Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Craig Easton and Lottie Davies.

Craig Easton is a Scottish photographer whose work is deeply rooted in the documentary tradition. He makes long-term projects exploring issues around social policy, identity and a sense of place, in a research-based practice that weaves a narrative between contemporary experience and history. In April 2021, he was awarded the title of Photographer of the Year at the SONY World Photography Awards and is the current recipient of The Arnold Newman Prize for Portraiture in the USA. He has published three monographs: Fisherwomen, Bank Top and Thatcher’s Children.

Lottie Davies is a BAFTA-nominated artist and writer based in Cornwall and London. Her work is exhibited and collected internationally. She has been the recipient of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Award, The Young Masters Prize, and the Arte Laguna Prize for Photography amongst others. Her practice employs moving image, audio, text and interactive installation alongside photography. This mixed media approach was crystallized in her seven-year project Quinn which was widely exhibited across the UK and published in a limited-edition monograph in 2021.

www.craigeaston.com

www.lottiedavies.com

www.nhslothiancharity.org

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kavi Pujara.

Kavi Pujara is a self-taught photographer making personal, long-term documentary photo projects in his home town of Leicester. His work is included in this years Hayward Gallery touring group exhibition: After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024. His debut project 'This Golden Mile' was first exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation in 2022 and coincided with his first monograph of the same name, published by Setanta Books.

www.kavipujara.com

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Craig Atkinson from Café Royal Books.

This episode was recorded to coincide with the exhibition CAFÉ ROYAL BOOKS at Stills which ran from 10 November 2023 to 10 February 2024.

Craig Atkinson is an artist and lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. In 2005 he founded Café Royal Books and since 2012 he has been producing weekly publications on documentary photography, linked to Britain and Ireland, in an accessible and affordable zine format. Now spanning more than 600 issues, Café Royal Books has built-up a large, unique printed archive of documentary photography with broad appeal for its photographic, social and historic interest. Amongst those that collect Café Royal Books publications are universities and collections including: MoMA, New York; Tate; and the V&A, London. The exhibition, ‘Café Royal Books: Documentary, Zines and Subversion,’ was held at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol in 2022 and in the same year, Café Royal Books received the Royal Photographic Society Award for Photographic Publishing. 

www.caferoyalbooks.com

@caferoyalbooks (Instagram)

Episode music by Dom Mino’

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Markéta Luskačová.

This special episode of Photography Down The Line is a recording of a conversation between Ben Harman and the photographer Markéta Luskačová at a public event held at Stills, Edinburgh on 12th August 2023. The event marked the launch of Luskačová's solo exhibition at Stills. 

Markéta Luskačová was born in 1944 and became a freelance photographer in 1968 whilst undertaking postgraduate studies in Photography at the Academy of Film and Fine Arts, Prague. She relocated to London in 1975 and was a Nominee Photographer with Magnum Photographic Agency, Paris from 1976-80. Since 1971, Luskačová’s work has featured in exhibitions around the world and notable solo exhibitions have been held at the V&A, London (1983-84); Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (1989); Whitechapel Gallery, London (1991); Stills Gallery, Sydney (1998); Leica Gallery, Prague (2014); Tate Britain, London (2018-19); and The Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol (2019).

Luskačová's solo exhibition at Stills opened for the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2023. It brought together more than 50 works from some of Luskačová’s best-known series covering subjects such as: Pilgrims; Juvenile Jazz Bands in the North of England; Durham Cathedral and Chorister School; London Markets; London Street Musicians, Chiswick Women’s Aid and Carnivals in the Czech Republic. Stills worked with Luskačová to select photographs on the theme of children – an interest that permeates almost all of her work and for several years was the main subject of her pictures. By following this thread, we united photographs made around the UK and in Ireland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, dating from 1964-2009. The exhibition has been developed in partnership with the Centre for British Photography, London where it will be presented in 2024.

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kelly O'Brien.

Kelly O'Brien is a creative worker, documentary photographic artist, educator and PhD researcher.

Within her working practice, Kelly explores visual transformation and storytelling in connection to personal and political narratives through making and theory. She is interested in the photographic relationship to absence, investigating how invisibility can be utilised as a tool of possibility and perception to visualise erased and misrepresented histories. The themes that currently anchor her work are class, labour, family, care and liberation.  

Kelly is curious about the potential in experimental collaboration and collective participation, in both the production and the dissemination of her work. She works within an intersectional feminist framework where an ethical questioning of the status quo and power relations are central. 

She has been the recipient of several awards and her work has been widely exhibited and published. With over 15 years of experience as a creative labourer, Kelly has worked as a community arts facilitator and producer, collaborating on projects that focus on radical social justice. She also lectures in photography, working in partnership with universities and art institutions in the UK and internationally.

Instagram  @kelly.o.brien

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Marilena Vlachopoulou.

Marilena Vlachopoulou is a documentary and portrait photographer from Athens based in Glasgow. Since graduating from Kelvin College in 2018, she has been documenting Glasgow’s music scene and gig landscape in a variety of analogue formats. Her work has been featured widely, from the pages of The Herald newspaper to the walls of The Benaki Museum, as part of Athens Photo Festival 2020. She has been commissioned by House of VANS London, Govanhill Baths, The Skinny, The Wire, Polaroid and others.

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Sophie Gerrard.

Sophie Gerrard (Scottish, b.1978) is an award-winning international artist working within the field of photography. Her practice is characterised by sensitive and evocative visual exploration of the natural environment and our relationship to it.

Sophie’s work has been included in publications including The New York Times and The Guardian. Her work is shown in national and international public institutions including Paris Photo, The Martin Parr Foundation, The Photographers’ Gallery, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, OFF_festival Bratislava, Unseen Amsterdam, FORMAT International Photography Festival, The Fox Talbot Museum, and Perth Museum & Art Gallery. Her work is held in private and national collections including The Sir Elton John Collection, The National Collection of Scotland, The University of St Andrews Collection, Coutts Bank private collection and the StatOil Collection.

Sophie has a Masters from The University of The Arts London, and degrees from Edinburgh College of Art and Manchester University.

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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Jonjo Borrill.

Jonjo Borrill was born on the North-East coast of England. After a childhood of struggling to express himself, photography became a cathartic outlet for his thoughts and feelings about the world. As his photographic practice matured, Borrill's interest became documenting others' stories and giving them a voice and platform to be heard.

www.jonjoborrill.com

@jonjoborrill (Instagram)

Episode music by Dom mino'

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Ishiuchi Miyako.

This special episode of Photography Down The Line is a recording of a conversation between Ben Harman and the photographer Ishiuchi Miyako at a public event held at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh on 2nd August 2022. The event marked the launch of Miyako's solo exhibition at Stills, the first ever display of her work in Scotland. Miyako responded to questions with the assistance of an interpreter, the filmmaker Linda Hoaglund. 

Ishiuchi Miyako was born in 1947 and first started taking photographs, self-taught, in the mid-1970s. In 2005, with her series Mother's, she represented Japan at the prestigious Venice Biennale in Italy. Her work has been exhibited and collected by numerous collections and institutions around the world. Major exhibitions of her work have been held at J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2015) and the Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan (2017). Miyako was the recipient of the 2014 Hasselblad Award.

Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual filmmaker born and raised in Japan, where she attended Japanese public schools. A graduate of Yale University, she has directed and produced five films about art and the relationship between Japan and the U.S. including Things Left Behind, a film about the transformative power of Ishiuchi Miyako’s “hiroshima” photographs. Linda’s most recent film, Edo Avant Garde, reveals how Japanese artists innovated many techniques of “modern art” in the 17th and 18th century.