In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to Lesley A. Martin, creative director of Aperture. She has edited over one hundred books including collaborations with Zanele Muholi, La Toya Ruby Frazier, Richard Mosse, Hank Willis Thomas, Rinko Kawauchi, Antwaun Sargent, and Sara Cwynar to name just a few. She is also the publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture , Ojo de...
Mar 04, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats to writer and curator Ekow Eshun. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Granta, Wired and Aperture. He is Chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing London’s most significant public art programme, and the former director of the ICA. In this conversation, we discuss how his upbringing in London informed his creative work. We discuss what he is looking for in emerging artists and his...
Feb 18, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Gem chats to Laia Abril. Laia is a research-based artist working with photography, text, video and sound. She began her career at the iconic Colors Magazine, which left an indelible mark on how she thinks about process, authorship and collaboration. Now, her art practice is centred on creating a dialogue about hidden realities related to sexuality and gender inequality. In this episode, we talk about her long term project, A History of Misogyny. Chapter 1 - On Abortion is a gut-wrenching explora...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Gem chats to Quil Lemons, a New York-based artist who has really crafted a distinct visual language which interrogates ideas around masculinity, queerness, race and beauty. His first body of work ‘GlitterBoy’, a tender portrait series of Black men and boys adorned in glitter, examined the shifting notions of gender and beauty as they relate to masculinity in the black community. The project laid the foundation for his bold and daring work that straddles art and fashion. “I got into photography t...
Jan 21, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Gem chats to Farah Al Qasimi. While her primary line of inquiry examines postcolonial structures of power, gender and taste in the Gulf Arab states, what galvanises the work is her unique ability to embed meaning into visual aesthetics. Farah describes her aesthetic approach as 'so muchness'. Her frames overflow with a heady mix of print, objects and domestic interiors amplified by the tension between harsh lighting and an acidic colour palette. Together they transport us into her psyche, an int...
Jan 07, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 31
In this special episode, Gem Fletcher celebrates some of the personal projects, assignments and exhibitions that have been her highlights from the year. Despite the tough reality of 2020, some incredible work has been made, published and exhibited, some of which Gem has already talked about this season and many more which will be discussed in Season 4 that kicks off in January 2021. In this episode, she is in conversation with Alona Pardo, Silvia Rosi, Maggie Shannon, Camila Falquez and Sarah Al...
Dec 29, 2020•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Gem chats to Sara Urbaez, a photo editor with extensive experience in both brand and editorial spaces. Sara extensive career has seen her work in photo departments at Apple, Airbnb, Wired, Art+ Auction and Modern Painters. Motivated by photography’s long history of preventing cultures from representing themselves and the dire lack of diverse storytelling in the industry, Sara founded Listo – a platform devoted to dismantling colonial tendencies in photography. Listo is profoundly celebratory and...
Dec 10, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Gem chats to Diana Markosian, known for her intimate approach to storytelling using photography and film. Her projects have taken her to some of the most remote corners of the world, where she has created work that is both conceptual and documentary. Her images can be found in publications like National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times. She holds a Masters of Science from Columbia University in New York. In this conversation we talk about her journey, her process, what ...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Recorded remotely on 16th October 2020, Gem chats to photographer Annie Collinge who moves between the world of art and fashion, creativity and commerce in a way that stays true to her ethos and intentions as a photographer. Based in London, she uses photography as a tool for transformation, for imagining a kind of illusion in the everyday. Encountering her work is to happen upon something miraculous unexpectedly - often a playful fantasy that is joyful yet carries a dark undertone. In this conv...
Nov 19, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Recorded remotely on 5th September 2020, Gem chats to photographer Philip Montgomery. Renown for his urgent documentary work that focuses on the American experience, his work examines the social issues of our time, utilising observational strategies of documentary and aesthetic approaches of fine art. Based in New York City, he is a graduate of the Photojournalism and Documentary Program at the International Center of Photography. His work been exhibited around the world and is included in the 2...
