The United Nations of Photography

For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!

Daniel Meadows studied at Manchester Polytechnic where he rented a barber’s shop in 1972, and invited people to come into the Free Photographic Shop to have their photographs taken for no charge before he travelled around England in the Free Photographic Omnibus. This work was published in Living Like This, 1975. Meadows went on to photograph the northwest of England in the 1970s and in the 1980s the people of the London suburb of Bromley published as Nattering in Paradise. In 1983 David Hurn invited him to teach at Newport College of Art and Design and from 1994 he taught at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. From 2001 to 2006 Meadows was creative director of Capture Wales, a BBC Wales project. The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford acquired his archive in 2018 and in 2019, and celebrated the acquisition with an exhibition of Meadows’ work, Now and Then.

“I’m going to answer this question in two parts. Part one, Bill Brandt. I was eighteen years old and up in London from the West Country, where I was
completing my tenth year in boarding school. Yes, I’d been sent away as an eight-year-old but I hadn’t thrived and was filled with something far more
furious than mere adolescent rage. Anyway, this was a school trip and I was in my uniform. I went to the Hayward Gallery and I saw the Bill Brandt retrospective and it blew my socks off! Here I was, a D grade student, certain of only one thing, that I knew nothing. I knew no one working class, I knew no women, no one of colour, I’d never been in a factory, I’d never been in an office. As I say, nothing, but I was fizzing with curiosity. Here were the photographs of a man who had taught himself about the world by using his camera like a passport to slip between the social classes. As soon as I understood what he’d done, I knew that I wanted to do it. 

Part two. As someone who has been in documentary practice for half a century, I sometimes get asked to offer up my rules of engagement. So here they are. The brief version is to always treat people as individuals, never as types and read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans because it is the bible. Here’s the longer version. One, know why you are doing your work, who you are doing it for and where those represented by it can see it when its finished. Two, practice explaining what you do including who benefits from it. Be clear and succinct. Three, when deciding your subject matter, research it on the ground and in books, familiarize yourself with all the ways in which it has already been covered and begin work only if you think you can bring something new to it. Four, once you’ve committed to a project, immerse yourself in it. Live close to it, as close as you can and in a way that is sustainable. Nothing must be more important than your work. Five, work by yourself and be disciplined. Do it for at least eight hours every day and do it as well as it can be done. Six, make a habit of engaging with strangers particularly with people whose attitudes are not your own. Be polite, don’t argue, listen, be curious and respectful. Seven, celebrate, wonder. Eight, catalogue everything you produce as you go along. Nine, don’t call yourself an artist. Ten, don’t expect anyone to be interested in what you’ve done for at least twenty years. That’s what photography means to me too, and just maybe some of this is what I saw as being the possibilities of a career in documentary practice myself when I turned up as a schoolboy at the Hayward for the Bill Brandt Retrospective.” 

www.danielmeadows.co.uk

Image: John Payne, aged 11, with pigeon Chequer and friends; left Michael White, right Kalvin White, brothers, Portsmouth. Friday 26 April 1974. © Daniel Meadows

© Grant Scott 2026

For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!

Clare Strand is a UK-based artist who works with, but mostly against the photographic medium. Over the past 25 yrs, she has made work with found imagery, kinetic machinery, web programmes, fairground attractions and most recently, large-scale paintings and chamber music. She often rejects the default settings of the photographic medium and instead and without apology, welcomes a subtle, slow-burn, approach. Her practice is situated somewhere between control and a willful acceptance of chance. She has exhibited in venues such as The Museum Folkwang; The Center Pompidou; Tate Britain; Salzburg Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her work is held in the collections of MOMA; SFMoma; The V&A Museum; The Center Pompidou; The Kunstmuseum, Bonn; The British Council; The McEvoy Collection; The Arts Council; The NY Public Library; The Provincial Collection,  The Uni Credit Bank; The Mead Museum: Cornell University, The Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf andThe DZ Bank. Strand has produced four publications to date, including Clare Strand Monograph published by Steidl (2009), Skirts published by GOST (2014) Girl Plays with Snake published by MACK (2017) and Negatives for Fun with Clare Strand Photography published by Multipress (2019). Strand was one of the four nominees for the Deutsche Borse prize ( 2020). She is currently represented by Parrotta Contemporary Art, Cologne/Bonn. 

