In episode 149 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering unrealistic expectations, visual fitness, being recorded on Zoom and 'remote' portrait photography.

Plus this week photographer Norman McBeath 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?’

Norman McBeath (pronounced McBeth) is a photographer and printmaker who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. His creative collaborations with poets include Plan B with Paul Muldoon, The Beach with Kathleen Jamie and Simonides with Robert Crawford. Simonides was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and exhibited at Yale and the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. McBeath's latest book Strath is a further collaboration with the poet Robert Crawford. His work has been shown as part of exhibitions at the Leica Gallery in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 2015 he was awarded a Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo and subsequently invited to show work from the Fellowship in the exhibition Between the Land and the Sea 2016 at the Keeper’s House, Royal Academy, London. In 2019 the Scottish National Portrait Gallery held a major exhibition of The Long Look, a collaboration with the painter Audrey Grant. Collections which hold his work include; the British Library; the National Library of Scotland; the British Council; Harvard University and Yale Center for British Art. www.normanmcbeath.com

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, 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 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