Oct 22, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Recorded remotely on 4th September 2020, Gem chats to photographer David Brandon Geeting, a photographer renown for his disruptive approach to still life and visual aesthetics. Masterfully playing with ideas of taste, worth, reality and truth, David challenges our expectations of photography, especially those within the commercial and editorial space. David's 2019 monograph Neighbourhood Stroll is a collection of photographs taken outside in his neighbourhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Void of hum...
Oct 08, 2020•48 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Recorded remotely on 7th September 2020, Gem Fletcher chats to Dr Jennifer Good, writer, researcher and educator. Known for her fascinating research on the relationship between photography and trauma. She has written several books and writes for a variety of photography magazines and journals. As the Joint Course Leader on the BA & MA Photojournalism and Documentary course at the London College of Communication, Jen works closely with students on discovering and honing personal ethics throug...
Sep 24, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Recorded remotely on 26th July 2020, Gem Fletcher chats with renowned artist, writer and educator Carmen Winant. Her expansive art practice uses text and image to question the patriarchal framework that surrounds women’s bodies. She confronts, unveils and reimagines within her practice to empower agency and liberation. Through the collection and aggregation of found imagery, she examines the limitations of photography to transmute the human experience in all its complexity. My birth, her renowne...
Aug 27, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Recorded remotely on 24th April 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to renowned photographer Christopher Anderson, who continues to have a fascinating journey through the industry. He’s created world-renowned photojournalism, some of the most disarming magazine covers of the last two decades as well as a series of fascinating photo books about a range of different subjects from his children to documenting the NYPD in the wake of 9/11. He first gained recognition for his pictures in 1999 when he boar...
Aug 06, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Recorded remotely on 9th April 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to renowned photographer Alec Soth, best known for his iconic work Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004) . A series of 47 images of people and places which evolved from road trips along the Mississippi River. The project brings together Alec’s documentary style and poetic sensibility capturing the spirit of the community he encountered. 16 years on and he is one of the most celebrated image-makers of our time. He went on to publish over...
Jul 23, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Recorded remotely on 31st May 2020 during lockdown, Gem chats to leading photographer and artist Shaniqwa Jarvis, best known for her fusion of modern fashion aesthetics with sensitive and emotional portraiture. Her approach captures vivid reality across a wide range of subjects, each frame imbued with profound optimism. In this conversation, we explore how Shaniqwa found photography, how she entered the creative industry at the turn of the century and all she had to overcome to be the iconic art...
Jul 09, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Georgie Wileman is a portrait and Documentary photographer focusing on social injustice. Her work highlights our internalised lives, the struggles we live with mentally, physically and emotionally. What may appear dark at first glance is more about enlightenment. Georgie’s photography seeks to educate audiences on urgent human struggles that often go unseen, while in turn enabling her subjects to feel validated in their suffering. Gem Fletcher talks to Georgie Wileman about her process and what ...
Jun 25, 2020•39 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Micaiah Carter's stylised photographs have graced magazines, screens and billboards capturing icons, past and present with his unique blend of 90’s maximalism and 70’s hues. He is clear about his intentions as an image-maker – wanting the work to be a quality platform for the representation of people of colour that hasn’t been seen before. What I love about his photographs is how they emanate a powerful hybrid of joy and resilience. Gem Fletcher chats to Micaiah Carter about collaboration, ident...
Jun 22, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Leonard Suryajaya uses his work to speak profoundly to the challenges of being an outsider, and the deep complexity of navigating identities. He embeds his life experiences into every facet of his work, testing the boundaries of intimacy, community and identity. His subjects, often family, friends and lovers, work in a kind of absurd theatre within the frame. Viewing Suryajaya’s work is an emotional experience. The photographs are disarming, intense and even over stimulating at times. The chaos ...
May 21, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Born and raised in New York City, with pit stops in South Carolina and New Orleans, photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis has been using the camera for nearly a decade as a tool of empowerment. Battling with depression from an early age, Bobb-Willis found solace behind the lens and has developed a visual language that speaks to the complexities of life: the beautiful, the strange, belonging, isolation, and connection. Inspired by masters like Jacob Lawrence and Benny Andrews, Bobb-Willis applies a ‘p...
