixed” image on cloth, a century before the invention of photography, remains an interesting antecedent. Readers are referred to two publications by Hackin: “Les scenes figurees de la vie du Buddha d’apres les pentures tibetaines,” Memoires concernant l’Asie Orientale, Tome II, Paris, 1916, pp. 42-51; Guide catalogue du musee Guimet. Les collections bouddhiques, Paris-Bruxelles, 1923, pp. 77-78.
12. I am grateful to Jean Keim for first bringing my attention to this delightful story (Album, no. 12, 1970) and to G. Beguin, Conservateur, Musee Guimet, Paris, who provided me with references and copy prints.
Bill Jay: 1982
© The Estate of Bill Jay
https://billjay.com
In episode 239 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on respecting copyright, those that support you, the passing of George Lois and Allan Porter and photography baseball cards.
Plus this week, photographer Kieran Dodds 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?’
Kieran Dodds was born in 1980 and describes himself as a non-fiction photographer. After studying Zoology at university he trained at the Herald newspaper group in Glasgow, picking up national and international awards. His first self-assigned story The Bats of Kasanka received 1st prize in the World Press Photo awards and a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship then allowed him to document Tibetan culture in flux, as pastoral nomads were resettled in highland China, resulting in the body of work titled The Third Pole. On his return home Dodds focused on political upheaval using the landscape to consider depictions and realities of Scottish identity through the centuries to create Land of Scots. Most recently he has been exploring the major role of spiritual beliefs in the global conservation movement, funded by the Royal Photographic Society Environmental bursary. His first book Gingers was published in 2020 and his work has featured in the New York Times, GEO, Financial Times, La Repubblica, Die Zeit, Wall Street Journal, New Scientist, Sunday Times Magazine and National Geographic. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Caz and twin daughters Ada and Isobel. He is represented by Panos Pictures, London. www.kierandodds.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
I received an urgent message from the editor of a photographic magazine. He was publishing a feature on Arnold Newman and needed, now, a short personal appreciation of his life and work in order to spice up the piece. Could I oblige? This is the piece which was published with Arnold Newman’s response. If the […]
This is not a long read, it’s not a complex read, it’s not going to cost you any money and it may not provide a quick solution. The title is not clickbait, but it might seem that way. However, the reality is that these six questions are only the beginning. They are not a solution […]
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I never knew what the Anthropocene was until I started working in academia and amongst academics. Not any old academics, but photography academics. Not sure what the Anthropocene is? Let me explain. The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. Various start dates […]
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In episode 238 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting nostalgically on the importance of the camera shop, gateways to photography and not being too sensitive as a photographer. Plus this week, photographer Don Tonge takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in […]
I am not a fan of list writing. They are by nature subjective and exclusive, good books get left out and those chosen are either included based on personal bias or to keep publishers happy. Despite this I get asked to recommend books on a regular basis so I guess there must be a need […]
Whenever I speak about photography these days I start by defining where we as photographers are with the medium by denying its importance as a traditional practice. That may sound like a strange place to start, but let me explain. I am not being provocative simply to be provocative here, but to challenge a pre-conceived […]
In episode 237 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on taking inspiration from other photographs, post-graduate photo education and the lack of photography on the radio and television. Plus this week, photographer Max Miechowski takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in […]
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In episode 236 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the visual storyteller, not promoting exclusivity, cancelling art and respecting the wedding photographer. Plus this week, photographer Henry Iddon takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the […]
One of the most affecting films I have seen documenting the life and times of a photographer has to be Thomas Leach’s In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter released in 2012. In the year of its release I commissioned an interview with Thomas (the link to this interview is at […]
In this third episode of a new monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the importance of the photo book to photographers today, expectations, sustainability […]
Elon Musk has bought Twitter. That’s concerning for many. However, Twitter is not the big player in numbers or revenue that you may think. It’s in debt and has financial issues, its engagement numbers are not the biggest. Musk paid a lot, maybe too much and tried to get out of buying it. Social media […]
I recently instigated a new hashtag on our Twitter feed #ProPhotoWisdom based on an email I received from an art director friend. I had asked her to give a talk to my students on her career and to give the students an insight into client expectations of a professional photographer. In addition to doing this […]
I have heroes, cultural heroes and they have provided me with creative inspiration and aspiration throughout my life. Including but not only, Robin Day, Lucie Rie, Ernest Hemingway, Lenny Bruce, Patrick Heron, Bob Dylan, JD Salinger, Mark E Smith, Nina Simone, John Cooper Clarke, Irving Penn, Eugene Smith, Barbra Hepworth, Bernard Leach, Nick Cave, Edward […]
In episode 234 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the ethics of selling prints, fake images and the importance of family and friends to photographic practice. Plus this week, photographer Cecilia di Paolo takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in […]
A house is only worth what someone will pay for it. The owner may have a hope of what it will achieve, but the market will always decide the actual worth. This is true of whatever is bought and sold including photographic prints. You may buy a house to live in or to add to […]
In episode 233 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of research to photographers, asking questions you want answers for and getting ready for winter. Plus this week, photographer Math Roberts takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length […]
I recently saw a thread that had developed on Twitter discussing neurodiversity amongst photographers. It made me think. I have taught neurodivergent photographers, but I have never been able to identify what impact that neurodiversity had on the aesthetic of their image-making if any and neither could they. Neurodivergent is a nonmedical term that describes […]
I was long ago given the advice to breathe before I pressed the shutter on a camera, but I can’t remember who told me, or if no one did and that I read this piece of advice. Either way it is a piece of advice that has stayed with me. There are two reasons I […]
One of the issues of working as a commissioned photographer that is least conducive to understanding your own images is the need to deliver work quickly. The client demand for photographs to be delivered on a deadline denies the opportunity to spend time with the work making judgements slowly based upon reflection and analysis. The […]
In episode 232 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photographer and photo editor Eamonn McCabe, finding context to get paid and the positive and negative aspects of the photo community online. Plus this week, photographer Jane Hilton takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer […]
Did you know that there is such a thing as a dumb phone? It’s the opposite of a smartphone, obviously! It’s an old school phone purchased to make phone calls and used for texting. It has few if any apps and poor cameras incorporated in its offering. Drug dealers and criminals use them and call […]
I follow on Twitter a man called Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17). Michael is an actor but he also writes a weekly film column and describes himself as a cinephile, docuphile and drummer. He is also a ferocious tweeter constantly posting film and photography related content the majority of which is historical. Great films, forgotten films, interviews […]
In this second episode of a new monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on the importance of photographer’s writing, the curse of art speak, considering […]
Bob Dylan once stated that he used to care but things have changed. I agree with Bob, but I do still care. I care about the commissioned photographer today just as much as I did when I commissioned them. I care about the issues they experience and the future they face. It used to be […]
The essence of punk to me was always a sense of doing. To try without fear of failure, to use whatever you could beg, borrow or steal to make something happen, to have your voice heard. Fanzines were the epitome of this mindset. Handwritten, stapled, opinionated raw messages from the underground that took publishing and […]
Let me start by stating that I do not believe that there is one answer to this question, unless that answer is both and that provides an interesting conundrum. The pressure of making photographs can fill some with crushing anxiety, others find solace through making images and some photographers use photography to explore their own […]
In episode 230 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on not shooting the messenger, good conduct for photography competition judges, and taking inspiration from photographers, photography and anywhere else you can find it! Plus this week, photographer Roland Miller takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no […]
I have always believed that photography should be an open church. In some ways it is. Anyone can buy a camera, anyone can make photographs and anyone can share their photographs. It is pretty democratic in these senses. However, what the new photographer may not be aware of are the multitude of unwritten rules and […]
The golden era of the self-published photo book may be coming to an end. There are a number of reasons for this and the majority of them can be traced directly to the current economic crisis. Let’s begin with funding. Many self-published photo books use funding platforms such as Kickstarter to fund them, often relying […]
You may disagree with this statement or not understand why I used the word misunderstood, so let me explain what I mean. I spend a lot of my time explaining many aspects of photography, but I spend most of my time dealing with misconceptions. So often when addressing these I am met with the same […]
It’s hard to exaggerate the state of New York City in 1979. I remember the emptiness of the streets at night, the constant whoop-whoop of sirens and the almost hyperbolically anxiety-inducing 4am subway journeys. It was the underground Hellopolis of The Warriors, the subway-set gang movie that also came out in 1979. Subway stations were a set […]
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In episode 222 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott has lost his way, been set adrift upon the open seas and found himself on a desert island with only eight photo books for company, the complete works of William Shakespeare, the Bible and just one luxury item. In this episode he reveals the final four […]
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In episode 221 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott has lost his way, been set adrift upon the open seas and found himself on a desert island with only eight photo books for company, the complete works of William Shakespeare, the Bible and just one luxury item. In this episode he reveals four of those […]
Whilst making the film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay, UNP Founder and Curator Grant Scott spoke at length with Sue Davies OBE the founder of The Photographer’s Gallery not only about her memories of Jay, but also about the founding of her gallery. In this edited audio from that telephone conversation […]
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In episode 220 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the documentation of social/economic deprivation, whether class is relevant to making photographs and the slow death of the DSLR. Plus this week, photographer Neil Massey takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes […]
In episode 7 of this new podcast series Grant Scott continues his search for Bill Jay, and documents the opening and closing of the Photo Study Centre in the ICA, London with support from the founder of The Photographer’s Gallery, London, Sue Davies, curator William Messer, photographer Daniel Meadows, photographer/photo editor Bryn Campbell and one-time […]
Why do so many people constantly try to make photography as complicated as possible? Let me rephrase that, why do so many people involved with photography try to make it seem so complex? Is there an agenda at play here? I’ll leave you to answer that question, whilst I address the question of photography’s base […]
The photographer Terence Donovan used to ask me when I was talking about another photographer “What are they bringing to the party?”. His fellow photographer Brian Duffy would comment that photography had nothing new to offer. Duffy left the medium and became a specialist antique furniture restorer. Both have since died. I don’t think they […]
In episode 6 of this new podcast series Grant Scott continues his search for Bill Jay, and documents the end of Album magazine and Bill’s move to the ICA with support from the founder of The Photographer’s Gallery, London, Sue Davies and Bill Jay himself! You can see all issues of Album magazine here: https://billjay.com/album-magazine/ William ‘Bill’ […]
In episode 219 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on embracing experiences and life, empathy and context in photographic documentation, and protecting your legacy through your own actions. Plus this week, photographer Arne Svenson takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in […]
In episode 5 of this new podcast series Grant Scott continues his search for Bill Jay and reflects on the birth of Album magazine in 1970 with support from its publisher Tristram Powell and Bill Jay himself! You can see all issues of Album magazine here: https://billjay.com/album-magazine/ William ‘Bill’ Jay (12 August 1940 – 10 May […]
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In episode 218 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the word photograph, music and creativity, poetry and photography and positive news for some commissioned photographers. Plus this week, photographer Andrew Moore takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which […]
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William ‘Bill’ Jay (12 August 1940 – 10 May 2009) was a photographer, a writer on and advocate of photography, a curator, a magazine and picture editor, lecturer, public speaker and mentor. He was the first editor of Creative Camera Owner magazine, which became Creative Camera magazine (1967–1969) and founder and editor of Album magazine (1970–1971). Jay established the first gallery dedicated to […]
Anyone remember DTP? Desk Top Publishing? Well, I do because in the late 1980s and through the 1990s I heard it proclaimed as the future. The democratisation of design. Everyone could be a graphic designer, just by purchasing a software package, just as today anyone can be a photographer by owning a smartphone. I hope […]
In this talk recorded by the Royal Photographic Society Contemporary Group on Monday June 20th 2022, UNP Founder and Curator Grant Scott addresses the constantly shifting sands of engagement with the photographic medium. Noting that we read books and acquire a respect for how difficult it is to write and that we are taught how […]
In episode 217 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the definition of contemporary photography, avoiding labels and he announces a new addition to the A Photographic Life broadcasts. Plus this week, photographer Jillian Edelstein takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes […]
We have welcomed many informed contributors to the A Photographic Life podcast over the past years, but only one person has repeatedly joined us to discuss the world of photography. Bill Shapiro’s conversations with Grant Scott have always been well received, with requests for them to be longer and more frequent. Therefore due to popular […]
