Stay ConnectedFortnightly in-depth interviews featuring a diverse range of talented, innovative, world-class photographers from established, award-winning and internationally exhibited stars to young and emerging talents discussing their lives, work and process with fellow photographer, Ben Smith. The most recent 50 episodes are on this free feed, 200+ more are in the archive!
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Katrin Koenning is a visual artist from Germany whose work travels across still and moving images and text, at times including found materials, painting and collage. Pursuing intimacy and interconnection her work centres around practice as relational encounter. Most stories evolve through years and use returning as a way of drawing closer. Different series often intersect, merging in and out of each other. In her extended image-dialogues, Katrin uses fragments and slippages to suggest narrative spaces, communities and lived experiences that are allied, fluid and multiplicit. Many of her series render non-human human entanglement and intimate kin, positing imaginaries with a greater-than-human world.
Katrin has been the recipient of multiple awards, such as the Bowness Photography Prize. Her work is regularly exhibited in Australian and international solo and group exhibitions including presentations at Ishara Art Foundation Dubai, Chobi Mela, Paris Photo, Hamburg Triennial of Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australian Centre for Photography and the National Gallery of Victoria (2023). Koenning’s images have been published in The New Yorker, Vogue.com, Zeit Magazine, The Guardian, New York Times, Esquire Italy, Der Spiegel, Yucca Magazine, California Sunday and many other places. Her work is held in numerous institutional and private collections both in Australia and abroad; most recently her large-scale installation While the Mountains had Feet [2020 — 2022] was acquired in whole by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Katrin regularly teaches workshops in photographic practice and thinking, working closely with many institutions and festivals locally and across the Asia-Pacific region such as Angkor Photo Festival (Siem Reap Cambodia), Photo Kathmandu (Kathmandu, Nepal), The Lighthouse (Calcutta, West Bengal), Myanmar Deitta (Yangon, Myanmar), Australian Centre for Photography, Perth Centre for Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Palmtree Workshops (Santorini Greece, forthcoming), and others.
Katrin lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) on unceded Boon Wurrung Woi Wurrung Country.
In episode 253, Katrin discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“This is always the way that I work, I look at what the thing is that is at stake, and what am I trying to talk about? And actually also very much like I’m listening to the thing that I’m trying to talk to. So what does it want from me? You know, what does the story want from me and what does the situation around it ask of me? And therefore how do I need to approach it?”
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Ian Macdonald (b. 1946) is an internationally acclaimed photographer born and raised in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, UK. He studied Graphic Design and Printmaking at Teesside College of Art in 1968 and went on to study Painting and Photography at Sheffield School of Art, Photography and Graphic Design at Birmingham Polytechnic and Education at Lancaster University. He pursued photography alongside drawing – his first love - painting and printmaking.
Since 1968, Ian has consistently photographed the people and places of Teesside, one of Europe’s most heavily industrialised areas in the north east of England. His love of the region, the beauty of the landscape – great expanses of wildness nestling among industrial settings - and his solid admiration for the people working and living amongst this environment has resulted in a completely honest and passionate depiction of a place and its community.
“The most successful of my photographs seem to be a product of an exploration into my environment and the people I live and work amongst and an excitement generated in me by what I confront. Sometimes by-product would seem a more appropriate term, because only rarely do images really come near to saying anything about the strength, humour, vitality, atmosphere, pathos and despair which seems to make up what goes on around us all. Always, I am spurred on by a tingling sensation at the possibility, this time, perhaps, the image may really say something”.
Ian’s work has been included in various publications, such as England Gone, Smith’s Dock Shipbuilders, Images of the Tees, Eton and The Blast Furnace. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many private and public photography collections around the world. In 2024 Ian had a major retrospective entitled Fixing Time, covering the first twenty years of his work, displayed across two venues in the north east of England - Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.
Ian is currently working on a series of forthcoming books with GOST Books.
In episode 252, Ian discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
Website | Short film about Ian by Jamie Macdonald
“When I first went to Greatham Creek, there was no history anywhere about it. I couldn’t find anything written down. So I wrote a lot down. I talked to people. I went into pretty deep research into archives in the local library and stuff like that. And I guess this was part of the drive for [photographing] both the shipyard and the furnace. Because maybe I did have an inkling, because there was nothing about the creek - where’s the stuff about the furnace?… about the men who worked there, like my dad and granddad? Where is their history? And I wanted to celebrate their history. I wanted to celebrate what they were. I wanted a record, a document, a memory of them. And that’s what drove me to do it.”
