Welcome back. To celebrate reaching the 100th episode of the podcast, I collaborated with the team at the International Centre of Photography in New York City, to host a one day salon. My motivation was to gather the community together in person and start talking about where we stand in photography. Titled, Between Two Worlds, the salon was an attempt to describe the feeling of existing in two image worlds, the one we think we know, and the new one emerging. We can sense that this new image world operates differently to the one we were socialised in—and yet it’s unclear exactly how.

Before you dive in, I wanted to share what I told the audience at the salon - there are no tidy or easy answers here. In fact my expectation is that these conversations will involve a lot of complexity and contradiction, but holding space for, and embracing this chaos, is in my opinion, the urgent work that needs to be done. 

In this session On Portraiture, I was joined by Avion Pearce, Caroline Tompkins and Alexander Coggin. Three fascinating photographers, each with their own distinct approach to imaging people, and yet their strategies overlap and intersect in different ways. 

Throughout history, Portraiture has played a critical role in how we understand people and ourselves, revealing a myriad of ideas about the maker and the sitter. In an era where identities and communities are yet again being erased or reduced, Portraiture feels particularly pertinent to me right now. 

Projects mentioned:

Caroline Tompkins - Bedfellow

Avion Pearce - In The Hours Before Dawn

Alexander Coggin - Micheal

Follow Caroline, Avion, Alexander & Gem on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

Thank you to the whole team at ICP for collaborating on this project.

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to writer and artist Gideon Jacobs. For the last few years, Gideon has been grappling with our relationship to images and technology, posing theories about its potential futures. Despite his beat not being politics, many of his most potent essays, in particular those for the LA Review of Books, use the root of politics to untangle the changing state of images and the ways in which reality is being reimagined through image production and strategy in dark and surreal ways. In this episode, we cover a lot of ground, trying to unravel how the value of images is shifting and what the potential outcome or implications of this could be, to which there are several possibilities, but for Gideon, our relationship to technology comes front and centre. 

Gideon Jacobs is a New York based writer contributing fiction and nonfiction to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, BOMB Magazine, The Drift, Heavy Traffic, aMONG others. Alongside his writing, he is currently performing a one man show called Images: A Show, a performance as a Second Commandment fundamentalist preacher, directed by Ruby McCollister. He has lectured at a number of institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome and the New School, NYC. Gideon is currently working on a novel about images.

Articles mentioned:

Trump l’Oeil (LA Review of Books)

Player One and Main Character (LA Review of Books)

AI is the Future of Photography… (New York Times)

Follow Gideon @gideon___jacobs & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to Donna Ferrato, a fearless photojournalist who has redefined how the world sees domestic violence through her groundbreaking work. Her seminal book Living With the Enemy [published by Aperture] sparked a global reckoning, exposing the hidden realities of abuse and igniting conversations that continue to drive change. In this conversation, Donna shares her radical approach to image making, what she went through to get her work seen, and her lifelong mission of wielding the camera as a tool for justice.  

In 2021, Donna received a grant from the Mayor’s Office to End Gender-Based Violence to build and install a public art installation on a human scale in the form of a prison cell sculpture of mirrored steel which symbolized a portal into the lives of criminalized survivors of domestic violence.  Donna's work has been recognized with numerous prestigious honors, including the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Plight of the Disadvantaged, the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, the Missouri Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Artist of the Year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Look3 Insightful Artist of the Year. In 2008, New York City declared October 30th “Donna Ferrato Appreciation Day,” and in 2009, she was honored by the judges of the New York State Supreme Court for her tireless advocacy for gender equality. In 2025, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from John Jay College of Criminal Justice for her lifelong commitment to justice, truth, and the transformative power of photography.  

Donna's photographs are held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the International Center of Photography in New York City, as well as in private collections such as those of Celso Gonzalez-Falla, the Marrus Family Fund, Keri Jackson and Adrian Kunzel, Ann and Alex Russ Family Fund. She is represented by the Daniel Cooney Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

Follow Donna @donnaferrato & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this conversation Lisa Barnard talks to Gem Fletcher about her new exhibition, You Only Look Once,  at c/o Berlin which considers perception in relation to both human and machine experience. She addresses the complexity of technological progress and the ecological resources on which its promises depend. Her research focuses on California, unfolding a multilayered, fragmented and nonlinear story that encompasses photographs, an immersive video installation, archival interventions, alternative printing strategies and AI-generated image analyses that weave together in the creation of a dense visual entanglement.

Lisa Barnard is a British artist and lecturer whose photography focuses on real events. In her projects, she combines classical documentary methods such as photography, audio, video, and text with contemporary visual strategies and digital technologies. She brings together her interest in aesthetics and current debates on the materiality of photography with political questions surrounding new ecological efforts, technological developments, science, and the industrial military complex. Barnard is an associate professor and head of the online masters in documentary photography at University of South Wales. She regularly exhibits her work and has published three monographs: Chateau Despair (2012, GOST, supported by Arts Council England), Hyenas of the Battlefield: Machines in the Garden (2014, GOST, supported by Albert Renger-Patzsch prize), and The Canary and the Hammer (2019, MACK, supported by Getty Images Prestige Grant). 