Let’s start with a brief and concise description of Dyslexia. The British Dyslexia Association describes it this way. Dyslexia is a learning difficulty which primarily affects reading and writing skills. However, it does not only affect these skills. Dyslexia is actually about information processing. Dyslexic people may have difficulty processing and remembering information they see […]
In episode 4 of this new podcast series Grant Scott continues his search for Bill Jay and reflects on the importance of Creative Camera magazine and the impact Bill had on photography in the UK as its editor before leaving in December 1969. Bill Jay was a photographer, writer on and advocate of photography, curator, […]
In episode 216 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photographs as memories of lives lived and lost, and reducing the pressure on making work. Plus this week photographer Mickey Smith takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she […]
If like me you have spent your life collecting vinyl records and subsequently CDs you will be well aware of the importance of being able to find what you are looking for within a reasonable timespan, but also recognise the mindset required to instigate and maintain a system of order. I don’t have that mindset. […]
I am writing this article on the basis of the myths I hear most often. You may not hear them, you may hear others, that’s okay. Please write your own and dispel them at your leisure. Here are mine. 1. Photography is about being a generalist. Don’t be a generalist, be a specialist, an expert, […]
In episode 215 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photography in your fifties, the importance of integrity in documentation, and learning from the past, whilst listening to the present. Plus this week photographer Shane Rocheleau takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 […]
Let’s start with the ‘Decisive Moment’, or if you prefer, “if your pictures are not good enough, you’re not close enough”, or maybe “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Or even “the first 10,000 photographs are your worst”. Your call. We have all heard these phrases, dictates and possible truisms many times. I’m not […]
The title of this article may be perceived as being contentious by some, even offensive, perhaps sacrilegious, but let me explain. I often talk about teaching photography because it is something I do. It is not the only thing I do, but it is a major part of my life, it is something I know […]
In episode 214 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on writing your own biography, post-graduate education for photographers and travel photography without travelling. Plus this week photographer Dominic Davies takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the […]
I have been asked this question by three different people, in three different ways over the last week. Each time my answer was yes! Nothing controversial there you might say and you would be right, but let me make my answer a little deeper. Each of my questioners owned cameras they did not understand. They […]
I started teaching photography within a university setting in 2012. Ten years on and I am still trying to work out teaching, but what I do know is that as soon as I find a template and start repeating myself it will be time for me to stop. I began with a common misunderstanding, the […]
In this extended episode Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation they discuss NFTs, photography in the Metaverse, photo books and photo book clubs, photographic curation speak and digital conflict imagery. Useful Links for this episode:www.fastcompany.com/90736185/how-the-metaverse-will-reinvent-the-art-of-photographywww.ceros.com/inspire/originals/how-best-art-directors-use-instagram Bill ShapiroBill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary […]
In-between what? Well, in-between the moments when the planets collide, when prior expectations suggest that the photograph should be made. I recently read that a group of photographers work was post-documentary, that it had not been editorialised or had narrative placed upon it. I neither understand the need for such a label or the description […]
“People are crazy, times are strange, I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range, I used to care, but things have changed.” Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed. I do still care, but Bob is right, people are crazy, times are strange and things have changed. Let me explain. The economic global climate and constant prophesying […]
In episode 212 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the price of residential workshops, the future of portraiture and bullying in photography. Plus this week photographer William Saunders takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the […]
I recently wrote an article about photographing actors, that made me think about photographing musicians. For a while I tended to photograph actors in studios, but with shrinking budgets I find myself today making photographs of them in their homes. I prefer this more personal setting. The idea of spending time together and photographing musicians […]
Throughout my life and career I have met, known and photographed many actors. This has led me to divide them into a number of different categories. The first divide is between stage, and film/television, the second between those who understand that being photographed is part of their profession, and those who do not. The third […]
In episode 211 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott hands over the podcast to five of his photography graduates to explain what photography means to them. iThe students contributing to this week’s episode include Cameron Howard, Laura Skog, Jack Rees, Sasha Burdian and Sophie Jeffreys. All five students are graduates from the Photography BA (HONS) […]
I write on all aspects of photography based on my personal experience, in that sense I am at heart a journalist reflecting on life as I see it. My experiences provide me with content and shape my opinion. It does not provide absolutes or facts, but I hope at times to suggest answers alongside questions. […]
In episode 3 of this new podcast series Grant Scott continues his search for Bill Jay and hears from photographer Alen MacWeeney and Anna Ray Jones about Bill’s relationship with Tony, Tony’s beginnings as a photographer and the impact a trip to New York in 1968 had on the history of photography in the UK. […]
I often talk about identifiable visual language when discussing a photographer’s body of work as being a positive attribute of a photographer’s practice. The personal approach to image- making, based upon a concentrated exploration of the medium that allows images to stand out from the crowd, to be recognised as being associated with one particular […]
Every enthusiast photography magazine, and website has run a feature on photographing landscapes, birds and flowers at some point. Some do this every month, and I have no problem with that. Why would I? These are the ‘go to’ subject choices for many photographers, from the young beginner to the seasoned camera club veteran. They […]
This post is illustrated with a selection of images of women featured on photographic magazine covers, none of which have any relation to reality. They are illustrations, perceived ideals of perfection created with digital brushes, and software. I had many examples to choose from. When I worked on Elle magazine back in the 1980s, the […]
In episode 210 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the documentation of the everyday, the latest NFT news, not needing rules and listening to young photographers. Plus this week photographer Edmund Clark takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length […]
I have been working with a talented young photographer whose images are intimate, sensitive, and honest. Documenting women through long form projects she gains the trust of the people she is photographing, and is consequently given access to the most private areas of their lives. Interestingly when she shows the work or when the work […]
There is no programme, no set of rules, no agreed approach, no Holy Grail, no magic answer in either book, workshop or in fact any form to avoid photographic extinction. However, the old ways have gone and they are not coming back. Let me repeat that in a slightly different way, the old ways are […]
I recently saw a tweet by the film and paper company Ilford asking “what is your best photograph that breaks the rules?” In itself inoffensive click bait created to instigate some follower interaction, but it is a question that illustrates a traditional approach to photography that in my opinion restricts the progression of the medium. […]
In episode 209 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the digital forum, the mindful photographer and photographic degree shows. Plus this week photographer Rashod Taylor 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 […]
There are few areas of photography as contentious, and ethically important as the representation of the naked form. For decades the female nude was a consistently repeated trope in photography magazines, and books, images primarily created by men. Today such imagery can be seen as gratuitous, manipulative or disrespectful. Published to provide titillation for the […]
Let me put some meat on the bone of the title of this article by listing some of the photographers who spent their earliest days to the side of the camera making suggestions, rather than behind it pressing the button. Irving Penn (Saks Fifth Avenue), Tony Ray Jones (a car magazine), Hans Feurer (advertising), Peter […]
In episode 208 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the role of the viewer in photography, sadness within documentary photography and why art directors can be an important factor to photographic success. Plus this week photographer David Butow takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no […]
I recently wrote about how my father opened my eyes to an aspect within photography I had never noticed https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/04/18/is-documentary-photography-obsessed-with-sad/ and now my ten-year-old daughter has done the same. Again the revelation occurred after visiting a group exhibition, but the observation was different, if just as direct and insightful. My daughter stated “Why is there […]
I often hear of people’s bad experiences when engaging with fellow photographers in online forums. Photography can be a lonely business so a desire to connect with others is a natural desire so here is a series of suggestions for anyone who is engaged with online photo forums and pages. The majority of posts are […]
The viewfinder on a camera only allows for one eye to see through it. Of course a digital camera presents the opportunity of using a screen on which to compose an image, but it is the viewfinder that allows you to completely isolate that image and yourself from its surrounding noise. To make minute adjustments […]
In episode 207 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on keeping it simple, ignorant criticism, lack of empathy, and not placing your agendas on others. Plus this week photographer Ian Brown takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he […]
If a successful portrait relies upon a connection between the photographer and the person being photographed, the responsibility for that connection lies with the photographer. This does not mean that only gregarious, outgoing, self-confident people can make photographic portraits but there is an invisible line that exists between the self and the other. I usually […]
I recently attended an exhibition of British documentary photography with my father. The exhibition featured mainly black and white images made during the 1960s, 70s and 80s by some of the most recognisable names making documentary work during those decades. Martin Parr, John Bulmer, David Hurn, Homer Sykes, Daniel Meadows, Chris Killip amongst many others. […]
The comedian Michael MacIntyre does a skit on the ‘ man drawer’, the drawer somewhere in your house that is filled full of ‘useful’ stuff most often he says created by a man. My wife has one of these drawers in her desk so I am not sure if such a creation is defined by […]
Buying photo books can easily lead to an addiction. Small print runs, limited edition prints, and high demand are temptations that it can be hard to ignore. I have in my lifetime given in to those temptations with gusto resulting in two major sales of my collections of books running into the 1000s. It was […]
In episode 206 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the truth within images of conflict, whether smartphones have become too smart and he suggests a Photo Life Hack to save you money. Plus this week photographer Tricia Porter takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no […]
I never use the word ‘commercial’ to describe commissioned photography for a very simple reason. All photography is commercial, in my eyes, if a commercial transaction takes place, that includes the sale of a print, a book, or even an NFT! Therefore, commissioned is a more accurate description of the practice of being asked to […]
The longer you do something, the more success you have the greater the pressure gets. That’s my experience any way. I was recently asked what the best photograph was that I had made in the previous week. I answered that I hadn’t made one that fulfilled that criteria. My wife had made a photograph of […]
In episode 204 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on why photographers feel the need to label themselves, keeping photography simple, the importance of subject matter and trying to buy a camera.
Plus this week photographer Mimi Plumb 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?’
Born in Berkeley, California and raised in the suburbs of San Francisco, Mimi Plumb received her MFA in Photography from SFAI in 1986, and her BFA in Photography from SFAI in 1976. She has served on the faculties of the San Francisco Art Institute, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since the 1970s, Plumb has explored subjects ranging from her suburban roots to the United Farm Workers movement in the fields as they organized for union elections. Her first book, Landfall, published in 2018, and is a collection of her images from the 1980s. Landfall was shortlisted for the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award 2019, and the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2019. Her second book, The White Sky, a memoir of her childhood growing up in suburbia, was published in September, 2020. The Golden City, her third book, was published early this year and focuses on her many years living in San Francisco. Her photographs are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Collection Deutsche Börse in Germany, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pier 24, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. She is a 2017 recipient of the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, and has received grants and fellowships from the California Humanities, the California Arts Council, the James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography, and the Marin Arts Council. She lives in Berkeley, California. www.mimiplumb.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 203 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed in a conversation with photographer Tom Pilston* *and reflecting on the need for a humanitarian approach when documenting war and conflict, the role of the photo-journalist and the importance of empathy in photography.
Above: The Boy with His Rat in a Sock, Prezemysl, Poland. Tom Pilston 2022. Tom Pilston began worked in the music and fashion industry before moving to photojournalism in the late 1980s. As a staff photographer on the then newly launched Independent newspaper Tom worked across its titles specialising in photo essays from the UK and abroad, travelling to Bosnia, Burma, Sudan and Kosovo among many others. In 2007, he decided to go freelance, covering Barak Obama’s first election and the war in Syria on a number of assignments. Throughout his career, Tom has worked for and with numerous charities and non-profit organisations, highlighting the work they do around the world. Tom’s clients include The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek and Le Point magazine. He regularly works with Save the Children, UNICEF and Christian Aid. Tom has won World Press Photo awards, a Nikon award, an Amnesty International Award and numerous others. Last week he was documenting the Ukrainian refugee crisis on the Polish boarder. www.tompilston.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 1 of this new podcast series Grant Scott begins his search for Bill Jay and hears from photographers John Benton Harris, Patrick Ward, David Hurn, Bryn Campbell, Homer Sykes, Brian Griffin, Martin Parr, Paul Hill and Bill’s sister Sue Jay. He even hears Bill’s side of the story.
