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