Follow Lisa @lisacbarnard & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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I Will Keep You in Good Company, the latest book by Liz Johnson Artur brings together pages and fragments from over twenty years of her personal workbooks she has kept since the early 1990s. These books are a kind of private, experimental playground where she shaped her photographic language through layering, cutting, annotating, and assembling: a space for processing not only images, but life itself. Each page is a tactile surface, combining photographic prints on canvas, tracing paper, faxes, and photo stock with screen-prints, handwriting, and clipped texts. The result is a sensorial, intimate archive of moments lived and witnessed – of friends, family, strangers, lovers – held with care and attention. 

In this conversation, Gem and Liz talk about the workbooks and Liz’s journey making them throughout her career. They also talk about the power of stubbornness, finding your tools, overcoming shyness, how she has integrated her work into her life and the importance of being yourself within the institution. 

Follow Liz @lizjohnsonartur & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode Gem talks to writer and curator Vince Aletti about his most recent book Physique—which showcases rare photographic prints from the underground gay magazine of the same name—collated from his own private collection. Spanning the 1930s to the early 1960s, these photographs chronicle a hidden, coded world of homoerotic imagery. Physique reveals a forgotten chapter of American gay culture in which photographic prints served as a lifeline, connecting a community of men under threat while also providing solace, pleasure, and empowerment amid oppression. In their roving conversation, they talk about obsessions, Queer culture, FOMO, writing, the importance of incongruous connections, Bad Bunny and the evolving codes of masculinity.

Vince Aletti is a writer, critic, curator and book maker. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and has also written for Aperture, Artforum, Document, amongst other titles. Vince was the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994 to 2005 and the paper’s photo critic for twenty years. In 2005, he won the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for writing. He has made many books, most recently, The Drawer and Physique made in collaboration with Self Publish Be Happy and Mack. Vince lives and works in Manhatten

Follow Vince @vincealetti & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to Charlotte Jansen, writer and Photo London curator. They discuss mechanics behind photography fairs, how she approaches the curatorial process and how this aspect of the industry can support the work of emerging artists. 

Charlotte Jansen is a British Sri Lankan author, journalist and critic based in London. She is the curator of Discovery at Photo London and writes on contemporary art and photography for The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New York Times, British Vogue and ELLE, among others. She is the author of Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze, and Photography Now.

Follow Charlotte @omfgnoway & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to photographers and longtime partners Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez about their collaborative project and book, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,” published by Mack. For the last five years, the two artists have traversed the border between Mexico and the United States, working together for the first time and ruminating on ideas about human connection, migration and the mechanics of photography itself. In this conversation they talk about the reality of collaboration, and how as they studied the borderlands they were faced with an unavoidable reckoning that, over time, offered them a deeper understanding of each other and their work.

Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them.  Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries.

Andres Gonzalez is a visual artist based in Vallejo, California. His book “American Origami” (2019) won the Light Work Photo Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Book Awards. We featured “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,” his first collaborative project with fellow photographer, and life partner, Carolyn Drake, which saw them spend five years traversing the border between Mexico and the United States, capturing moments and characters from their individual perspectives.

Follow Carolyn @drakeycake & Andres @andresvgonzalez & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher speaks to Amak Mahmoodian about her latest body of work, ‘One Hundred and Twenty Minutes’, in which she examines dreaming for individuals living in exile. Working with 16 collaborators, Amak uses photography, poetry, drawing and video to explore the new lives created through dreams, as well as the ways in which dreaming enables individuals to return to a past that cannot be reached while awake. 

Amak Mahmoodian is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. She began her career as a research-based photographer in Iran in 2003 at the Art University of Tehran. Since 2010, she has been living in the UK, unable to return to Iran. She practices as a visual artist at the intersection of conceptual image-making and documentary photography, working with photographs, text, video, drawing, archives and sound.Her practice explores the presentation of gender, identity and displacement, bridging a space between personal and political across platforms and formats including installation, books and films.

Her works are held in collections such as the Tate, and the British Library in London. She has published two books, Shenasnameh (RRB- ICV Lab, 2016), and Zanjir (RRB, 2019) which was the winner of The Best Photo Text Book award at Rencontres Arles, 2020.

Follow Amak @amak_mahmoodian & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to artist Paul Kooiker. They discuss his process, unique way of seeing, his relationship to equipment, the archive, book making and sepia and how he thinks about the ecosystem around his practice. 

Paul Kooiker is an award winning artist based in Amsterdam. Disconnected from time and place, and transcending classic gender roles, his surreal images feel like film stills of stories we can only imagine. Paul’s practice is characterised by a conceptual and experimental approach to photography and for the past five years he created works that flirt with the boundary between commerce and art. As a result, he has become a much sought-after creator of iconic images and collaborated with Vogue Italia, Luncheon and AnOther, Givenchy, Valentino and Rick Owens. Paul has published thirteen books and had his work displayed in countless solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. His works can be found in a great many international collections, both public and private. 

Follow Paul @paulkooiker & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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