Bill Jay was a photographer, writer on and advocate of photography, curator, magazine and picture editor, lecturer, public speaker and mentor. He was the first editor of “the immensely influential magazine Creative Camera and founder and editor of Album magazine. He is the author of more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography, and roughly 400 essays, lectures and articles. His own photographs have been widely published, including a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is also known for his portrait photographs of photographers. www.donotbendfilm.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 202 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on Stephen Shore’s most recent book, the Ukraine #PhotoPrint Day, Giles Duley’s ‘No More War’ and the impact images of conflict have upon us.
Plus this week photographer Àsìkò 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?’
Àsìkò Ade Okelarin was born in London and spent his formative years in Nigeria. He is now based in London, working as Àsìkò, the Nigerian word for ‘the moment’. He describes himself as a visual artist who expresses his ideas through the medium of photography and mixed media. His work is constructed in the narrative that straddles between fantasy and reality as a response to his experiences of identity, culture and heritage. Each series explores the limits of femininity and masculinity, spirituality and beauty and our relationship with nature and understanding a sense of self in the world we live in. Àsìkò’s visual aesthetic comes with adornment and choreographed movement, juxtaposed with atmospheric locations, symbolism and a distinct seductive charge. His images have been widely exhibited in the USA, France, Nigeria, Norway and the UK, reported on by CNN Africa and the BBC and published in titles including Afropunk, The Guardian, Schon Magazine, 125 Magazine, Blanck Mag, and Pride. www.asiko.co.uk
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
*Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You?* including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/**
© Grant Scott 2022
I think that we can all agree that to make, take, and find photographs, the photographer needs subject matter. Something, someone or somewhere to make images of and with. I think that we can also agree that a photographer can survive without Photoshop, a darkroom, and studio lighting techniques.
These are not essentials they are add-ons, areas to explore once you have decided upon your subject matter, the stories you want to tell based on your interests, and passions outside of photography. I understand that these are easy to structure as lessons that can be graded based on information, given, remembered and regurgitated within an exam process, but they miss the point of introducing students to the true nature of photography. Photography should be fun, engaging and rewarding, and should be understood at the very beginning as a tool with which you can document your life and the life of others. As such the first introduction to photography should in my opinion be subject based.
A sixteen or seventeen year-old student should not in my opinion be encouraged to replicate images by those thirty years or more older than they are. They should be introduced to previous makers and current practitioners, but they also need to be encouraged to use photography to show the world how they see it. They should be encouraged to take risks, make mistakes, and fail, and rewarded with high grades for doing so. Playing safe should be discouraged and marked as a failure to explore the medium.
For photography and other similar creative practices to be successfully taught within schools requires those who teach the subject to understand that it must exist outside of the frameworks used to teach maths, science or any other traditional subject.
Photography also requires the teachers to understand the medium they are teaching outside of that framework. Too often art teachers are given the responsibility of teaching photography with no true understanding, experience or training in the medium. The teaching equivalent of learning French from someone that does not speak French, but that speaks German, as all languages are the same! Well of course they are not, and yet that does not stop this practice continuing in many schools and colleges.
This lack of understanding amongst the teaching staff is obviously going to be passed on to their students. The result is that those students see photography no differently than other subjects they are studying. Not part of their life but part of the exam system.
This leaves these students with a misunderstanding of what photography is, what it can be, and how it fits into the context of the creative industries. Not a problem you may think, as long as they pass their exam, and I would agree, however, it is a major issue for anyone looking to continue their study of the photographic medium at university. Prior to dedicating three years to studying any subject, and the financial commitment that incurs, it is essential that any student should understand what they are about to study, the level of engagement required and the essential nature of that subject. Without this expensive mistakes can be made.
Therefore, my suggestion to any teacher engaged with teaching students photography at school is to reach out to the photographic community, and invite photographers into your school. To show their work and to speak about the realities of working as a photographer, client expectations, the creativity required and the level of intellectual enquiry involved in making photographs.
Teachers need to focus on encouraging students to document their lives with photography, using whatever camera they have to hand. To make images of their friends and families, passions and interests, at their part time jobs and of the people they interact with.
They need to promote the use of the smartphone as a camera to make stills and moving image, and give students the freedom to explore photography in their everyday lives, from posters to magazines, from Instagram to physical exhibitions and photo books. In short, to encourage them to have fun, whilst exploring context. Get them to read books, listen to podcasts, watch films, explore politics and become engaged with the world around them. All of these will improve their photography.
Without all of this you are not teaching photography as it is today, but photography as it is described to pass an exam. An exam that has very little relevance to the subject being studied. Photography is a visual global language that shapes everyones lives to some effect, and therefore of course it should be taught in schools. However, to be taught effectively it needs to be taught like a language, with nuance and understanding not as a series of techniques.
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
The past year has seen much discussion concerning ownership of photography. The buying and selling of a digital file or perhaps more accurately a link to a file, but the recent events in Ukraine have presented the medium in a new light or more accurately a very old light, in fact the oldest of lights that take us back to its earliest days.
Roger Fenton’s Crimean War photographs represent one of the earliest systematic attempts to document a war through photography. Fenton, who spent less than four months in the Crimea in 1855 – a war that was fought primarily on a peninsula extending into the Black Sea, barely connected to Ukraine, but connected none the less – produced 360 photographs under trying conditions. However, whilst these photographs present a substantial documentary record of the participants and the landscape of the war, there are no actual combat scenes, nor are there any scenes of the devastating effects of war within his documentation.
Fenton had purchased a former wine merchant’s van and converted it into a mobile darkroom, hired an assistant, and traveled to the Crimea, traveling under royal patronage and with the assistance of the British government.
While Fenton was in the Crimea he had ample opportunity to photograph the horrors of war, but he shied away from such views that would have portrayed the war in what may have been perceived by some within the establishment and the populace as negative and unpatriotic. His intention was not to create a realistic representation of war and there may be several reasons for this, including the limitations of photographic techniques available at the time; inhospitable environmental conditions; and political and commercial concerns. However, today we may see this as an avoidance of the documentarian’s duty, perhaps the images he created would be described as ‘fake news’, maybe as a response to a situation from a contemporary art practice perspective, not news, but art. Whatever, the reasons behind Fenton’s images they give us an insight into a reality, but not the actual reality.
From then to now, photography has been questioned concerning its ability to reflect the truth. The best we can accept is that it portrays a truth, a truth that has been directed by the photographer, their views, their position, their intentions to include and exclude, their ability to create narrative.
Images that have come from Ukraine have been attacked by the Russian state as being false, manipulated and staged. The photographic truth denied by those to whom the evidence is an unconvenient truth. Images that are informing the west of atrocity and which may in the future be used as evidence of war crimes.
The photographic image is as important today as it was in 1855, despite its death as a communicative media being repeatedly proclaimed, the democratisation of the ability to create both the still, and the moving image has lead to the Ukraine War already being the most visually documented in history. The citizen journalist is central to this, but the professional photographers working through news agencies, associations and organisations are providing us with a consistent narrative, underpinned with journalistic understanding.
As I write this article just three weeks into the war, images are being identified as being iconic signposts of the level of atrocity that is occurring. Images created at train stations, on desolate roads, makeshift bridges and in the ruins of a maternity hospital are already being burned into our visual data banks.
I am beginning to identify an aesthetic in these photographs born of the cold Ukrainian light, technical abilities of today’s digital cameras in low-light, and the colour palette created by the indiscriminate bombing of buildings. The scorched earth policy to life made real amongst the mud and snow. Hyper sharp digital images, that reveal every detail of the horror.
Where the analogue documentation of past conflicts has produced grain and blur, digital capture is bringing clarity and often a painterly representation of situations and environments reminiscent of a Breugel painting or a Goya depiction of atrocity. This is a difficult balance for the photographer to maintain. The use of post-production tools including vignette, colour intensity, contrast and colour manipulation have been contentious discussion points since the adoption of digital photography by photo-journalists. Perhaps, too often recently I have seen images from Ukraine described on social media as being ‘painterly’ as if that is a good thing. I am not sure that it is, as the idea of the painter as a reliable creator of truth is hard to accept.
Fenton’s photographic assignment did not prove as lucrative as he had hoped. Sets of his Crimea photographs went on sale in November of 1855, but by December 1856, the publisher, Thomas Agnew & Sons, had disposed of their unsold sets, prints, and negatives at auction. When the Crimean War ended in February 1856, so did the interest in its photographic documentation.
There is no doubt that the interest in all images of conflict fades as the images created pass from news to history. The multitude of images created of any war are always reduced to a series of iconic images that remain in the public consciousness. They are not images to be bought or sold as mere product, they must be respected and revered as important artefacts of a reality that could and sadly does get repeated.
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
Image: Roger Fenton. The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Ukraine, 1855. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
In episode 201 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on images from Ukraine, the importance of crediting the photographer and why you shouldn’t pitch ideas to magazines.
Plus this week photographer Victoria Gewirz 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?’
Victoria Gewirz is a photojournalist who grew up in a news-loving family. Her father was a paperboy who later subscribed to three different newspapers and her father-in-law was a “newsie,” whose family owned a newsstand. She was surrounded by copies of Life magazine growing up, and real life drew her toward a major in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism at the Boston University School of Public Communication. Gewirz’s work has been published in The Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, and Town and Country magazine and is included within collections at Fidelity Investments, The David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, and numerous private collections. She is a two-time winner of The Julia Margaret Cameron Awards juried by Elizabeth Avedon and has been awarded the Photographer of the Year Award by The New England Association for Media Photographers. However, a career turning point for Victoria was an assignment to photograph the The Big Apple Circus for the Boston Children’s Museum. She was mesmerized by the timelessness and pageantry of the circus and”never stopped going back.” www.victoriagewirzphotography.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
*Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You?* including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/**
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 200 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the past 200 episodes of the podcast and presenting a ‘super edit’ of past contributors answering the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’. He also introduces his new podcast series In Search of Bill Jay.
Super Edit Contributors in order of appearance.
Tom Stoddart
Daniel Meadows
Alys Tomlinson
Ilona Langbroek
Ashleigh Coleman
David Rothenberg
The Guzman
Harry Borden
Fabio Ponzio
Jason Langer
Kenneth Jarecke
Katherine MacDaid
Jill Hannes
Mark Klett
Greg Marinovich
Paul Lowe
Anna Boyiazis
Andrew Jackson
Jeremy Nicholl
Simon Roberts
Yukari Chikura
Polly Alderton
Seamus Murphy
Sirrka Konttinen
Yael Martinez
Venetia Dearden
Derek Ridgers
Dan Burn Forti
David Eustace
Julia Fullerton Batten
JM Golding
Stephen Dupont
Tim Davis
Robert Trachtenberg
Ruth Lauer Manetti
Richard Ansett
Reuben Wu
Pixy Liao
Paul Russell
Mona Kuhn
Melissa Breyer
Buku Sarker
Chris Floyd
Alys Tomlinson
Aaron Turner
AD Coleman
Brian Griffin
Claire Thomas
Cathal McNaughton
Craig Easton
Dafydd Jones
Danna Singer
Ed Kashi
Jim Mortram
Daniel Meadows
David Eustace
Art Streiber
Tom Oldham
Clare Strand
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2022
As photographers we are communicators. How well we communicate is a matter of what we are trying to communicate. I would also add that our ability to communicate is also reliant upon how well we understand what we want others to understand. It is not a requirement of anyone to understand everything, but it is the responsibility of the communicator and the receiver to at least make an effort to do so.