“Story One. My Sister. In my mum and dad’s photo album there is a square photo with a centimetre white border. It is an image of my sister fast asleep. The eiderdown is gold and the pillow is pink. Her right arm is bent up around her head, her short dark hair is messy, and her face is beautiful. When I saw this photo of my sister, I was so jealous and insisted my dad took a photo of me asleep but to my knowledge he never complied.
Story Two. Photo-graphy. When I was in fourth year primary school, Mrs. Rimmer wrote the word photography on the blackboard and asked us to put our hands up to read out what it said to the class. In my head I read it as ‘photo-graphy’. Annette Lawford put her hand up and said ‘photography’. I was amazed at this epiphany. I remember thinking what an interesting word it was and how clever Annette Lawford was.
Story Three. Lisa’s Bedroom. I must have been around thirteen or fourteen and I used to spend a lot of time at my friend Lisa’s house. She was and still is one of my best friends plus she had a TV, a phone, a sink, a sofa-bed and a constantly replenished biscuit barrel in her bedroom. Lisa’s parents had a lodger, whose job was to travel the country and photograph the displays of a popular fizzy drink. He used a Polaroid camera and had a stash of Polaroid film in the small box bedroom he rented. Lisa and I used to liberate boxes of the film and photographed ourselves. We had limited wardrobe but we scraped costumes together. An old woman, a builder, a student, an expectant mother and bit actors from the film Grease. During our visits to the box bedroom, we became aware that the lodger also kept a large quantity of pornographic magazines, which we studied with great interest. In retrospect, this entire episode may have been a seminal moment in my introduction to photography and its varied uses.
Story Four. Corrine Day. My secondary school was on the outskirts of Croydon. I didn’t enjoy school. At a particular low point, I had to see the Deputy Head to explain my concerns. She told me how she would look at people and write down their descriptions, and her thoughts about them. She suggested I do the same. I appreciated her response but I appreciate it even more now. The model Kate Moss was in the year below me. I remember her bringing her first fashion shoots for a teen magazine into school. Soon after, she started working with Corinne Day for The Face resulting in these infamous fashion spreads. The images they made had a profound affect on me. I was intrigued and anxious.
Story Five. Gordon. In a non-linear process I ended up studying on the Editorial Photography degree course at Brighton University. On the first day we were shown the filmThe Rebel. I had a packet of soft mints and I turned to my neighbour and offered him one. I found out later that person had to go to an
emergency dentist appointment as the mint had dislodged his tooth. This person has now been my husband for twenty-five years. Photography has punctuated my life in so many ways, however, unlike the Annette Lawford days, I’m less enamoured by the word, but maybe, when you have lived with something for so long, its only reasonable to feel a push and pull, a love and hate.” 

http://www.clarestrand.co.uk

Image: Clare Strand. Aerial Suspension. 2009

© Grant Scott 2026

In this weeks episode we launch the new ‘Proust Photo Quiz’. Friend of the podcast photographer Harry Borden is the first to take the questions on…

The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album, a form of parlour game popular at the end of the 1890s. The album, titled An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. was found in 1924 and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. Our ‘Proust Photo Quiz’ is an adaption of the original text.

Harry Borden was born in New York and brought up on a farm in Devon in the South West of England. He studied photography at Plymouth College of Art and Design. Borden moved to London after graduation, where he worked as an assistant for the photographer Lester Bookbinder. He received his first commission from The Observer in 1994 and continued to work for the title until the present day photographing celebrities, musicians, creatives and politicians. Examples of Borden’s work are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London and National Portrait Gallery, Australia and appeared regularly in Harpers & Queen, Vogue and The New Yorker. In June 2005, he had his first solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London titled Harry Borden: On Business which included 30 portraits of leading business leaders. In 2017 his book Survivor, A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust was published having been shortlisted for the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2014. It was later judged among the 10 best photography books of 2018 by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. In 2021 his second book Single Dad was published by Hoxton Mini Press. He continues to work on a commissioned basis and on personal work, whilst also lecturing on the MA Professional Photography at Oxford Brookes University. Borden’s YouTube channel which contains films made with his son Fred can be found at www.youtube.com/@fredandharryborden his photography at www.harryborden.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 continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England.

Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale.

© Grant Scott 2026

For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!

Hellen van Meene was born in the Netherlands in 1972 and studied Fine Art at Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and briefly in 1995 at the Edinburgh College of Art. Five years out of art school, she was shortlisted for the Citibank Photography Prize (2001) and signed with New York’s Matthew Marks Gallery. As her work gained recognition, she expanded her subject matter and spent time working in England, Russia, Latvia, the United States and Japan. Van Meene’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, The Photographer’s Gallery, London, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is held in the collections of major museums worldwide including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Art Institute of Chicago, MoCA Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Five monographs of her work have been published; Hellen van Meene:The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits in 2015, Helle van Meene: Japan Series in 2002, Hellen van Meene: Portraits in 2004, Hellen van Meene: New Work in 2006, and Hellen van Meene: tout va disparaitre in 2009. She lives and works in Heiloo in the Netherlands and is represented by galleries in London, New York and Tokyo. 

“Working with photography is a fast way for me to connect with my subject. For me the loveliest way of making photographs is when I meet someone in the street and for whatever reason I feel connected with that person. I will then try to find a way of making a beautiful photograph of them. Sometimes, I will try and find a location close to where I met the person and other times, I will already have a location in mind that I have researched.
I may try and find a subject that fits the profile of the location I have in mind, for example, if I have an old house, I will look for someone who is appropriate visually for the wallpaper in that house or the light there. 

I love making photographs, especially when I have an idea, the model is in front of me, and I am waiting for the light. I see that something is growing, the person is feeling more secure, the beauty is coming out of them. Most of the time when you photograph someone who is unfamiliar with being a model, it is really lovely when you see them opening up like a flower in front of the camera. That is why I like to work with non-professionals, there is something for me to experiment with, I can have my input into the photograph. When I am with professional models there is not so much for me to gain. I love to get into the emotion of the person who is not used to being photographed, someone who doesn’t realise how beautiful they are. There is a wonderful communication between us.

I like to work with daylight, it allows me to respond to the model, just as the light touches their face, or the hair or the background. I don’t really like working in studios where everything is fixed and there are no spontaneous moments of light. When the light goes in and out you have to think quickly how you want the model to pose. The changing of the daylight on the materials in the photograph is the best way for me to communicate what I have in my mind. 

Photography is my language, and my way of translating my ideas to an audience that are willing to see my photographs.” 

http://hellenvanmeene.com

© Grant Scott 2026

In episode 402 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott reflects on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.

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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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.

© Grant Scott 2026

For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!

Mark Steinmetz was born in New York City and raised in the Boston suburbs of Cambridge and Newton, where he lived until he was 12. He then moved to the Midwest and studied photography at the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. He left the MFA programme after one semester, and in mid 1983 aged just 22 he moved to Los Angeles in search of the photographer, Gary Winogrand, whom he befriended. Steinmetz makes photographs of ordinary people in the ordinary landscapes they inhabit, and in the midst of activity. He finds many of his subjects whilst walking, but he has also spent time at Little League Baseball and summer camps. His work has been exhibited in many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public collections featuring his work include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney New York Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yale University Art Gallery and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nazraeli Press has published nine monographs of his work, including South Central in 2006; South East in 2008; Greater Atlanta in 2009; The Players in 2015; and Angel City West in 2016. Among other awards, Mark’s been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1994 and he resides now in Athens Georgia.

Mark Steinmetz: “Hi, I’m Mark Steinmetz. I’m in Athens Georgia, USA. And I have been asked the question, the big question, “What does photography mean to me?” And first, I would say that photography has no intrinsic meaning in and of itself. It’s a tool. Nothing more. A chef may have a fondness for his or her spatula, but finally, it’s just a tool. And the mammoth beast of photography, all the various uses of photography is not something that I really think about too much or dwell upon. I would paraphrase James Agee, who wrote in an essay on Helen Levitt’s book A Way of Seeing that only a few practitioners have really helped us to see better. Most photography has…sort of dumbed down people’s ability to see. It’s made people blind. But a small percentage have really improved our ability to see.