May 07, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Eva O’Leary has been producing photographs in and around her hometown of Central Pennsylvania, ironically nicknamed Happy Valley. Gaining access to college parties, dorm rooms, and proms and other social spaces of those in the midst of pivotal coming of age moments, O’Leary examines individual vulnerability in these transitional times. Her work explores intimate moments to deftly confront power dynamics as it falls along gendered lines, especially within the lives of adolescents. Eva’s work navi...
Apr 23, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Chris Maggio is a photographer living in NYC with 8.6 million of his closest friends. Often exploring the quotidian details of American cities and their tourism, his documentary practice sits at the intersection of both observational and staged photography. He examines the humanity and hidden complexities of humour in everyday life. His hybrid practice crosses documentary, fashion, portraiture all laced with his signature intervention. While his work feels loose and organic, every inch of the fr...
Apr 09, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Devyn Galindo is fearlessly nomadic, honest and observant, with an eye toward the gently radical. Having grown up between California and Texas, she between Los Angeles and New York, keeping time to explore and the South. Devyn documents the lives of her friends emerging from the Chicanx scene in Los Angeles. Exploring her own identity as a queer artist during the current political climate has become an obsession that led to their first publication , We Are Still Here , which launched in November...
Mar 26, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Antuwan Sargent is an art critic, writer and curator. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more, as well as essays to multiple museum publications. His first book, “The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion” (Aperture) is out now. In the book, Antwaun addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The presentation of black figures and black runway and cover models in the media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclus...
Feb 20, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Michelle Groskopf is a street and editorial photographer based in Los Angeles. Her street photography has been exhibited around the world, including Korea, London, NY and LA, and has been featured in the New Yorker’s photo booth, Creative Review, Lenscratch, The British Journal of Photography, Ain’t Bad and more. Her client list includes The NY Times, Apple, New York Magazine, California Sunday, Wired, GQ, Bloomberg Businessweek and Refinery29. Michelle Groskopf talks to Gem Fletcher about vulne...
Feb 06, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Kimberly Drew is a writer, curator, and activist. She received her B.A. Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies. She first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, W, Teen Vogue, and Lenny Letter and she has executed Instagram takeovers for Prada, The ...
Jan 23, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Prarthna Singh's work explores female identity in contemporary India, within the intersection of gender and nation. Particularly drawn to stories that stand at the conflux of radical vulnerability and power; her images highlight India’s transition and contrast while exploring a dual dichotomy between feminine identity and strength. These female narratives are constructed within India’s own traditions, poised between fragility and abundance. After completing her BFA in photography from the Rhode ...
Jan 09, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Charlotte Jansen is a British Sri Lankan author and arts and culture journalist. Since 2015, she has held the position of Editor-at-Large at Elephant magazine . She has written for The Guardian, The Financial Times, ELLE UK, Vice, The British Journal of Photography and Wallpaper*, among others. In 2017, she published her first book, Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze. The critically-acclaimed publication will be released as a paperback edition in Autumn 2019. She is ...
Jul 25, 2019•34 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Alys Tomlinson grew up in Brighton, UK and studied photography at Central Saint Martins. She recently completed an MA in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. Her projects are often research-led and she is most interested in the relationship between people and place, exploring themes of environment, belonging and identity. Her major body of work ‘Ex-Voto’ (2016-2018) explores Christian pilgrimage sites in Lourdes (France), Ballyvourney (Ireland) and Grabarka (Poland). Often placed anonymou...
Jul 11, 2019•42 min•Season 1Ep. 7
After eight years in London including a five-year stint at M&C Saatchi and time with Anomaly, Lydia Pang moved to New York and now works as a Creative Director for Refinery29. She defines herself as a Frankenstein Creative, born out of an international outlook and the changing industry - the job she has created for herself is made up of many roles. She has made it her mission to support new voices and given many photographers their first big job. She’s an advocate for constant learning, disc...
Jun 27, 2019•50 min•Season 1Ep. 6