“And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin.’”
Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall. 1963
I consider this to be a simple and common sense approach to the concept of communication, and yet for some reason writing about photography so often seems to head off into another direction. I am not just speaking of academic or ‘art’ speak in this context, although, both can sometimes feel as if they have no intention of communicating anything other than a desire to confuse through a cascade of language. What I am addressing is the inability of the photographer to explain the ‘why’ behind a body of work.
I think this is most often the case because the photographer themselves may not have given this enough thought and consideration before commencing a project.
Now, I know that many photographers prefer to not have a focused destination for a body of work, and prefer instead to roll with the punches, and allow a project to find its own pace, purpose and trajectory. On that journey they may well find an understanding of why they are engaged with the work, but in my experience this process can also lead to confusion. When multiple rabbits holes are available the temptation to explore them can be irresistible with a resultant loss of focus on what you are doing, and why you are doing it. The result can be a multitude of unfinished projects that never come to fruition leading to frustration and disappointment.
If the work does come to a conclusion, perhaps online, in print or within an exhibition context the need for an explanation of the ‘why’ behind the work will become a necessary element of the finished artefact. A context for the work will need to be supplied, and the more succinct, and clear that context is the more likely it will be that the work will be understood.
Too often I read text accompanying images that seems to have no relationship with the photographs being shown.
This can be as a result of a process that places an over importance of writing context before the work has been made or as a need for a context to be grafted on to a body of work that never had one. Either way the pressure to explain the unexplainable or the non-understood ensures a disconnect between the photographers intentions and the audiences engagement for, and with the work.
I prefer to work backwards. To have a set destination for the work and an outlined journey for it to take. I ensure that I understand what I am doing, and why, but remain open to the work, and my intentions to evolve. I leave space for change built on a spine of intention. This may not work for everyone of course.
Like Bob Dylan I want to know my song well before I start singing and I want to ensure that I know it really well before I present it to an audience.
“Now I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you.
Beat on, cheat on, mistreat you,
Simplify you, classify you,
Deny, defy, mystify you.”
Bob Dylan: All I Really Want to Do. 1964
My intention as a communicator is to communicate, not to confuse or alienate the viewer or a potential audience. To do so would be to make work with an agenda of exclusivity and that makes no sense when telling stories designed to be shared. To do this I need to understand my work, and be able to convey that understanding simple and effectively. I wonder how many photographers feel the same?
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 199 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on creativity, working as a photographer, and if NFTs are the result of a perfect storm or just a passing squall.
Plus this week photographer Mike Abrahams 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?’
Born in 1952 in South Africa Abrahams moved to Liverpool in 1955 and grew up there. Aged 12, he discovered the magic of the darkroom under the stairs in a friend’s house and became hooked on photography. In 1970 after failing to get into medical school he enrolled on a dentistry course in the hope that he could switch to medicine but he was expelled after just two terms. In 1972 he enrolled on a photography course at the Polytechnic of Central London and discovered Henri Cartier Bresson, Don McCullin, Leonard Freed, Robert Capa and Marc Riboud who had visited the course to show his work which Abrahams found transforming. In 1975 he began working as a freelance photographer with the Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph, The Observer Magazine, and started to work with international magazines and newspapers, covering stories in Southern Africa, Gaza, Cyprus, Israel, Eastern Europe, Northern Ireland, the UK as well as portraits of those in the arts and literature. In 1981 he was a co-founder of Network Photographers the internationally renowned picture agency. His 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. Other important assignments have included coverage of the division of Cyprus, 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, The Jews of Damascus and Bradford’s Muslims and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Awards for this work included the World Press Photo Award in 2000, the book Faith was a finalist in the Design Week Awards and the work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and Europe. Cafe Royal Books have published six books of his work in 2022 and his work from Northern Ireland was published as Still War – Photographs From The North of Ireland in 1989. His work has been widely exhibited and is held in the Museum of London and Science and Media Museum, London. Abrahams current landscape work has been exploring the relationship between structures and their environment and he is based in London. www.mikeabrahams.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
*Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You?* including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/**
© Grant Scott 2022
Meet Bill Jay, evangelist, bible salesman, photographer, editor, writer, curator, lecturer, historian, instigator, provocateur, teacher, mentor and rattlesnake shooter, Bill Jay was all of these and more. A man whose influence on photography in the UK and US from the mid-sixties until his death in Costa Rica in 2009 cannot be underestimated.
In 2018 the film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, UK. It was the culmination of two years work. A film made by just two people, myself, and filmmaker Tim Pellatt. The team that created the film was as small as the budget. It was a self-funded project with no additional financial support and yet its impact within the photographic community in both the UK and US belied its humble origins.
Bill Jay had been forgotten and dismissed by many talking of the photographic history of the late 20th Century in the UK. UNP founder and curator Grant Scott sought to find out why and to put the record straight.
In this podcast series Scott tell’s Bill Jay’s story and that of his own journey searching for the truth surrounding Jay’s life. Featuring new interviews and material not included in the film, this podcast aims to place Jay into his rightful place within the written and oral photographic history of the late 20th Century.
www.donotbendfilm.com
https://billjay.com
www.cordialav.co.uk
www.lauraritchie.com
http://grantcampbell.co.uk
Image: Copyright David Hurn/Magnum
© Grant Scott 2022
Since the screening of Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay www.donotbendfilm.com UNP Founder and Curator Grant Scott has continued to research the life of Bill Jay and the impact that he had on those around him. Subsequent research has unearthed further lost artefacts and stories that make connections between photographers and bring insight into how inter-connected the photographic community was in the 1960s and 70s between the UK and US.
In Search of Bill Jay will take the listener on a journey as Scott describes the process of researching Jay, making the film and subsequent events since its first screening at the Martin Parr Foundation in 2018. In Search of Bill Jay will feature voices not heard in the film and stories not told, it will bring clarity to myths and suggest further areas for research. Just like the film and the man himself, it will be a fast paced rollercoaster ride!
All episodes will be posted at www.unitednationsofphotography.com and wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, and iTunes on the A Photographic Life podcast channel.
Image: Copyright: David Hurn/Magnum
In episode 198 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on a considered response to the podcast and hearing from Jim Mortram about #PhotoPrintDay.
Plus this week photographer Alen MacWeeney 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?’
You can follow Jim Mortram on Twitter @JAMortram, Photo Print Day @PhotoPrintDay and don’t forget to use #PhotoPrintDay
Born in Dublin in 1939, Alen MacWeeney became a press photographer for a local newspaper in 1952. One of his earliest bodies of work was of the semi-nomadic Irish travellers, images that were also turned into a movie, broadcast on RTÉ and BBC 4, and included in Itinérances, 28th Festival Cinéma d’Alès, which MacWeeney co-directed. MacWeeney left Ireland and moved to New York in 1961 to assist Richard Avedon. His work was getting noticed, resulting in them being shown in the Museum Of Modern Art. After working on glamorous shoots for influential titles such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in Paris and New York City, MacWeeney had become disenchanted with the highly stylised nature and limitations of studio photography, and was becoming more interested and influenced by the work of documentary photographers such as Robert Frank and he returned to Ireland in late 1962. He then began an extensive career in commercial and editorial photography. His personal work from the mid-1960s capture the misty streets and cozy pubs of Dublin with Joycean affection. There are also sprawling country landscape views with flocks of sheep and ancient cairns. MacWeeney’s best-known work from this period is his series and book Travellers: Tinkers No More. At a time when this centuries-old itinerant culture shifted from horse-drawn conveyance to motor-hauled caravans, the he explored their makeshift camps with his camera and tape recorder. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. MacWeeney’s photographs have appeared internationally in magazines and books: among them, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, G.Q., Life, The World of Interiors, American Photographer, and Aperture, amongst many others. His work has been published books including: Irish Walls; & Ireland, Stone Walls and Fabled Landscapes, Bloomsbury Reflections, Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden, The Home of the Surrealists, Spaces for Silence, Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More, Once Upon a Time in Tallaght, and, Under the Influence. MacWeeney’s archive resides at Cork University and he lives in New York and Sag Harbor, with annual travels to Ireland. www.alenmacweeney.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
*Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You?* including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/**
© Grant Scott 2022
I have always been drawn to a lo-fi approach to music, more attitude than aptitude. A ragged guitar appeals more to me than a noodling guitar, energy and passion over professionalism and production values. I feel the same about photography. I’m more Robert Frank than Jeff Wall.
There are two specific reasons for this. One is that I grew up in the London of Punk, New Wave and the ‘Do-It-Yourself’ ethos of the late 1970s and 80s, and the other is that I never studied photography in a formal environment. Therefore I have always been more interested in the doing, than the outcome, the process than the artefact, and I have never known more than I need to know.
I am not a manual reader, instructions follower or YouTube ‘how to’ watcher.
Enthusiasm, ambition and creativity have always been more interesting instigators to making photographs to me than technical expertise, and aesthetic perfection. In an analogue world the happy accident could be turned to your advantage. The darkroom could be your friend or in my case the expert printers to whom I delivered my under, over, or occasionally well-exposed film. I never learnt how to print, or how to master colour transparency film. Colour neg was my weapon of choice, and I soon learnt that with the help of a fast film, a tripod and a stop push at the darkroom I could build a successful photographic career.
Now many of you may be reading this and throwing your hands up in disbelief and anger. How dare someone with so little technical knowledge class themselves as a professional photographer. Well, I mastered my camera (a Hasselblad) and my light meter (a Minolta) and that was all I needed. In the studio I moved lights around until things looked as I wanted them too, and a Polaroid test confirmed or questioned my decisions. My learning was on the job, and not dictated to by pre-ordained classical lighting set-ups.
The move to digital of me was therefore simple. I had learnt to ‘get things right’ in camera (lighting, composition etc) and continued to use my light meter whilst occasionally luxuriating in the joy of automatic focus. I never saw the automatic buttons or pre-set settings as an option, but I did not decry them either. I learnt the minimum amount of Photoshop to meet my needs, and how to deliver a digital file to clients. Again my learning was on a ‘need to know’ basis.
Now, we are in a time when anyone can take photographs with no knowledge or experience. Where pre-sets and automatic settings are not questioned, and the idea of a light meter and manual focus seem to many to be nothing more than unnecessary hurdles to photographic capture.
This has left many technically trained and proficient photographers feeling resentful with their abilities under appreciated. I understand how that must feel, but in a competitive environment creativity is the differential, and not technical competency. So much of the technical competency now in photography relates to post-production expertise, and that is difficult to use as a point of difference, particularly as so much post-production work falls into the traps laid by aesthetic trends and fashions.
I often hear seasoned photographers dismiss other photographers (particularly the young and successful) as not having paid their dues, of not having earnt their stripes in the technical division. I think that is a shame.
Technical learning can come in time but the lack of it should not be used to deride those beginning their photographic journey. I have no issue with any photographer lacking in technical ability, whatever their age. The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks sounds as fresh, and relevant to my ears today as it did when it was first released in 1977, whilst I cannot say the same for Seconds Out by musical technicians Genesis released in the same year.
Retaining the spirit of the amateur, the beginner, the non-technician is not easy. It takes work to maintain a sense of energy and discovery in any creative endeavour, but it is possible if you see the value in the lo-fi approach and do not become seduced by the technical and a search for production perfection. In this I turn to and raise my hat at Yo La Tengo, audio masters of the long form lo-fi approach.
So, let us praise the non-technical photographer, and not dismiss them as beginners with so much to learn. Let’s exalt the sense of innocence and nurture it within both the young and the mature photographer.
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
Image: Yo La Tengo: Video: Ohm.
In episode 197 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the changing artefacts of photography, the importance of controlling your reputation and how a magazine can too easily misread its audience.
Plus this week photographer Bradley G. Munkowitz (GMUNK) 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?’
