The Messy Truth - Conversations on Photography

In this episode, Gem Fletcher chats with artist and educator Zora J. Murff. They deep dive into Zora’s latest book True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis), a manual for coming to terms with the historical and contemporary realities of America’s divisive structures of privilege and caste. Since leaving social work to pursue photography over a decade ago, Zora’s work has consistently grappled with the complicit entanglement of the medium in the histories of spectacle, commodification, and race, often contextualizing his own photographs with found and appropriated images and commissioned texts. True Colors continues that work, expanding to address the act of remembering and the politics of self, which Murff identifies as “the duality of Black patriotism and the challenges of finding belonging in places not made for me—of creating an affirmation in a moment of crisis as I learn to remake myself in my own image.” The book open’s up discussion about education, collaboration, working with institutions, audience and liberation. 

Zora J Murff is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Arkansas. He received his MFA from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and holds a BS in Psychology from Iowa State University. Merging his educational experiences, Murff uses his practice to highlight intersections between various social systems and art. He has published books with Aint-Bad Editions and Kris Graves Projects. His monograph, At No Point In Between (Dais Books), was selected as the winner of the Independently Published category of the Lucie Foundation Photo Book Awards. In 2020 Murff was announced as the winner of the inaugural Next Step prize, awarded by Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. His work was presented at the 2021 Rencontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award.

Follow Zora’s work here - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats with artist Jess T. Dugan. They discuss what it takes to cultivate and maintain an artistic practice, what Jess learned from their own journey, and how the mantra "meet everyone, learn everything," fuelled their approach to both crafting a practice and a business. We cover so much from developing relationships, holding space for reflection, building a community around your work, and what true representation means. 

Jess is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. Their work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 45 museums throughout the United States. Jess’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015).

Follow Jess on Instagram @jesstdugan - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats with editor, writer and curator Elisa Medde. They discuss how an issue of Foam Magazine comes together in addition to a range of issues currently affecting the photo industry. They talk about systems, value, visual literacy, new talent, nurture and the importance of friction and criticism.

Elisa is Editor-in-Chief of Foam Magazine, Amsterdam, where she has based a large part of her activities since 2012. With a background in Art History, Iconology and Photographic Studies, Elisa’s research reflects on the relationship between image, communication and power structures. She has been a nominator for a number of prizes and chaired various juries. She loves collaborating with educational programs as a lecturer and jury member, such as KABK, ECAL, Brera Academy, Fotofilmic and many more. Next to curating paper and physical spaces, she regularly writes for Foam Magazine and various publications such as C4 Journal, Something We Africans Got, Vogue Italia / L'Uomo Vogue, YET Magazine and many artists’ books.

Follow Elisa on Instagram @elsmdd - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to artist and professor Elle Pérez. Elle generously lets us into their world from the early but formative days as a Bronx punk to the ways in which their art has shifted strategies and metaphors and now explores the subtle and visceral moments of emotion and power. We talk about the profound love and intimacy that is the lifeblood of their art and how threads and relationships between types of images and modes of working bring about new gestures.

Elle Pérez has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, 47 Canal and Commonwealth and Council. Their work has also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barbican and in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. They are also the Assistant Professor of Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Follow Elle on Instagram @elleperex - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to artist Anastasia Samoylova who moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. By utilizing tools and strategies related to digital media and commercial photography, her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque.

Her new book Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova & Walker Evans was published by Steidl in 2022. In 2020-2021 her ongoing project FloodZone was presented in solo exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art; HistoryMiami Museum; Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; and The Print Center Philadelphia. The book of the project was published by Steidl in 2019. In 2022 the project will be exhibited at the Eastman Museum. Samoylova is shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022.

In this conversation, we discuss Ana’s journey, and how her early work built to where she is today, united by the urgency of climate anxiety and questioning of the pictured world we occupy. We talk about publishing, process, artistic ecosystems, the artist as a cultural worker and much more. 

