A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Guy Martin’s career began almost exactly ten years ago when in 2006 he graduated from the legendary University of Wales BA course in documentary photography with a first class degree. Since then, he has establishing himself as a successful editorial photographer and his work has appeared in a wide selection of some of the world’s most high profile magazines.
As well as editorial commissions, he has also worked consistently on long-term personal projects - which, as he explains, are hugely important to him - and his latest The City of Dreams, shot in Turkey where he is now based, has been extensively published and exhibited. It’s a clever juxtaposition of two disparate elements involving Turkish soap operas and work from various protests. You can see it on his website (link below) and that is the project he is referrring to in the latter half of the podcast.
During 2011 guy covered the tumultous political upheaval in the middle east and North Africa, which we have subsequently come to refer to as the Arab Spring. He photographed the revolution in Egypt and then, in April of that year, the civil war in Libya. It was there in the besieged city of Misrata that tragedy struck and Guy came very close to losing his life. He and fellow photographers Chris Hondras and Tim Hetherington, two of the most experienced and respected photojournalists of their generation, were caught in heavy fighting and a motar exploded right next to them. Chris and Tim were both killed - a huge and shocking loss which I think is probably still being felt in the photographic community not to mention among those that knew and loved them - but Guy, who was badly injured, survived and got home to England to begin his rehabilitation, which he threw himself into with single-minded determination.
In episode 008, Guy discusses: Relationship with Huck magazine; staying with it until it gets awkward; print being alive and well; the importance of personal projects; Turkey project - The City of Dreams; studying at Newport; tragedy in Misrata

Stuart Freedman was born in London and has been a photographer since 1991. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Life, Geo, Time, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine and Paris Match. He has covered stories all over the world, from Albania to Afghanistan and from former Yugoslavia to Haiti and Sierra Leone.

His work has been recognised in many awards, from amongst others, Amnesty International (twice), Pictures of the Year, The World Sports Photo Award, The Royal Photographic Society and UNICEF. In 1998 he was selected for the World Press Masterclass and the following year for the Agfa Young Photojournalist of the Year.

His work has been exhibited widely. Solo shows include Visa Pour L’Image at Perpignan, The Scoop Festival in Anjou, The Leica Gallery in Germany, The Foire du Livre (Brussels), The Museum of Ethnography (Stockholm), The Association and the Spitz Galleries in London. His work on HIV/AIDS in Rwanda and from post-conflict South of Lebanon have toured extensively internationally.

He continues to write and photograph for a variety of editorial and commercial clients and is a member of Panos Pictures in London. His first book, The Palaces of Memory, about the coffee houses of India, has just been published by Dewi Lewis (link below).

In episode 007, Stuart discusses: Photography magazine as an early influence; being "appalling" to begin with; wanting to be a writer; Sierra Leone; a love/hate relationship with India; the Palaces of Memory; having to be a brand; revenue streams and fashions.

Laura Pannack has established herself in the past six or seven years as a very original voice in the field of portrait photography. She has been extensively exhibited and published in the UK and Internationally, with her work having been shown at the National Portrait Gallery and the Houses of Parliament, among other venues. She has won numerous awards, including a first prize in the World Press Awards and the 2012 Vic Odden Award.
To quote from the blurb on her own website: 'Laura is driven by research led self-initiated projects. In her own words, she does all she can “to understand the lives of those captured, and to present them creatively”. She is a firm believer that “time, trust and understanding is the key to portraying subjects truthfully”, and as such, many of her projects develop over several years. Her particular approach allows a genuine connection to exist between sitter and photographer, which in turn elucidates the intimacy of these very human exchanges. Her images aim to suggest the shared ideas and experiences that are entwined in each frame that she shoots.'
In episode 006, Laura discusses: Feeling unproductive; early memories of having a photographer dad; trust; asking inappropriate questions; human vulnerability; the dilemma of deciding when to quit and remaining dissatisfied.

