A Photographic Life

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 of those photo books and his luxury item choice.

The Final Four Desert Island Books Grant Chooses this week:

Evidence 1944-1994, by Jane Livingston, David A.Ross and Richard Avedon. Published 1994, by Random House, 183 pages.

Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945, by Martin Harrison. Published 1991, by Rizzoli, 312 pages.

W Eugene Smith: The Camera as Conscience, by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill. Published 1998, by Thames & Hudson, 352 pages.

Magnum Contact Sheets, by Kristen Lubben. Published 2011, by Thames & Hudson, 524 pages.

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 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 photo books.

The First Four Desert Island Books Grant Chooses this week:

On the Other Side of the Camera by Arnold Crane. Published 1995 by Konemann UK Ltd, 320 pages.

Passage: A Work Record by Irving Penn. Published 1991 Random House USA Inc, 300 pages.

Man Ray: Portraits. Paris, Hollywood, Paris by Clément Chéroux. Published 2011 Schirmer Mosel, 316 pages.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious by W.M Hunt and William Ewing. Published 2011 Thames & Hudson, 320 pages. www.wmhunt.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 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 Neill Massey 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?’

Neill Massey has been working as a professional photographer for the past 30 years. He picked up a camera aged 15 and studied photography at Bournemouth Art School before spending the following 15 years based in London working as an editorial photographer, for magazines including The Face, Sleazenation and Q. In 2009 Massey moved to Vietnam where he lived for 6 years working on the long-form photographic projects Bloody Chunks, Untitled, Song and Monobloc. In 2015 he returned to London and began documenting the City of London. Since 2020 Massey has been developing photographic based artworks called: KALEID {} ESCAPES. www.instagram.com/mrmasseyman

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 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 Bill student Mark Trompeteler.

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 Albummagazine (1970–1971). Jay established the first gallery dedicated to photography in the UK with the Do Not Bend Gallery, London and the first Director of Photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Whilst there he founded and directed the first photo-study centre. He studied at the University of New Mexico under Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke and then founded the Photographic Studies programme at Arizona State University, where he taught photography history and criticism for 25 years. Jay is the author of more than twenty books on the history and criticism of photography, four books of his own photography, and roughly 400 essays, lectures and articles. His regular column titled Endnotes was published within Lenswork magazine for a number of years and his own photographs have been widely published, including a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

www.donotbendfilm.com

Thanks to Aaron Bommarito for archive recordings with Bill Jay. All other interviews were conducted by Grant Scott.

© Grant Scott 2022

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!

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 Albummagazine (1970–1971). Jay established the first gallery dedicated to photography in the UK with the Do Not Bend Gallery, London and the first Director of Photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Whilst there he founded and directed the first photo-study centre. He studied at the University of New Mexico under Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke and then founded the Photographic Studies programme at Arizona State University, where he taught photography history and criticism for 25 years. Jay is the author of more than twenty books on the history and criticism of photography, four books of his own photography, and roughly 400 essays, lectures and articles. His regular column titled Endnotes was published within Lenswork magazine for a number of years and his own photographs have been widely published, including a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

 www.donotbendfilm.com

© Grant Scott 2022

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 length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

Arne Svenson is a self-taught photographer with an educational and vocational background in special education, whose photographic practice aims to seek out the inner life, the essence, of his subjects, whether they be human, inanimate, or something in between. He says that he uses his camera as a reporter uses text, to create a narrative that facilitates the understanding of that which may lie hidden or obscured. In the years 2012-1016, Svenson was artist-in-residence at Wesley Spectrum High School, a program in Pittsburgh for children on the autism spectrum. In partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum and the Cognitive Psychology Department at the University of Victoria, BC, he was involved in a long-term project exploring the science of facial recognition skills with subjects on the spectrum. The resultant work was shown in its entirety at The Andy Warhol Museum. He is the author/photographer of numerous books, including Unspeaking Likeness, The Neighbors, Prisoners and Sock Monkeys and in 2016 he received the Nannen Prize in photojournalism for his project The Neighbors. Svenson's photographs have been shown extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia and are included in numerous public and private collections, including SFMOMA, Carnegie Museum of Art, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Norton Museum of Art. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America and The New Yorker, among other publications. Recent solo exhibitions of his images have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Western Washington University, and as a two-person show with the work of Andre Kertesz at Galerie Miranda, Paris. Over the past few years Svenson has given numerous lectures in universities and museums, mostly on the issue of free speech in the arts and how this topic relates to his series The Neighbors, the subject of a protracted legal battle. He was the defendant in a lawsuit involving privacy issues and therefore uniquely qualified to speak about the ramifications of censorship and the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. https://arnesvenson.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 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!