Follow Ana on Instagram @anasamoylova and follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to photographer and director Campbell Addy. They come together to discuss Cambell’s first monograph Feeling Seen published by Prestel. Much has happened since the pair recorded the first episode back in 2018. This is a truly special episode that speaks to what it means to be a young artist, how to navigate fashion and advertising and not lose yourself, what it means to meet the people who helped form you as an artist and how community shapes everything.

Campbell has worked with editorial outlets Vogue, Financial Times, Dazed, Luncheon Magazine, Double Magazine, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Garage Magazine. His work has been exhibited internationally including at the world-renowned Somerset House. Campbell is also the founder of Nii Journal, a biannual arts and culture publication, and of Nii Agency, a modelling and casting agency dedicated to representing and celebrating diversity.

In this conversation, we discuss Campbell’s journey since the first episode, what he has discovered about himself and making work along the way touching upon community, process, creative practice and the future.

Check out my first conversation with Campbell on episode 4 here. 

Follow Campbell on Instagram @campbelladdy - Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to the artist Rory Hamovit. Rory uses his work as a site to interrogate and explore notions of masculinity, queerness, performance and history. Rory understands what it takes to really commit to a studio practice - to embrace introspection and humour - to cultivate a space that is unrestrained and playful. His work is about craftsmanship on multiple plains from the physicality of building and making, to always questioning and reframing. He inserts vulnerability as a strategy for world-building. Rory recently graduated with his MFA from Yale School of Art.

In this conversation, we discuss Rory’s journey, how he thinks about performance, process, vulnerability, collaboration and so much more. 

Follow Rory on Instagram @roryhamovit Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to the artist Karla Hiraldo Voleau. Karla’s work revolves around identity, vulnerability, love, gender roles and the mechanisms in human relationships. Using a hybrid model of performance, photography and text, she blurs the lines between fiction and reality. Her practice is one that is constantly in community with strangers, grappling with aspects of humanity that we can all relate to, or struggle with. Karla graduated from ECAL (Switzerland), with an MA in Photography in 2018. Her work was featured at the Rencontres d’Arles 2017 & 2019, the Fotomuseum of Winterthur, or the BIP Photo festival of Liège (Belgium) in 2020. She is part of the Foam Talent 2020 edition, and of the Olympus Recommended Fellowship 2020. Her first photobook ‘Hola Mi Amol’ was part of the Aperture First Book Awards in Paris Photo 2019.

In this conversation, we discuss Karla’s journey, how she thinks about performance, process, vulnerability, collaboration and audience and so much more. 

Follow Karla on Instagram @karla.voleau Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to the curator, writer and creative consultant Charlotte Cotton. Charlotte has explored photographic culture for over twenty years and held positions including curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, head of programming at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and curator-in-residence at Katonah Museum of Art, NY; International Center of Photography, NY; and California Museum of Photography. Her book, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, is published in ten languages and has been a key text in charting the rise of photography as an undisputed art form in the 21st century. In Photography is Magic she surveys over eighty artists whose photographic practices shape the possibilities of our contemporary image environment and in Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self addresses the complex intersections of our rights to be seen and heard while claiming the privilege of privacy. She has contributed to many more books and essays exploring photography, art and fashion. 

In this conversation, we discuss Charlotte’s journey, how she thinks about the future, process, ethics, collaboration and audience and so much more. 

Follow Charlotte on Instagram @pimcharlottecotton Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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 chats to photographer and gallery director Ying Ang. Ying’s work is about active and conscious looking. She grapples with political and social issues that often alter the landscape of our mind in challenging, isolating and revelatory ways. Through unflinching exploration that traverses the boundaries of process, materiality and self, she crafts remarkable works fueled by the type of interior rage that we have seen harnessed as political fuel in so many social movements throughout history.

Her recent book, The Quickening: A memoir on matrescence, explores the transformation and lived experience of a woman in her motherhood and postpartum depression/anxiety. The work interrogates the under-represented transition of biological, psychological and social identity during a complex and yet ubiquitous phase of life.

In this conversation we discuss process, motivation, grappling with self-censorship, survival and reckoning with the complex reality of being an artist and parent. 

Follow Ying on Instagram @yingang Follow Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe five stars if we're worthy 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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