224 - Edward Burtynsky

230 - Julia Kochetova

Julia Kochetova (b. 1993) is a Ukrainian photojournalist and documentary filmmaker based in Kyiv. Her work focuses on firsthand storytelling as a method, researching topics of the war generation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and feminism.

Julia studied journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University (UA) and Mohyla School of Journalism (UA), alongside participating in IDFAcademy (NL). As a freelancer, Julia has covered the Maidan revolution (2013-2014), the annexation of Crimea (2014), and the Russia-Ukraine war (2014-now).She is a regular contributor to Der Spiegel, Vice News, Zeit, Bloomberg, The Guardian, amongst others.

In 2023, Julia won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Continuing News Coverage: Long Form with VICE News Tonight and in 2024, just a few weeks ago, was the global winner of the Open Format category in the World Press Photo awards for her multi-media project War Is Personal.

In episode 230, Julia discusses, among other things:

• Viewing the war as a long-term project.
• Not choosing to be a war photoghrapher.
• Still photographs no longer ‘working’ - importance of text.
• How her WPP winning project was done ‘last minute’.
• Her love/hate relationship with Instagram.
• How all her plans changed in 2014 with the Maidan Revolution.
• Her documentary film project See You Later.
• What she means by ‘it’s about the photographs I haven’t taken’.
• A valuable lesson learned about behaving ethically.
• How war has deprived her of the capacity for joy.

Referenced:

• Oleksandr Komiakhov
• Daria Kolomiec

Website | Instagram

“I’m really grateful that our story is being told by Ukrainian photographers, but it never was about career ambition. We Ukrainian storytellers were never in the position that we chose to become war photographers. I keep saying I’m not a war photographer. I’m photographing war because this is what’s happening in my country. I have zero wish to photograph any other wars. I’m doing this because this is my war. That’s the only accurate skill I have.”

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229 - Michael Ackerman

Michael Ackerman was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1967. When he was seven years old his family emigrated to New York City, where he grew up and began photographing at the age of eighteen. Michael has exhibited internationally and published five books, includingEnd Time City, by Robert Delpire, which won the Prix Nadar in 1999. His other books are Epilogue (Void, 2019) Half Life (Delpire, 2010) Fiction (Delpire, 2001) and Smoke (l'axolotl, 2023). His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Biliothèque National, France among others, as well as in many private collections.

“In Michael Ackerman’s work, documentary and autobiography conspire with fiction, and all of the above dissolve into hallucination.His photography explores time and timelessness, personal history and the history of places, immediate family and love, with all it’s complexities and contradictions.“ Jem Cohen.

Michael currently lives in Berlin and is represented by Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris, Spot Home Gallery, Naples and MC2 Gallery, Milan.

In episode 229, Michael discusses, among other things:

• A little family history
• Why he put that info on his website
• Collating family photos on becoming a father
• Why he loves New York
• How he started photography there
• Being ‘very, very slow’
• Why he uses cheap plastic cameras
• What he likes about photographing animals
• Mood
• Anders Petersen
• Longing being the human condition
• Photographing ‘life’
• Text and context
• Transcending the facts while keeping a strong hold on a deeper truth
• His life in Berlin with an impossible ‘to do’ list

Referenced:

• Teru Kuwayama
• Sylvia Plachy
• Lorenzo Castore
• Anders Petersen
• Robert Frank
• Masao Yamamoto
• Boris Mikhailov
• Jem Cohen

Website | Instagram

“For me photography is always a negotiation between confrontation and avoidance. And I think my pictures show that. I think my pictures are very intimate and they do get close to something and they are an attempt at getting close, but there’s also a lot of fear in them I see, because I know it in myself, and a lot of solitude.”

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228 - Valerie Belin

A student at the École Beaux-arts de Versailles (1983–1985), and then at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges (1985-1988), French artist Valerie Belin obtained the French higher national diploma in visual expression in 1988 and also holds a diploma in advanced studies (DEA) in the philosophy of art from the Université de Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (1989).

Initially influenced by various minimalist and conceptual tendencies, Valérie became interested in the photographic medium in its own right; this is at once the subject of her work and her way of reflecting and creating. Light, matter and the “body” of things and beings in general, as well as their transformations and representations, constitute the terrain of her experiments and the world of her artistic ideas. Her work is articulated in photographic series, each one produced within the framework of a specific project.

Valérie’s work has been exhibited around the world and is held in numerous public and private collections. Winner of the Prix Pictet in 2015 (Disorder), she was made an officer of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2017. This same year, atouring exhibition was co-produced by the Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, the SCôP in Shanghai and the Chengdu Museum. In 2019, Valérie unveiled a major new series at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and this year, 2024, she has been named as Master of Photography at Photo London where she will have a major career retrospective.

Valerie lives and works in Paris.

In episode 228, Valerie discusses, among other things:

• Her father being an artist at heart
• The influence of a particular teacher
• The dual influence of American minimal art and Italian baroque art
• How she discovered photography and was inspired by a misogynistic teacher
• Not photographing people initially
• Presence and absence
• Why she chose bodybuilders as her first foray into shooting people
• The theme of beauty
• How women are ‘attacked’ by stereotypes
• AI being paradoxical to what she wants to show
• The importance of Photoshop to her practice
• Where the ideas come from
• Use of comic books
• Making a living
• Recent series’ ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lady Stardust’.