Bradley G. Munkowitz, popularly known as GMUNK, is a prolific Berkley-based director, designer and artist who works not only in motion design and animation, but also in graphic design, experiential design, live action direction, photography, psychedelic design, installation art, robotics, projection mapping, LED, and more. In his teenage years, he started with sculpture and ceramics, and then in college moved onto filmmaking, before taking graphic design classes at Humboldt State University where he started using After Effects and Flash to make interactive experiences – merging video, design and audio cues to create something interesting and fresh. Once out of college he worked as a Flash animator / video editor and worked in motion design for the next 10 years at studios in Los Angeles and Australia including with the master of film titles Kyle Cooper. He then moved into directing commercials, whilst still working on experiential projects and photography. An innovator in 3D digital art using his photographs as starting points for his finished work his clients include. Microsoft, Nike, Audi, Maserati, Sony, Hyundai, Hummer, HBO, Adidas, Samsung, and Uber. https://gmunk.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
*Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You?* including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/**
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 196 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on whether or not you need to read Susan Sontag, people trying to get photography on the cheap and he suggests some health considerations for photographers based on his own experience.
Plus this week photographer Andreas Weinand 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?’
Andreas Weinand was born in 1958 in the Rheine region of Germany, and is now based in Berlin.
He studied photography at the University GHS Essen (Folkwang), graduating in 1990 and his photography is primarily engaged with research concerning personal identities and the exploration of relationships between the individual presenting his/her personality and the society to which he/she engages with. Between 1985 to 1995 he concentrated on three projects: Deutsche Volksfeste, Colossal Youth and Reflecting Oneself. Weinand’s work has been exhibited extensively including exhibitions in Denmark, Belgium, Canada, Russia, Italy and Germany and represented in numerous public collections. Three book of his images have been published The Good Earth, Colossal Youth and Stadt Land Mensch. www.andreasweinand.de
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2022
Simple question, simple answer surely! Well, yes and no! I am approached by many photographers looking to move into a formal academic setting to teach photography and I have written articles previously that respond to the key requirements and factors those photographers need to consider. But this time I want to address a series of requirements I have previously not discussed.
Teaching within a formal environment is a team game, it is a long game. A game broken down into semesters and modules, rather than halves and periods. Each teacher or lecturer takes on one module at a time and that module needs to be part of an overall jigsaw puzzle of learning. The teaching will be sequential and over time the course will develop and evolve leading the student to a pre-ordained ending which will have allowed the them to reach a point of understanding appropriate to their engagement.
It is a two way street of course; both the teacher and the student must be invested in the concept of learning and a passion for the subject.
However, it does not work if the teacher attempts to download a life time of knowledge and experience to one student cohort within one module without an understanding of who else and what else is being taught within the course. Success requires an understanding of academic structure, rules and guidelines that will be new to anyone entering an academic environment for the first time, they were to me! However, they need to be accepted and followed. To not do so can have a negative impact on the student experience and teaching colleagues. It can also be detrimental to the course.
If this seems both logical and based on common sense why am I raising this issue? Well, because photographic practice is essentially an independent practice, where guidelines and structures are determined, stretched and broken by the photographer, with hopefully little impact on others. Therefore, the idea of having to follow the rules that others set and work within a team can be a challenge for many photographers considering a pathway into teaching.
As an external examiner of photographic courses in the UK, and a reviewer of courses for government backed approval I have seen at first hand the issues that arise from a dysfunctional or fractured teaching team.
The truth is that a great photographer will not necessarily make a good teacher, and a good teacher may not be a great photographer. However, I do believe that it is important for any teacher to be aware of the contemporary photographic environment. There is no space for resting on what and how you may have learnt, be that in the last five, ten, twenty or thirty years. You need to be part of the photographic conversation to remain relevant.
Photographers often explain to me how they want to teach to pass on their knowledge and experience. It is a natural belief of what constitutes teaching, but you need to have a much wider understanding of what teaching will involve before you throw yourself into it. Here are 5 starter questions I recommend you ask yourself before taking on a teaching position:
- Am I a team player?
- Am I happy to take on administrative duties that I don’t understand?
- Can I follow guidelines?
- Am I happy to structure my teaching alongside what others are teaching on my course?
- Can I support students as well as encourage them?
If you can answer these honestly and positively then it is worth progressing in whatever way you choose towards a formal teaching position. If not, you may be getting involved in something that is not for you.
You can read Grant’s previous articles on teaching photography here:
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2016/04/20/im-a-photographer-let-me-in-opening-the-door-to-photo-education/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2022/01/03/do-you-need-letters-after-your-name-to-be-a-photographer-ba-ma-phd-and-all-the-rest/
Image: Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, 1989.
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
In life it is easy, and I believe important to have heroes, but so often our choice of heroes is siloed by our interests. Looking up can be positive, an aspirational and inspirational process of introspection. However, looking down on others is never a good way to go, and yet the photographic community in my experience has an unhealthy sense of self-righteousness embedded within its DNA. It is not alone in this, most creative communities suffer from a similar sense of ‘better than thou’, but I believe that we should be aware of this corrosive attitude.
Some photographers look down on wedding photographers, I have heard wedding photographers look down on school portrait photographers, event photography is often derided, as is e-commerce still-life work. Above the line advertising photographers may look down on below the line work, and both may look down upon editorial photographers earning less than they are. Photographers engaged in art practice may look down on commissioned photographers working for clients, whilst those enjoying the medium as a hobby may be looked down upon by those for whom it is a profession. If you make photographs for the pure pleasure of doing so, or for payment, you may be judged unfairly by academics.
Everything I have just written may not be true, but then again all of it may have an element of truth. I’ll let you decide based on your own experience.
The photographic environment is competitive even if you don’t want to enter the competition, the very act of showing work introduces an aspect of judgement.
Such judgement is comparative and therefore competitive. It promotes the idea of looking up and down, of placing work and therefore the photographer into an imaginary, highly subjective success chart. Such charts exist within silos created by practice and subject matter. Landscape, fashion, documentary, portrait etc. etc. In every chart there are heroes at the top of the hit parade and it is these champions and their work, that images are judged against.
We are all used to seeing click bait articles claiming to inform you of the ‘Top Ten Portrait Photographers’
My suggestion is to step out of the silos, initially by avoiding labels for your work and in turn by looking at work by photographers outside of your comfort zone and interests. To seek inspiration and information from those only working within your field is both constrictive and non-sensical in my opinion. Just as my musical tastes are eclectic and wide ranging so are my photographic influences. I think this is clear from the guests who contribute to the A Photographic Life podcast. I want to hear from people creating work that is nothing like mine, just as much as I do from my heroes. I want to be challenged, questioned and informed from different perspectives.
I don’t want to be labelled or siloed and I definitely do not want to look down on work by those whose practice and instigation is different from mine.
Listening to a podcast recently I heard an expert on religious cults explain that the genesis of a cult is division. The creation of a sense of them and us. The cult needs an adversary to rail against and to base their beliefs upon as a response to the other. I have seen a sense of this in the evangelical NFT community recently. The zealous creation and proclamation of a NFT community points to this sense of a cult. It also confirms the sense of labelling, silos and judgement. If you don’t believe in NFTs, you are not forward thinking, intelligent or open-minded, some say as they look up to the Ape avatar heroes and down on the non-believers.
Looking sideways offers alternate opinions and approaches. It is the sign of the truly open-minded. You wouldn’t cross the road without looking both ways, maybe that should also be the case when you make photographs.
Image: Take from the film Sideways featuring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church: 2004
Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 195 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the use of the word photography, the role of photojournalism and the evolution of the photographic agent.
**Plus this week photographer Ruth Lauer Manenti take’s 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?’******
Ruth Lauer Manenti received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in painting and drawing in 1994 and in 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, she has developed a spiritual life and practice that has propelled much of her photographic work. Gradually she accomplished what she was striving for in drawing and painting, through photography. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work and part of Ruth’s determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and to create a continuum. She was awarded a NYFA grant in photography in 2016 and had a solo exhibition at The Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY in 2020. Her book Alms was exhibited at The Griffin Museum of Photography and Manenti received an Honourable Mention in the 2021 Julia Margaret Cameron Award and 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts in Photography. She lives in the Catskill Mountains in New York with her husband and 3 cats. www.ruthlauermanenti.com
*Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).**
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2022
*In episode 194 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on photography as evidence of important events, what it takes to get commissioned and why you don’t need to buy more cameras and lenses.*
**Plus this week photographer Frederic Aranda take’s 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?’******
Self-taught portrait photographer Frederic Aranda was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1980 and came to the UK over 20 years ago to undertake a degree in Japanese at Oxford University. He has been based in London ever since and is known for a colourful but pared-down form of portraiture and group portraits for clients such as Vanity Fair and Patek Philippe, Harrods. Two books of his work have been published, Electric Fashion in 2017 and California Elegance: Portraits From the Final Frontier in 2021. He has had three solo exhibitions of his work in London, the most recent of which was in the Raphael Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Aranda was given a Fellowship to the Royal Photographic Society in 2021 and his work has also been recognised by the International Photography Awards, the RPS International Photography Exhibition and The Swiss Photo Award. Aranda was also a finalist in the Sony World Photography Awards and the Aesthetica Art Prize. Last year his work was part of a group show on Holocaust Survivors living in the UK at the Imperial War Museum, London. https://fredericaranda.com
*Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).**
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 193 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the difference between an amateur and professional photography, the need for a new photography TV series and the challenges photography could face in 2022.
**Plus this week photographer Art Streiber take’s 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?’******
Art Streiber is an American portrait photographer best known for his portraits of entertainment and sports personalities. Streiber studied at Stanford University, graduated in 1984, and has been based in his hometown of Los Angeles since 1994. He is a regular contributor to the major Hollywood studios and networks, having shot posters and related promotional collateral for ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, MTV, Universal Studios, DreamWorks, and Sony Pictures. Streiber has also photographed behind the scenes at the Academy Awards every year since 2000 to the present day, excluding 2009. In 2005, American Photo magazine named him one of the ‘100 Most Important People in Photography’ and in 2008, the Pacific Design Center in California presented Streiber with the Star of Design Award for photography. Streiber lectures and teaches frequently and is represented by Elaine Browne for Entertainment Commissions and Candace Gelman Associates for Commercial work. www.artstreiber.com
*Dr. Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).**
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2022
I can, without any fear of contradiction, state that I never commissioned a photographer with letters after their name whilst I was an art director. A role that I held until the early Noughties and from the late Eighties. The work and the personality of the photographer were my only considerations.
The majority of the photographers I worked with were either self-taught or educated within the polytechnic system in the UK. These offered diplomas, not degrees, and highly career focused education.
Those that attended camera clubs progressed through the Royal Photographic Society levels of study and achievement, collecting letters after their names, but rarely taking these into the commissioned editorial or advertising areas of the medium. Their goal was to achieve the highest accolade the RPS offered, not to create a portfolio for commission. LRPS, ARPS and FRPS.
Until the creation of the ‘new universities’ in 1992 the academic requirements for teaching photography were primarily practice based, with photographers using a teaching income to support their art practice and social documentary work. Teaching at polytechnics meant five days a week in class and therefore restricted a commissioned practice in which you had to be available at all times and often at short notice.
That was then, but this is now. The RPS continues its awards system with little reference to the commissioned environment, but with the arrival of photographic degrees within universities and the death of the polytechnic system, letters after your name have become common place.
If you are young or old and want to study photography within an academic setting the chances are that you will start with an undergraduate degree, a BA (HONS). A two, three or four year period of study invariably within a university.
The transposition of such learning from a polytechnic to a university has seen contact hours drop from five days a week to a maximum of two and a half, and a move away from the idea of photography as a trade to an art form. Photography within university higher education has had to adopt an academic rigour outside of the photographic practice once taught. Now theory and academic research constitute the learning framework of the medium if you want to achieve a BA after your name.