Kalpesh Lathigra was born and bred in London, England. He studied photojournalism at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication), before being awarded what was then a much sought-after traineeship with the Independent Newspaper, which at that time was renowned for a commitment to using excellent photography in a way that many national newspapers in the UK never really had in the past. Kalpesh went on to have a successful freelance career as a newspaper and magazine photograper, shooting features and portraits for most of the major British broadsheets and their weekend magazines and in 2000 he won a first prize (Arts, Singles) in the World Press Awards. A few years later he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship for his long-term project about the lives of widows in India: Brides of Krishna. He is still a busy, jobbing editorial photographer, but, alongside that role, he has also developed his own personal practice in which he has attempted to straddle the invisible divide between editorial, documentary photographer and a more authored, artistic sensibility - a state of affairs that we spend much of the interview mulling over. His first book, 'Lost In The Wilderness', which he funded with a Kickstarter campaign, will be published later this Autumn and is the result of 5 years work documenting the native American Lakota Sioux community of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, USA. (Check links below for updates.) In Episode 005 Kalpesh discusses: Use of the label 'artist'; book project - 'Lost In The Wilderness'; why working is good for the soul; a friendship with Ralph Fiennes; changing his approach to the story; the fight against cliche, the World Press controversy and he danger of cliques

Antonio Zazueta Olmos was born in Mexicali, Mexico. At the age of 12 his family moved to Fresno, California where he spent his formative years. He went on to take a degree in Photojournalism at  California State University before moving to the other side of the country to spend 3 happy years on the Miami Herald. Since then, as a passionate and socially conscious photojournalist, working on issues concerning human rights, the environment and conflict, he has travelled all over the world, including The Americas, The Middle East and Africa. Twenty years ago he arrived in London for a short visit, started getting commissioned immediately and never left. He works regularly for the Guardian and Observer Newspapers. On January 1st 2011, he began working on what was to become his first book, The Landscape of Murder, in which he methodically documented the sites of all 210 murders that took place in London over a 2 year period. In Episode 004, Antonio discusses: Formative years in Fresno, California; A love of learning; Happy days on the Miami Herald; Returning to Mexico for the Black Star agency; News and wire photography; Shooting portraits; and The Landscape of Murder project

Vanessa Winship has spent the past two decades working on long-term documentary projects, predominantly in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and surrounding territories of Turkey and the countries surrounding the Black Sea, which provided the material for her first book, Schwarzes Meer (Black Sea). She went on to live for five years in Istanbul, Turkey, where she produced a second book: Sweet Nothings: The Schoolgirls from the Borderlands of Eastern Anatolia. She has exhibited her work all over the world and has been awarded numerous honours including two first prize World Press Awards, the Sony Photographer of the Year Award, The Godfrey Argent Award and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2011, for which she proposed an 'American odyssey'. Her subsequent journeys in the USA resulted in another highly acclaimed book: She Dances On Jackson. In 2014 she had her first retrospective exhibition at the Fundación MAPFRE gallery in Madrid, Spain.

George Georgiou who is of Greek Cypriot descent, was born and bred in London, England. He has spent most of the past two decades living and photographing extensively in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey, where he lived in Istanbul for five years and which was the subject of his first book: Fault Lines/Turkey/East/West. He describes his work as having "focused on transition and identity and how people negotiate the space they find themselves in." On returning to London in 2008, he started work on the project which became his most recent book, Last Stop, an exploration of his home town photographed entirely through the windows of the city's double decker buses. George has exhibited all over the world, including MOMA in New York as part of the 2013 new photography show. Awards include two World Press Photo prizes in 2003 and 2005, The British Journal of Photography project prize 2010, Pictures of the Year International first prize for Istanbul Bombs in 2004 and a Nikon Press Award UK for photo essay 2000. In episode 002 George discusses: Getting 'ungraded' ("worse than an F") in his photography A' level; an early introduction to celebrity and glamour photography; experiences during the Kosovo conflict and Serbia; moving from B&W film to colour digital; whether he has '1000 true fans'; and funding a photo book through Kickstarter

Ian Teh has spent the past two decades working extensively in China on long term documentary projects. He has published three monographs, Undercurrents (2008), Traces (2011) and Confluence (2014), which was shot in Malaysia, where he is currently based. He has had numerous solo exhibitions and his work is featured in the permanent collections of a number of major museums. He has received several honours, including the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography and the Emergency Fund from the Magnum Foundation. In 2013 he was elected by the Open Society Foundations to exhibit in New York at the Moving Walls Exhibition. In 2010, the acclaimed literary magazine Granta published a 10-year retrospective of his work in China. Here he discusses what he learnt from using his dad's camera; his early love of B&W and why he switched to colour; his formative experiences in Hong Kong and elsewhere; 'photographic grammar' and his abiding obsession with process; and how to shoot an entire photo book in 3 weeks.

Photographer, Ben Smith introduces a new weekly photography podcast: 'A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers' and answers a few 'frequently anticipated questions.'