If some mad scientist were to strap me to a table or some very mean sorcerer were going to cast a spell on me, and they told me that they were going to wipe from my memory, all traces of the late work of Eugène Atget or the or the early work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, I would be more than terrified. 

Jean Renoir, the great filmmaker, the son of the painter, was asked whether cinema is art. And his answer was, “what does it matter?” He compared cinema to baking bread, which was very French of him. He said that it’s something that can be done wonderfully, and anything that can be done wonderfully is, well, that’s enough. I think questions such as, is cinema art? Is like other questions about meaning, which is, really, is this valuable? Is doing this thing something to cherish? And it leads us to other questions like, What is the meaning of life? And does my life have meaning? And for all of these heavy questions, I would refer you to a cat lying in the sun. The cat lying in the sun is not asking himself if his life has meaning. He knows that he is the meaning of his life. He has no guilt trip about lying in the sun. He doesn’t feel like he has to do anything. He doesn’t have to have a purpose. He is the purpose. We don’t have to have purpose. We are the purpose. 

For me, photography has been the vessel, the funnel, the container that directs my thoughts. It orchestrates my life. And I can’t really reach in deep enough to express all that it means to me. For me, photography is a kind of literature. But it’s a literature that affects people, not through words, but through images. Images can touch other people in a different space and time and in a way that words cannot. It’s a system of sharing, a way of touching other people, and somewhere in this is its meaning.”

https://www.marksteinmetz.net

Image: © Mark Steinmetz

© Grant Scott 2026

In episode 401 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is reflecting on the big and small things that impact on the everyday engagement we all have with photography.

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 foto8 magazine, 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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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.

© Grant Scott 2026

Image: Magnum photographers take a break during their AGM, New York City, 1989 © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos.

In this special 400th episode UNP founder and curator Grant Scott looks back over the podcast’s evolution from idea to reality, from shed to garage and from one man talking into a microphone to live events. Engaging in trans-Atlantic conversations and building an incredible archive of photographers thoughts on photography.

Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 1 https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2018/05/02/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-1/
Those who have contributed: https://unitednationsofphotography.com/a-photographic-life-podcast/
Colin Jones
Mik Critchlow
Brian Griffin
John Sevigny
Ross McDonnell
Tom Stoddart
Stuart Pilkington
Paul Lowe
Brian Duffy
Mary Ellen Mark
Jane Bown

Contributors to the mega mix in order of appearance:
Tom Stoddart
Daniel Meadows
Alys Tomlinson
Ilona Langbroek
Ashleigh Coleman
David Rothenberg
The Guzman
Harry Borden
Fabio Ponzio
Jason Langer
Kenneth Jarecke
Katherine MacDaid
Jill Hannes
Mark Klett
Greg Marinovich
Paul Lowe
Anna Boyiazis
Andrew Jackson
Jeremy Nicholl
Simon Roberts
Yukari Chikura
Polly Alderton
Seamus Murphy
Sirrka Konttinen
Yael Martinez
Venetia Dearden
Derek Ridgers
Dan Burn Forti
David Eustace
Julia Fullerton Batten
JM Golding
Stephen Dupont
Tim Davis
Robert Trachtenberg
Ruth Lauer Manetti
Richard Ansett
Reuben Wu
Pixy Liao
Paul Russell
Mona Kuhn
Melissa Breyer
Buku Sarker
Chris Floyd
Alys Tomlinson
Aaron Turner
AD Coleman
Brian Griffin
Claire Thomas
Cathal McNaughton
Craig Easton
Dafydd Jones
Danna Singer
Ed Kashi
Jim Mortram
Daniel Meadows
David Eustace
Art Streiber
Tom Oldham
Clare Strand

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 foto8 magazine, 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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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.