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 photography in the UK with the Do Not Bend Gallery, London and the first Director of Photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Whilst there he founded and directed the first photo-study centre. He studied at the University of New Mexico under Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke and then founded the Photographic Studies programme at Arizona State University, where he taught photography history and criticism for 25 years. Jay is the author of more than twenty books on the history and criticism of photography, four books of his own photography, and roughly 400 essays, lectures and articles. His regular column titled Endnotes was published within Lenswork magazine for a number of years and his own photographs have been widely published, including a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

 www.donotbendfilm.com

© Grant Scott 2022

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 he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

American photographer Andrew Moore is widely acclaimed for his photographic series, usually taken over many years, which record the effect of time on the natural and built landscape. These series include work made in Cuba, Russia, Bosnia, Times Square, Detroit, The Great Plains, and most recently, the American South. Moore’s photographs are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Library of Congress amongst many other institutions. He received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2014, and has been award grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the J M Kaplan Fund. His most recent book, Blue Alabama, was released in 2019. His previous work on the lands and people along the 100th Meridian in the US, called Dirt Meridian, was exhibited at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. An earlier book, Detroit Disassembled, included an essay by the late Poet Laureate Philip Levine, and an exhibition of the same title opened at the Akron Museum of Art before also traveling to the Queens Museum of Art, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Moore’s other books include: Inside Havana (2002), Governors Island (2004) and Russia, Beyond Utopia (2005) and Cuba (2012). Additionally, his photographs have appeared in Art in America, Artnews, The Bitter Southerner, Harpers, National Geographic, New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, TIME, Vogue and Wired. Moore produced and photographed How to Draw a Bunny, a pop art mystery feature film on the artist Ray Johnson. The movie premiered at the 2002 Sundance Festival, where it won a Special Jury prize. www.andrewlmoore.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 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 in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

London based Jillian Edelstein began working as a press photographer in Johannesburg, South Africa. and studied photojournalism at London College of Communications after graduating from The University of Cape Town, B.Soc.Sc in Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology Social Work. Between 1996 and 2002 she returned to South Africa frequently to document the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Her award winning book of the work Truth and Lies was published in 2002. Edelstein's portraits have appeared internationally in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The FT Weekend Magazine, Vanity Fair, Interview, Vogue, The Guardian Weekend, The Sunday Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Forbes, GQ and Esquire. Her work has also been exhibited internationally including at the National Portrait Gallery, The Photographers' Gallery, The Royal Academy, Sothebys, Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in France, Bensusan Museum, Robben Island Museum in South Africa and Dali International Photography Festival, Yunnan Province, China. She has received several awards including the Kodak UK Young Photographer of the Year, Photographers' Gallery Portrait Photographer of the Year Award, the Visa d’Or at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan in 1997, the European Final Art Polaroid Award in 1999, the John Kobal Book Award 2003 and included in The Taylor Wessing Portrait Award on two occasions and the AI-AP Archive in 2008 and 2015. Edelstein was the winner in Latin American Fotografia 4 2015, has been included in World Press Awards on two occasions. Jillian was voted on the ‘Hundred Heroines’ list of women from across the world who are transforming photography today in 2018. She lives in London and is currently working on several photographic projects including a film documentary about the screenwriter Norman Wexler. www.jillianedelstein.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 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, 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