Referenced:

• Carl Andre
• Robert Morris
• Tony Smith (sculptor)
• Richard Serra

Website | Instagram

“I think it’s still true to say I’m very close to my medium and to the hybridation, because if you think of it what is photography today when with the same camera you can make videos, you can make whatever you want? I think we are in a time when you always have a kind of superimposition in your mind, you have several channels on all the time in your mind and maybe my pictures are showing that way of thinking or way of living.”

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227 - Linda Troeller

Linda Troeller’s art projects focus on self-portraits, women's and social issues. For 20 year she lived in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City, curating an exhibition for the 125th Anniversary, “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of Photographers”, and publishing a monograph of her own entitled Living in the Chelsea Hotel.

Other publications include Healing Waters, The Erotic Lives of Women and her newest book of self-portraits taken over almost fifty years, Sex, Death, Transcendence, published earlier this year (2024) by TBW books. Linda was also the subject of a 2023 feature-length documentary film, also entitled Healing Waters, directed by Derek Johnson and Ali Scattergood.

She has lectured at the School of Visual Arts, NYU, Parsons, Yale, Salzburg Summer Art Academy, New Orleans Photo Alliance, and Ryerson University, Toronto and was a professor of photography at Stockton College of New Jersey, Indiana University, and Bournemouth College, England. She has a MFA, School of Art, and MS, Newhouse School, Syracuse University and BS from Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University.

Linda lives in New York City and New Jersey.

In episode 227, Linda discusses, among other things:

• Modelling on an Ansel Adams book making workshop
• The experience of being nude in front of strangers
• The spirit of the 60s in the 70s + women’s lib
• Healing waters
• Societies expectations of women and ageing
• Her book, The Erotic Lives of Women
• Living in the Chelsea Hotel for 20 years
• How Alexander MacQueen influenced her visual palette
• How she has earned a living over the years
• Her TB/Aids project

Referenced:

• Lucien Clergue
• Eikoh Hosoe
• George Tice
• Judy Dater
• Imogen Cunningham
• Jack Welpott
• Robert Heinecken
• Lee Friedlander
• Melissa Shook

Website | Instagram

“You have to do some work to build up your self confidence, to be your most youness. ‘You’. Youness, herness, hisness, theirness, whatever it is that you wanna to be your most of you can make some strides by looking at yourself and understanding yourself. And if you want to do some more in your presentation you can. And you should.”

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226 - Nicole Tung

Nicole Tung is a freelance photojournalist. She graduated from New York University, double majoring in history and journalism, and freelances for international publications and NGOs, working primarily in the Middle East and Asia. After covering the conflicts in Libya and Syria extensively from 2011, focusing on the plight of civilians, she spent 2014 documenting the lives of Native American war veterans in the US, as well as former child soldiers in the DR Congo, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the refugee crisis in Europe. She is also a grantee of the IWMF Grant for Women’s Stories, and a fellow of the IWMF Great Lakes Reporting Initiative (D.R. Congo, Central African Republic).

She has received multiple awards for her work from the International Photo Awards, Society of Professional Journalists, PX3, and was named PDN's 30 Under 30 Emerging Photographers (2013), among others. Nicole was given the honorable mention for the IWMF 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Awards, and awarded the 2018 James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting from the Online News Association. Her work has been exhibited + screened at the Annenberg Space for Photography, Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Visa Pour l'Image, and most recently at the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy award for war correspondents in France (2019), with Save the Children in Hong Kong (2019), and at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong (2020). Nicole has also given keynote speeches and contributed to panels on photojournalism and journalist safety, at events including the International Journalism Festival (Perugia, 2019), TEDx in Sweden, the Adobe Make It Conference in Sydney, and Creative Mornings at the National Geographic Auditorium in Washington D.C., among others. She served on the board of the Frontline Freelance Register (2015) and is has undergone HEFAT training with Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC) and Global Journalist Security. She is based in Istanbul, Turkey.

In episode 226, Nicole discusses, among other things:

• Notable differences between the war in Ukraine and previous conflicts she has covered
• The modern use of drones in warfare
• Stories she has covered in Ukraine
• The way she works with publications
• Managing and thinking about risk
• The question of whether journalists in conflict zones are more likely to be targeted now than in the past
• Reactions to her from ordinary people in conflicts
• The question of whether photojournalism is an ‘important’ job
• The impacts of social media both negative and positive
• Approaching photojournalistic stories in a different way
• Potential ways to earn a living other than from commissions

Referenced:

• Chris Hondros
• Tim Hetherington
• Marie Colvin
• Remi Ochlick
• James Foley

Website | Instagram

“If you don’t become trapped in this idea that what you do is so precious and be real about the impact and the degree to which images and photojournalism can go, especially if your intentions are good, you’re based in reality at least. Your grounded in a certain reality where you go “I know my images aren’t going to stop a war tomorrow but at least I can be a part of that documentation process.” And to me that is important. Why shouldn’t we be showing a reflection of our collective humanity that is both ugly and beautiful at the same time? There are so many grey areas. The world is not black and white.”

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