The balance of practice and theory can be a contentious issue. There is no national curriculum for studying and teaching photography and therefore that balance is reliant on the background and interests of those leading the course and teaching the modules. Therefore, intensive research of who is going to teach you on a photographic degree course is essential to ensure that the letters after your name have delivered you to the destination you wanted.
The benefit of a good postgraduate degree is broadranging in its potential for learning. It should introduce you to new ways of thinking, looking and communicating. New writing and reading, transferable inter-personal skills and challenge your understanding of what photography is and can be. It will also of course, explain how to use the tools of your trade. Not just that of photographic capture, but also those of marketing, publishing, and contextualising your work within a professional environment. A BA will provide you with an education that you cannot get on YouTube, and give you time to mature, but you will rarely if ever put the initials after your name.
Once you have your BA you might want an MA, as the bachelor becomes the Master. Most universities expect applicants for a Masters to have an undergraduate degree in a related field, but you may be able to apply without one if you can demonstrate relevant experience.One year to focus on a specific personal project can be appealing to those who have been working on a commissioned basis, those who wanted to continued their under-graduate education directly into post-graduate, and those looking for an opportunity to develop their practice. Whatever the reason, it is an investment of time and money – the average cost of a taught Masters degree in the UK is £8,740, but postgraduate fees can vary greatly between different subject areas – I would therefore advise that you sure why you are doing one, and that you make sure that the course you choose is the right one for you. A one year course passes very quickly, and being focused from the beginning will help you get the best you can from the course you choose.
There was a time when an MA was a required qualification when applying for a teaching position within Higher Education, but that time has passed and now a PHD is often seen as an expectation of all applicants. Despite this, if you have the required experience, but not a BA, a one year MA could help you with a recognised Higher Education qualification added to your application.
This takes us onto the PhD and the qualification that not only adds letters to the end of your name but also to the front! PhD is short for Doctor of Philosophy and is an academic or professional degree that, in most countries, qualifies the degree holder to teach their chosen subject at university level or to work in a specialised position in their chosen field. After earning a master’s degree, the next step is a PhD, which entails both working and performing research at an institution. However, in photography gaining a PhD is not simple.
The traditional PhD programme places major emphasis on independent inquiry, the development of competence in research methodology, the communication of research findings, and development of teaching skills. To apply this to photographic practice is not straight forward, but have no fear there are two other types of PhD a photographer can consider. The first is a Phd through practice and the second is by publication. Both require a considerable amount of reading and writing but they can also take into consideration the work you create and have created. The time it takes to complete a Phd can vary with a full-time PhDs usually last for three or four years, while part-time PhDs can take up to six or seven. Not only will it take up your time, but it will also cost you. In the UK, being a self-funded PhD student can be an expensive undertaking, with an annual tuition bill of approximately £3,000 to £6,000.
Just as with an MA there are many reasons for undertaking a PhD, but wanting to teach at a university is a major instigator for many. For those already teaching it may be a requirement to further their career, although the majority of positions stress that equivalent professional experience would also be relevant. You should never be put off applying for a teaching position just because you do not have a PhD!
In summary, you do not have to have letters after your name to be a photographer, but you may need them to teach photography. If you receive them as a consequence of learning they will act as evidence of a commitment to that learning. That is something to be proud of whatever you choose to do with those qualifications. However, the addition of that learning should add to your understanding of photography and your role as a photographer. There is a limit to what you can teach yourself, how far you can challenge yourself and what you can find out about yourself independently. Never forget that a progression through education can be a progression through life not only photography.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2022
My good friend Jon Levy does not mince his words. An award winning documentary photographer and founder/editor of the legendary Foto8 magazine, and gallery space Jon is not afraid to express an opinion that comes from a passionate position of experience. The title of this article was the beginning of his recent tweet that continued like this “art needs photography more than photography needs art. with all this NFT blah it’s enough to forget photography is just a tool. without something to say, your pictures will always be just pointless and shit, regardless of your technology or your price. say something or shut up.”
As I said Jon does not mince his words.
His words often make me think and question my own view of the photographic medium, but in this case he put into words what I think with a force of language that I would probably not use. You may not agree with his stand on this issue, but let’s spend some time to explore his assertion.
We know that the camera is our tool. Without it we cannot make images, just as the painter cannot paint without paint, but Jon suggests that photography is our tool. Just like paint it is our medium of creativity and communication. Paint can be applied with many tools, just as photography can be undertaken with different formats and cameras, but the photographic image is our medium. I use the metaphor of the painter as it seems relevant when discussing art.
Just as the term ‘fine art’ has become tainted within photography by over produced landscape imagery, so painting is out of vogue amongst those involved with contemporary art practice. Multi-media has been the fashion for some time now with constructs replacing sculpture and three dimensional collage replacing the figurative approach to image making. Just view the 2021 Turner Prize Shortlist for proof of this www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/herbert-art-gallery-and-museum/exhibition/turner-prize-2021
Art is looking to photography and in doing so it is encouraging photographers to view their work as art and describe themselves as artists, as artists embrace photography. The problem of course is what is art? And what defines an artist? We can all agree on what constitutes a table or a chair, but art like love requires a definition that is so subjective that it becomes almost meaningless. Art is in the eye of the beholder, but also in the eye of the purchaser, and there is no more cut throat, and subjective financial market than the art market.
But it is also in the eye of the curator and the creator.
Whether or not the work created has anything to say is also a subjective judgement. So often that message is defined by a piece of text rather than the image itself. Jon mentions the format of an NFT as a definition of what is perceived as art. It’s an NFT so it must be art right? Wrong! The format does not define whether it is art or not. An image on canvas is not immediately recognised as a work of art, and neither should an NFT.
Photographer as artist and photography as art is not an argument that can be won, and it is not one I am having here. Jon suggests that art needs photography more than photography needs it. I believe that he is suggesting that photography can exist without the art market and if that is the case he is right. Photography exists and has existed for many years as a commissioned editorial practice, a documentary practice, a journalistic undertaking, within advertising, as a hobby and many other forms of engagement with the medium. Art can also exist without photography but the art market has identified it as a lucrative source of revenue. One that is easy to sell through multiple limited editions, cultural connections and iconic pop culture recognition.
The art market likes photography and it likes to sell photography. It seduces photographers with the promise of gallery shows, high prices and international fame. It promotes these ideals through events such as Photo London and Photo Paris. Photographic supermarkets open to all, but reliant on the wealthy to exist. No buyers, no galleries, no show.
The bigger the print is the more valuable it is, and the more likely it is to become an intrinsic addition to any high value interior design scheme.
I have no problem with this until such work is lauded as being more important than other work that does not fulfil the art market’s criteria. When work needs to be explained to validate its price tag it has no true meaning, and as Jon suggests its integrity value is zero.
The NFT crowd claim to be breaking through these barriers by supporting each other, but they have forgotten that the value of an image is not decided upon by desire or expectation. It is set by the buyer and their willingness to invest. The art market understands this and is more than willing to create context (or reasons to buy) where there is none and utilise hyperbole when the existing context is fragile or out of fashion. The NFT guys scream buy! While the art market whispers invest.
The art market is booming, whilst other areas of commissioned photographic practice are diminishing. The idea of collecting imaginary work with imaginary money is therefore attractive to those not able to invest in the photographic stock that the market has dictated as being of value.
A Peter Lik at $6.5 million, or an Andreas Gursky for $4,338,500, maybe a Richard Prince for $3,973,000 or why not a Cindy Sherman for $3,890,500. The commission alone on these sales contributes nicely to the auction house profits, whilst the headlines that such sales produce further stokes the photography as art machine.
Jon suggests that your photography should say something and I agree. It should say something more than what it cost, it should say something more than who the work is represented by and it should say something more than “I know how to play the art game.” It doesn’t need to say it is ‘art’ it should be recognised as being important for what it is and not what it says it is.
I think now I will shut up.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2022
In this extended episode, editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro looks back, and forward with Grant at the dominant themes within photography of 2021 including: is humanist photography coming back? Is street photography over? What’s after Instagram? Online exhibitions and experiences, photography as evidence, archives and the cloud, and yes, NFTs! Grant also marks the passing of the photographers we have lost in 2021.
Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.
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) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Those We Have Lost in 2021
Tom Lankford
Grace Robertson
Tom LaBonge
Alice Rose George
George Forss
Terry Thorp
Bryan Monroe
Corky Lee
Ricky Powell
Bob Jardine
Chuck Close
Nick Oza
Hiro
Edward Keating
Robert Blomfield
Phillip Wolmouth
Emmanuel Bobbie
Benedict J. Fernandez
Aaron Rose
Giovanni Gastel
David McCabe
June Newton aka Alice Springs
Vivek Bendre
Faye Schulman
Robert Houston
Chi Modu
Sophie Rivera
Francoise Demoulder
Eva Sereny
Danish Siddiqui
Peter Bunnell
Colin Jones
Halyna Hutchins
Gary Trotter
Jack Kurtz
Robert Altman
Romeo Gacad
Colin Shaw
Tom Stoddart
Mick Rock
Frederick Baldwin
Sabine Weiss
© Grant Scott 2022
In episode 191 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Happy Holidays, whilst not taking things too seriously.
**Plus this week curator, editor, and photographic consultant *Zelda Cheatle take’s 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?’**
Zelda Cheatle’s life in photography and the arts has encompassed being a photographer, gallerist, publisher, curator, lecturer and author. She began her gallery career at The Photographers’ Gallery, London working with internationally renowned photographers and emerging British artists using photography. In 1989, she started the Zelda Cheatle Gallery, first in Cecil Court, WC2 , then Mount Street W.1 and finally in Shoreditch until 2005, where, she exhibited important work by British and international artists – including Helen Chadwick, Eve Arnold, Berenice Abbott, Sarah Moon, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lee Miller, Robert Frank and Abbas Kiarostami among many others. Her gallery also consistently showed young and emerging artists and the Zelda Cheatle Press published monographs of contemporary British artists and photographers. As lead curator for the World Photography Organisation for many years, Cheatle has spoken extensively about photography and its place as fine art. Her recent photographic exhibitions include Cecil Beaton in both the State Hermitage, St Petersburg and Blenheim Palace; Yan Wang Preston in China; photography from the Gulf countries exhibited in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the Dubai Photo Exhibition comprising 868 photo works. She began and managed the first Photography Fund, that collected, exhibited and published a collection of over 6,000 iconic prints including a Russian 20th century collection, Eve Arnolds vintage archive and icons and masterpieces of the European and American schools. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of the Arts Bournemouth, a Member of the Council of Friends, National Gallery of Ireland and has been on the Advisory Committee, Photo Shanghai, Chair of judges, Kraszna Krausze book Award and a Nominator for the Deutsche Borse and Prix Pictet competitions. Zelda Cheatle continues to curate exhibitions and publish, review and challenge photography. www.zeldacheatle.com
**Dr.Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).****
Comedy Extracts:
Hancock’s Half Hour: The Photographer, Series 6 Episode 8. 1960
People Like Us: The Photographer, Series 1, Episode 2. 1999
The Sketch Show, Series 1, Episode 6. 2001
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2021
When connected with the creative arts the concept of personal ambition, and resultant success can leave a bitter taste with some. The idea that creativity, and commerciality are distant bedfellows can be strong within the art community, but less so amongst the commissioned world of photography. Perhaps the commissioned world is more honest in its relationship with economic benefit from creativity. It can accept the harsh reality that their creativity has a value which it is happy to promote. An ambition to gain from creativity with financial rewards places an aspect of success upon the work being created. Validation comes from the commission and subsequent payment. It allows the photographer to describe themselves as being ‘professional’ as their engagement with photography can clearly be defined as a profession. Success.
The art community sees their practice differently, or does it? An ambition to reach a point of independence from the system is a common refrain within the art based photographic community. Enough financial security to allow the ‘practitioner’ or ‘artist’ to explore their work, is the dream, without the need to ‘sell out’ and accept commercial commissions. Such financial independence could come from inherited wealth, family financial support, or by getting lucky on the roulette tables, however, it is more likely to come from selling work. Success.