Image: Tony Hancock in the Hancock’s Half Hour episode The Radio Ham.

© Grant Scott 2026

In this special episode, editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro, art director, creative director and lecturer Fiona Hayes and UNP founder and curator Grant Scott look back on 2025 and forward to 2026 whilst reflecting on photo exhibitions, books, social media, publishing and the expectations of the Twenty First Century photographer.

Mentioned in this episode:
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2012/10/23/christopher-anderson/
www.wefolk.com/artists/christopher-anderson/information
www.vanityfair.com/news/story/christopher-anderson-white-house-photos-maga-vanity-fair
www.stanleybarker.co.uk/products/cheryomushki
www.henryohead.com/twelve-acres
www.hotshoemagazine.com/products/issue-214-stephen-shore?srsltid=AfmBOooAL0X1cSyFYeZxCcGKcuyaWjAR-3HWoIFw0L0VGO80QB6lJRIO
https://gostbooks.com/products/frontier 
www.toddwebbarchive.com/publications/9-paris-a-love-story-1948-1952/
www.stanleybarker.co.uk/products/la-polaroids

Resistance | How Protest Shaped Britain & Photography Shaped Protest
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6kg4cQpgI
Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark
https://ravenrow.org/exhibitions/peter-hujar-eyes-open-in-the-dark  
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34250044/
The Power and the Glory
www.newportstreetgallery.com/exhibition/the-power-and-the-glory/
Richard Avedon: In the American West
www.henricartierbresson.org/en/expositions/richard-avedon/
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2026/richard-avedon-facing-west/
Photo London 2026 
https://photolondon.org

Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.

Fiona Hayes
Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), Myself Germany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. In 2002 she founded independent photography magazine DayFour, publishing it continuously until 2012. She is Co-Author and Art Director of The Fashion Yearbook, and creative director of books for South African media consultancy Legacy Creates. Outside the publishing world, she has been Art Director of contemporary art auction house Phillips de Pury in London and New York, and Consultant Art Director of Russian luxury retail group Mercury/TSUM. (Fiona would like to point out she is not Russian: she is proudly Irish and studied Visual Communication and History of Art and Design at NCAD Dublin.) She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing at Oxford Brookes University, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, London, Nottingham Trent University, Ravensbourne University, and Leeds University. She lives in West London. @theartdictator

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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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.

© Grant Scott 2025

In this special episode recorded at our A Photographic Life Live 2025 event at Oxford Brookes University Grant speaks with photographic historian Dr Michael Pritchard concerning the importance of creating an organised archive, making money from an archive and how to leave your archive for those who will inherit it.

Dr Michael Pritchard
Dr Michael Pritchard has a practical knowledge of studio and location photography, darkroom processing and printing, and digital photography.  He joined Christie’s, the fine art auction house, as a photography specialist in 1986 and grew auctions of cameras and photographic equipment and associated material, setting many world auction records. He was also an auctioneer, and became a Christie’s Director and International Business Director for collectibles across the company. In 2007 he became a consultant for Christie’s working on a new cataloguing and property control system. He also undertook a PhD in history of photography between 2007 and 2010. His thesis examined photographic manufacturing and retailing from 1839-1914.  He has taught history of photography at MA level at De Montfort University and catalogued and organised the Kodak Historical Collection at the British Library for public access. Pritchard was recruited to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 2011 as Chief Executive, becoming Director of Programmes from 2018-2023. During his tenure he brought a renewed public profile for the RPS  and oversaw an expansion in its public activities, not least growing its membership to the largest in its history. In 2024 he established his own consultancy. He continues to support the RPS. Pritchard continues to actively research the history of photography and regularly delivers conference papers and publishes across the field. He edits the British Photographic History blog and The PhotoHistorian. His knowledge is regularly sought and he shares his expertise and knowledge of photography and its history with other academics and institutions, students, collectors and the general public.  He gives regular talks and has broadcast on a wide range of photographic subjects. His most recent book is A History of Photography in 50 Cameras (Bloomsbury). 

https://mpritchard.squarespace.com

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work zas 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 is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024.

© Grant Scott 2025