In episode 89 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the purpose of the photo book, pressure put on photographers, and the rise of the 'photo-entrepreneur'.

Plus this week photographer R.J.Kern 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?’

R. J. Kern was born in 1978 and is an American artist whose work explores ideas of home, ancestry, and a sense of place through the interaction of people, animals, and cultural landscapes. His work has been exhibited in a number of exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, Tbilisi, Georgia, the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK, and a solo exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA. Awards and accolades include PDN’s 30 2018, Critical Mass 2018 Top 50, the 2017 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (Finalist), and two Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2016, 2018). Kern's projects The Unchosen Ones and Out To Pasture were published in National Geographic in 2017 and his first monograph with Kehrer Verlag titled, The Sheep and the Goats, was awarded one of  'The Most Beautiful German Books 2018' by Stiftung Buchkunst and a 'Bronze' by the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2018-19. Selected collections holding his work include the Center for Creative Photography, Arizona, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. He was the Commemorative Artist for the 2019 Minnesota State Fair and is represented by the Klompching Gallery in New York and the Burnet Fine Art & Advisory in Minnesota. www.rjkern.com

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 on Player FM https://player.fm/series/a-photographic-life and Podbean www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/i6uqx-6d9ad/A-Photographic-Life-Podcast

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 (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay can now be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd47549knOU&t=3915s.

© Grant Scott 2020