The selling of prints, or published collections of images in book or zine form is a staple if limited income for most art based photographers. The ambition to sell and engage in a commercial transaction is a natural response to bills that need to be paid. Success.
Just as the commissioned photographer receives validation of their work from a client, so the art based photographer receives validation from their customer. In this sense the client and customer fulfil a similar role as a patron of the photographer. Of course the client usually expects to set or influence the creative agenda, whereas the customer in this case is buying into a previously created artefact, but both are intrinsic to the photographers continuing practice. Success.
We all have our own ideas and beliefs on what constitutes success, some of you will have no interest in the concept, but I think that we can all agree that the ability to continue with your photographic journey in some form has some form of success attached to it. However, the journey can give creative rewards as well as financial ones. Success.
Ambition can so easily been seen as a negative trait, associated with aggressive marketing, self-centred actions and focus purely on financial reward. Success is a similarly sensitive word when used alongside a creative practice. The definition of success is as nebulous as that of love. It means different things to all of us, and yet society places its own interpretation on the word. That interpretation is often aligned with an ambitious intent in which recognition, praise, awards and cold, hard cash become the grading device for levels of success. I have no issue with ambition or success, but my interpretations of both words are open minded, and open ended.
I often speak of photographs being successful or unsuccessful dependent on the intended content. I never use the words ‘good’ or ‘bad’, both of which are in my opinion subjective judgements of little if any value.
We are all ambitious for success, but we also have different interpretations of both of these words. To dismiss both would be to approach them with a pre-defined understanding based upon a societal definition. It would also be detrimental to the sense of discovery and achievement so essential to all areas of photographic practice.
Ambition is important and success can be rewarding, but both can have a negative impact on work and the self, an impact that should be watched out for, but they should not be dismissed or derided. Ambition and success are intrinsic to photographic engagement, but you can define these words in whatever way that you wish. What is important is to never look at the definitions of ambition by others as the definitions you have to adopt or define your success through a narrow point of focus. As Bob Dylan said, “Well, the moral of the story, The moral of this song, Is simply that one should never be, Where one does not belong, So when you see your neighbour carrying somethin’, Help him with his load, And don’t go mistaking Paradise, For that home across the road.”
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
In episode 190 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on creative freedom, preparing digital images for print and this year’s Christmas for photographers.
Plus this week photographer *Jefferey Stockbridge take’s 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?’**
Jeffrey Stockbridge was born in 1982 and is a Philadelphia-based photographer and fine art printer. Stockbridge graduated from Drexel University in 2005 and opened a premier fine-art printing business, Stockbridge Fine Art Print in 2009. He is known for his large-format colour photographs that document and humanize the elusive underbelly of inner-city life and his work has been featured in group exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Delaware Art Museum, The Woodmere Art Museum, The Fleisher Art Memorial and the DCCA. His body of work, Kensington Blues, documents the trials and tribulations of those affected by drug addiction and prostitution along Kensington Avenue in North Philadelphia. Audio interviews, journal entries and photographs, made over a period of five years, come together to tell the stories of those struggling to survive the neighbourhood and themselves. www.jeffreystockbridge.com
*Dr.Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Podcast music: Written and performed by Dr. Laura Ritchie www.lauraritchie.com
© Grant Scott 2021
Each week on the A Photographic Life podcast I ask photographers to answer a simple question, ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ I have now received over 200 responses and answers to the question, and one simple theme as emerged. That is that the gift of a camera at an early age is a life changing experience.
This may have been in response to a request for a camera, it may have been self-purchased with hard earned pocket money, but most often it seems to have been as an unexpected gift. A father, mother, relative or family friend took a risk and second guessed the importance that a camera could have to a young mind.
Those cameras opened-up a world of instigation and wonder to those who received them. They shaped their lives and careers, they have given them a reason to ask questions, and to explore the unknown. They have been the most important intervention into their educational journey. Of course the camera in itself is no more than an object constructed of metals, plastic and glass, but the possibilities it can offer cannot be under estimated.
Those that have spoken of their first camera do so with a nostalgic wistfulness, remembering the model and make clearly; as clearly as the first images they started to make. Images based on naive passion and enthusiasm. Unencumbered by perceived understanding of what photography has been or has to be. Raw, fresh and experimental, childhood images that can never be recreated; once the genie is out of the bottle and a knowledge of the medium begins to take hold.
As Pablo Picasso stated “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he/she grows up.”
Despite this the receiving of a first camera acts as an instigation, a key, a passport to an unknown series of adventures that we can choose to accept, if we wish. A series of adventures we may never have considered prior to receiving the photographic box of potential.
You don’t have to be interested in photography to be given a camera, just as you don’t need to have studied the medium to be a photographer. The photographic bug can bite at any time and at any age, but the earlier the bite the longer the life of adventures could be.
It has never been cheaper to buy a compact digital camera, perfect for small hands and inquisitive minds. Cameras that can be used and abused, without the fear of damage and great financial loss. So, why not take a chance and pass on a camera to someone who has never considered buying a camera or making photographs. You may just be changing their life.
You can find out who has previously answered the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ here* https://unitednationsofphotography.com/what-does-photography-mean-to-me-2/ and listen to their contributions to the A Photographic Life podcast at www.unitednationsofphotography.com, Spotify, iTunes and all podcast platforms.**
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
In episode 189 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the basics of photography, smartphone photography, documenting the personal and the noise surrounding NFTs.
*Plus this week photographers Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen and Juan Aballe take on the challenge of supplying Grant with *an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which they answer the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’**
Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and is now based between Bilbao, Spain and Venezuela. After studying political science, she graduated from the ETPA, a French photography school in Toulouse, in 2014. She is driven by the ambition to shed light on the effects of the current economic crisis inside the Venezuelan society and her work has an empathic, environmentally and socially critical focus based on long-term stories formed from in-depth investigations. Her project Días Eternos, about the conditions of women in Venezuelan prisons, is the recipient of the Women Photograph + Nikon Grant 2018. In January 2020 she was the winner of the Lucas Dolega International Price and in May 2020 she was a finalist in theInternational Women in Photography Association awards. Also in 2020, Arevalo Gosen became a National Geographic Explorer. Her project Dias Eternos revealing the conditions of women in pretrial detention and prisons in Venezuela, won the 2020 Lucas Dolega International Award as well as the Lumix Photo Award 2020. https://anamariaarevalogosen.com
Juan Aballe started printing his photographs whilst studying chemistry at University in Madrid and Berlin. After graduating as a chemist, he decided to devote himself to photography and visual media. He studied at the school of the International Center of Photography, New York, and later obtained his Masters in Photography at the EFTI School, Madrid. Juan’s work has been exhibited and published internationally and he has been awarded grants from institutions such as the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and the Fundación Botín. He has lived in Germany and the U.S.A. and is currently based in a small town in the mountains near Madrid. His first self-published photobook, Nachbar (neighbour in German), consists of 36 photographs from the same view of the building in front of his flat in East Berlin, photographed for over a year. In 2014 the independent publisher Fuego Books published his project Country Fictions, photographed in rural areas of the Iberian Peninsula between 2011 and 2013, in the aftermath of a profound economic crisis in Spain. In 2021 his work Last Best Hope, developed in the city of Oakland, California, will be published by Another Place Press. www.juanaballe.com
*Dr.Grant Scott is the the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
I don’t think that NFTs have anything to do with photography, they may be used by photographers to sell their work, but that’s different. What they do seem to be about is commerce, a need for community and validation.
Let me explain. I have spent the past few months observing the NFT phenomenon on Twitter, in forums (which I have had to join) and through the art marketplace. I have used my journalist training to try and understand the people behind and within the NFT community. I have not focused on the ecological impact of NFTs or the economic reality of their financial frailties. Others have done that much better than I could.
I am interested in people, it’s why I am a photographer, and why I do what I do.
I may be seen as old (57), and disconnected by many within the NFT community, but what age brings is experience, and most importantly first hand knowledge of previous fads, trends, booms and busts. As a teenager I read the great JK Galbraith’s book on the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and the morals of the tales he outlines within that book have stayed with me throughout my life. Greed is not good, whatever Gordon Gecko may have proclaimed.
It is difficult to find out about the people behind NFTs on Twitter or in forums as they primarily exist behind a series of cartoon based avatars, and pseudonyms that appear to have been created through a Frankinstein approach to syntax and grammar. Most end with the declaration of .Eth. A proud assertion based on currency.
The cartoon avatars apparently have collector significance with different animals indicating the prowess of the collectors ability to spend and hoard digital files. This to me has a sense of Dungeons and Dragons about it, but as I have never played either game I do not know if this is true.
I use the word game at this point as there does seem to be a sense of game playing in the NFT universe.
The collecting of images, reselling of those images and the recognition by fellow collectors of your prowess as a collector reminds me of the baseball or football card collectors who spend vast amounts on the rarest card based on desire within their community to own the Holy Grail, whilst the rest of the world looks on incredulous. Are NFTs a Top Trumps for the digital age?
This sense of game playing is further strengthened by the visual assault that greets you on the forums. Disposing with any form of information architecture they are as difficult to traverse as every aspect of the NFTs world is, and filled with just as much affirmative shouting as the NFT social media accounts. An NFT dictionary is required to understand many of the terms being used as acronyms abound and terms of reference are loosely used without context or explanation. Is this a deliberate approach to promote a sense of needing to be on the inside to understand what is going on? Is it a deliberate use of smoke and mirrors to create a sense of something happening that is actually much shallower than it wants to appear? I don’t know, but what I do know is that effective communication is based on simple language and clearly defined concepts. The NFT appears to be working on a very different basis.
I mentioned at the beginning of this article that experience of previous trends and fashions can be useful when meeting and greeting the latest movement. I was in London at the birth of Punk and New Wave at the perfect age to embrace the music, ideas and zines that promoted a new way, a new way of thinking and communicating. I saw its impact on the mainstream and how it was swallowed up by consumerism. It’s ideals where always about making money in one way or another, even if that was in a more naive time.
With the explosion of the dot com boom in the late 190s and early 2000s I found myself for a brief moment employed as the creative director of a venture capitalist funded online publishing initiative that was going to change the world. It didn’t, and lots of money was spent and lost. The desire to make money was clear, front and centre, but those with the money and the dream were just as naive as the punks who wanted to overthrow the system.
The NFT universe reminds me of both of these moments in different ways.
During a time of global pandemic the need for personal security, financial security, a sense of community and the need to be ‘heard’ has never been stronger, and the excitement surrounding NFTs promises all of these returns. Alienation from the art world has left people feeling that they need to take control just as the punks wanted to overtake the record labels, and the VCs wanted to become publishers.
So far in 2021, Gallup states that 56% of Americans own stock, based on polls conducted in April and July. This is similar to the average 55% recorded in both 2019 and 2020, and the average of 55% Gallup has measured since 2009. I think this is relevant to the NFT boom.
The NFT community appears to be largely US based or at least US powered, a country that is perfectly at home with the idea of buying and selling imaginary items, with prices that fluctuate daily, based on belief, and a perceived understanding of the global markets. This is not the case in the UK and it is not at the same level of engagement globally.
Speaking of stocks and shares, you may at this point consider the danger of pyramid schemes, a profit based allegation that I have seen used concerning NFTs. These are illegal in many countries (including in the US and UK), but I think it is worth considering what the definition of a pyramid schemes is. Simply, it is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable.
I am not suggesting that NFTs are a pyramid scheme, but there are some interesting similarities that I have observed.
I have seen a few photographers proclaiming that they have sold their work as NFTs, and I am aware of others who claim to have made big sales, but I have seen many more responding to these announcements stating that they have yet to make a sale. They are hopeful of future sales, because they have invested physically, financially and spiritually into the scheme based on a promise that they believe is being delivered to others. As more people join the NFT scheme the market becomes saturated, and either starts eating itself by those making having to also become those collecting or the lack of return on investment becomes the reason to leave the scheme all together.
Those who are at the centre of the community are selling hard and marketing harder. Constantly Tweeting and encouraging investment in their digital product.
Again, experience and age allows me too recognise the return of the phrase ‘digital art’ a description of much NFT work rather than photography. The first moment creatives were given digital tools and the Adobe Creative Suite the desire to create images digitally was too hard to resist. This soon developed into advanced digital image creation and manipulation both mainstays in film-making and advertising image making. Now the praise has returned within the NFT context, but from my experience with a few exceptions without the sophistication and imagination of those plying their digital trade within a professional environment.
I asked this question on Twitter “If you have bought an NFT please tell me why and what you intend to do with it. Serious question.” These are a few of the two answers I received:
“I bought lots of affordable NFTs in tezos blockchain. I plan to print some for my desk. Some of it I consider like Patreon with extra benefit.”
“I’ve bought some, I’m on the #tezos blockchain, some photographs were beautiful, it could help the photographers to grow, it’s not expensive on tezos, and most of all there is no people/curators between the photographer and the audience, this is why I buy NFT photography.”
“We bought a few and I run a photobook store here in Indonesia. I only bought what I can afford though, all under $5-6, and to be honest not all photography. What’s our plan with it? Currently only collecting it and to support our local artist.”
What is interesting to me about these responses is that these collectors could have purchased prints direct from the photographer and supported photographers by doing so, or through a Patreon page if the photographer had one. They did not have to buy NFTs to achieve their desired aims. I asked some more questions and this is one of the responses:
“I bought the series (6 images) total for 0.6 tez (2.5 USD), 2 months ago. The guy only made 2.5 tez (10 USD) for each of the image and 10% royalty if it get sold in 2nd market.”
So, photographers making $10 (£7.50) on a sale for an NFT. Not quite the big bucks being suggested. We all know that every pyramid has a top and a much wider base.
The photographers who responded to my question were polite and had photographs of themselves as their avatars. Perhaps the NFT world is split into two communities. One that is providing the hype and the noise, aggressive and in-your-face (I have been called clueless and an a**hole by two of these) and another that sees the NFT world as an interesting area to spend a few dollars on.
It is also interesting how often the issue of gatekeepers is raised by those promoting NFTs. The direct nature of sales is seen as a specific benefit and yet traditional gatekeepers such as Magnum, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and The British Journal of Photography are already part of the NFT marketplace, with many using their involvement as validation of the form.
Further insight into the buying and selling of NFTs was provided by another NFT collector who said this:
“I think every NFTs website are getting money on sales, I’m a web developer too, if I make a website promoting artists I will ask for a commission. Like a gallery getting a commission when a photographer is selling a print.”
This is a business, it is not about photography. It is about selling images that may have been created photographically and some may not. It is not the future for photography it is another possible commercial opportunity. Some want to be market traders, brash, loud and happy to make a few quid whatever the quality of the product, and others see themselves as a new generation of art dealers, curating and presenting work for the serious collector.
Both are reliant on the photographer or creative image maker for their commission, their cut! The commoditisation of art is nothing new, buying work directly from the creator is not new, acting as a patron of the arts is not new.
New practices concerning contracts, copyright and resales may come from the NFT boom but I will not hold my breath. I will however, remain open minded. An observer rather than a participator. Photographers I know and respect have dipped their toe into the market, and I am interested to see how they progress, and to hear their experiences. Other photographers I know have become evangelical about the NFT. I wait to see how long their enthusiasm lasts.
From the outside the NFT world I have experienced looks like a cult, and most cults end badly. From the inside it looks fragmented. That fragmentation may be its salvation or its achilles heel. My observations will continue, but my investigation will not. I have found the world of NFTs to be confusing, time consuming and ultimately shallow. That’s my experience and opinion today and I may change my mind. If you agree that’s fine, if what I have written has bought some clarity to your NFT view I am pleased, but if you disagree with everything I have observed that’s okay also.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
Why do festivals have themes? Is it to ensure the very best work is shown? Is it to expand the potential audience for photography? Is it to promote understanding of the medium? Or is it to fulfill an agenda or the personal desires of a curator?
That’s a lot of questions to start any article with, but I think that the answers to those questions may be quite simple. I have previously written about the criteria that needs to be met to receive funding from arts based institutions, and the need for specific boxes to be ticked. Those boxes are often created with the best intent, however the impact they can have on the physical reality of a photographic or arts festival can be disproportionate to the nature of the funding.
Festivals are not cheap to stage and they are not easy too curate. The genesis of a festival is also worth considering: rarely are they the dream of just one person (although those that I know of that are seem to me to be the most successful), most often they come from a collection of like-minded and well-intentioned individuals willing to give up much of their spare time to make something happen. Such a collective proposition can provide a challenging process (a situation I have personal experience of, as personal agendas come to the fore and feelings of inequality of input raise temperatures and personality traits), and one filled with compromise.
The solution often considered to resolve issues over what work, and which photographers will be involved in a festival when general consensus cannot be reached is the appointment of a curator.
The idea sounds like a good one in theory. Bringing in an expert in the medium to add their profile and connections would be seen by many trustees and festival boards as a positive, but the reality can be fractious, negative and find the festival’s identity being hijacked. The way in which this happens is most often through the adoption of a festival theme set by a curator based upon their own agenda and personal ambition. Any theme set by a curator or any board by its very nature immediately excludes work and creates a festival that is exclusive rather than inclusive.
Some themes are so broad that they cast a wide net, but others are so narrowly defined that very little work actually conforms to its parameters.
Either way work will be rejected for inclusion based on a set of rules created to lead the work and the viewer into a pre-conceived perspective. The theme will not only define the work shown, but also the audience for that work. It will aim to broaden that audiences understanding of the theme, and educate that audience on different aspects related to that theme. These are honourable aims and if achieved they validate the work shown. However, when the work shown is dependent on the theme to be included and not the strength of work in itself, the curation of such a presentation becomes more about the theme and the people or person who chose that theme, rather than a true representation of the quality of work being created.
Self-funded, agenda based exhibitions and festivals make sense in a free democratic society, but when personal agendas look to arts funding to be supported a sense of a totalitarian photographic state can take hold. One in which only certain photographers and certain work get exhibited because they understand the importance of working within the most popular themes of the time.
I am not saying those themes are not important, they are, but they can also become too dominant in an environment such as photography, where practice is so diverse. Such diversity in my opinion should and must be promoted to broaden the understanding of photography outside of the already engaged audience.
I have previously written about the need for photography festivals and exhibitions to be more fun, and spoken about the need for them to be more inter-active online. Covid has seen many online initiatives adopted by festivals forced to find an online audience but they have too often been limited to formulaic talks and presentations. To encourage people to travel in the new world to a physical festival may well require the festival organisers to be more imaginative in their presentations, more inclusive in the work shown and more innovative in taking that work and the festival experience online. None of which need a theme to restrict its possibilities.
The idea that festivals should be solely funded through paid for portfolio reviews, arts council funding, pay to enter competitions or the photographers taking part betrays the reality that the formulaic approach to photography and art festivals this century is now tired and ripe for change. Photography has never been more relevant or dominant in our lives, so now is the time to embrace that reality and to rethink the methods in which we connect with those who are currently not attending talks, festivals and exhibitions. We do not need more themes we need more imagination. It is time for the gatekeepers to open the doors to a new audience, new ways of interaction and new understanding of what the role of photography is in the 21st Century.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
I never want to achieve a ‘Wow Factor’ and I have no interest in progressing to the ‘Next Level’. Both are subjective and arbitrary achievements with no impact on what I do and how I do it. However, I may be in a minority in this belief. We are constantly being told that we should aim for the ‘Wow Factor’ and achieve the ‘Next Level’. These are put to us as aspirational achievements that will define our level of success, but of course they are not. They are sound bites used to provide a lazy description of progress.
I have never seen the next level, I may have been on the next level, I may be on the previous level, I have no idea where I am or where I have been and that is fine with me. The concept of improvement being gauged by the use of levels is directly opposed to the premise of creative practice.
Who are the judges who will define this siloed progress?
Photography workshops, courses and how-to-books often speak of their ability to take you to this mythical place, the next level, but it is clear to see that the suggestion is that you can only reach the next level and be as ‘good’ as the person attempting to take your hard earned cash if you buy their product. In this instance, the promise of a next level is nothing more than a sales technique, but it can be a dangerous one.
The inference of the next level is that you are not good enough. That you could be better and that you should be better.
The impact that this can have on your confidence, self-belief, and your reflection on your work can be negative. It can foster a sense of frustration and depression. The next level is deliberately intended to be unachievable as it does not exist. Creative endeavour is not a series of defined stages, but an evolving journey with ups, downs, confusion and moments of clarity. This is why it is so engaging, and rewarding.
A photographic journey is a personal journey. It is one in which you are your own judge of your own success, even when the desire for validation is strong. In the film The Dead Pool, Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan says, “Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” I tend to agree with Dirty Harry here, but with the caveat that some of those opinions are worth hearing, when informed and constructive. Unfortunately, the quest for the next level is as hopeless as that for the Holy Grail. It is not based upon opinions but promises, promises that cannot be delivered.
Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
In episode 188 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on learning and teaching, the lack of rules in photography and why there is no quick and easy solution to success.
*Plus this week photographer Polly Alderton 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?’*
Polly Alderton is a British documentary and portrait photographer, who studied Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art and Central St. Martins, and whose work is centred around the documentation of family and examining the class system in the UK. Her work concentrates on her immediate surroundings, with her family often being in the spotlight. Alderton’s images have been published in The Sunday Times, The Observer, Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope and Resilience, Portrait of Britain vol.1 & vol.3., and ID magazine, amongst others. In 2017 she produced a short film titled 12 Hours in North Essex for VSCO and in 2019 she was awarded the Firstsite Project Bursary to build on her independent project, Burning House. In 2021 Setanta Books, published Alderton’s work in a monograph titled Polly Alderton. She also works as a stills photographer with the BBC, notably photographing David Attenborough in Climate Change: The Facts and working with Martin Parr on a series of idents for BBC One. http://www.dollyandfife.com
Dr.Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021
I have been on Twitter for quite some time, and like any living, breathing thing does, Twitter has evolved over that period. Initially it felt quite friendly with polite suggestions to “please retweet” and generous actions such as ‘Follow Friday’ when Tweeters would recommend fellow Tweeters to their followers to share their likes, and a little love.
This helped anyone joining Twitter to build a list of who to follow. It introduced you to new photographers, and let you know of friends on the platform. It worked.
We have now it seems entered a new form of engagement with the platform. That of showing one image accompanied with a dumb question. Something similar to “what’s your favourite time of the day?” ” or “what makes you happy?” Or maybe a statement such as “show me your favourite waterfall” or “show me your favourite sunset”.
The common belief is that these participants are refugees from the newly moving image focused Instagram. I don’t know if this is true but I think I can see through the smoke.
The logic that is promoted for this practice is to show images for the benefit of others, but the cynicism within me sees it purely as a follower harvesting practice. In essence I have no issue with that if your goal in life is to be numerically successful. However, the dishonesty in the practice does not sit well with me.
Just as those engaged with NFTs only seem to want to communicate through emojis so the show and no tell community seem to have no interest in providing context or any other level of comment for their images or with the Twitter community.
Does it matter what I think? Well, of course not, but sometimes I think it’s worth putting a mark in the sand for others to consider or ignore.
Showing work should be encouraged, but so should a recognition of the importance of context through captioning. The promotion of photography as a shallow and insignificant medium focused only on the imitation of aesthetic is not something I can buy in to. It means too much to me.
So please don’t show me your favourite anything in photographic form, I’m not interested in your favourite things. I may be interested in what you think, the why, where and when, but rarely the how. Imitation of others and chocolate box landscapes may tell us about camera used or technique employed, but they tell us almost nothing of true value.
Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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).
Grant’s book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/
© Grant Scott 2021