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British photographer Mike Abrahams has worked as a freelance photographer for over 40 years having become renowned for his sensitive eye in documenting the lives of ordinary people often in extraordinary situations.
In 1981 he was a cofounder of Network Photographers the Internationally renowned picture agency and his work has taken him around the world. His photographs have been published in all the major international news media.
In 2024, Mike’s much anticipated book This Was Then, was published by Bluecoat Press and has been described as a lyrical portrait of humanity in adverse circumstances. It features photographs taken from 1973 to 2001 in cities from Liverpool to Glasgow. Blackburn to Bradford, Northern Ireland to the coalfields of Kent and London.
Mike’s work on Faith - A Journey with Those Who Believe, published in 2000, was the culmination of five years work, documenting the extremes and passion of Christian devotion throughout fourteen countries. Awards for this work included the World Press Photo Award in 2000, and the book Faith designed by Browns, was a finalist in the Design Week - Editorial Design: Books. It has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and Europe.
Colin Jacobson, picture editor of The Independent Magazine, described Mike’s body of work from the conflict in Northern Ireland and published in the book Still War, in 1989 as "Documentary photography at its best - imaginative, comprehensive, confident and concerned". His coverage of the troubles in Northern Ireland was the subjects of a Television documentary Moving Stills.
Other important assignments have included coverage of the division of Cyprus, Migrant labour in Southern Africa, the Intifada in the Occupied Territories, the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the rise in the influence of the religious in Israeli politics, the Cult of Assad in Syria, Northern Ireland and documenting Another Britain.
In episode 251, Mike discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“You can go here, there and everywhere, and I have travelled a lot and it’s been interesting and fascinating, but you’re always the outsider coming in. You don’t really know the story. It’s glamorous, it’s exotic, it’s fascinating, but I think it’s much harder to photograph your home turf. You come to it with quite an honest perspective. It’s the land you’re living in, you’re conscious of the differences in the country between the north, south, east and west, the regions… it’s kind of embedded in you, the differences.”
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Joseph Michael Lopez - JML, (b. 1973) is an independent photographer born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a mother who escaped the Cuban Revolution in 1967. He earned his MFA in 2011 at Columbia University. Lopez began his career as an analog cinematographer on the critically acclaimed Bruce Weber film, Chop Suey (2001). Currently, Joseph divides his time between long-form projects, teaching, and commercial work. His photographs have appeared on the covers of M, The Magazine for Leica M Photography, Leica Fotografie International, The Sunday Review of The New York Times, New York magazine and The New Yorker, among others.
Joseph’s photographs were on exhibit in “Cuban Photography after 1980: Selections from the Museum’s Collection”, at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2016, a commissioned series of his photographs of New York neighborhoods, “New York at Its Core: Future City Lab”, was installed at The Museum of the City of New York. Photographs from JML NYC, the series from which this commission originated, have also been published in the book Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz. JML’s first book JML NYC 02-23was published by GOST in the fall of 2024.
In episode 250, Joseph discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“Essentially, it’s about saying something and having a voice and having a perception of the world that is, like singing a loud song you know, your pictures have to say something. And how do you separate yourself from all the noise that’s out there already? You have to have an obsessive, emphatic way to perceive things. I think to a certain extent what we see is who we are in a way.”
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Dina Litovsky is a Ukrainian-born photographer living in New York City since 1991. Dina's imagery can be described as visual sociology. Her work explores the idea of leisure, often focusing on subcultures and social gatherings.
Dina is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, New Yorker, GQ and New York Magazine. In 2020 Dina won the Nannen Prize, Germany's foremost award for documentary photography. Other awards include the PDN 30, New and Emerging Photographers to Watch; POYi; NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International Photography Awards and American Photography.
Selected exhibitions include group and solo shows at the Museum of the City of New York; Noordelicht Festival, Netherlands; Annenberg Space for Photography, LA and the Anastasia Photo Gallery, NYC.
In 2022 she started writing the Substack newsletter In The Flash, an ongoing dialogue about the art and craft of creating and thinking about images. In her weekly posts, she discuses the creative process, focusing on the WHYof photography — intent, meaning, and inspiration. She shares her insights into the world of a professional photographer as well as all the things that make her tick and inspire her to create, from photography to art to music.
Dina holds a bachelor in psychology from NYU and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, NY.
In episode 248, Dina discusses, among other things:
“I’m an introvert with a social phobia. So I would never draw attention to myself. But with a camera I could actually go where I wanted to go and photograph and confront people, with a shield. And so I think I was using it more as my own self therapy, like I wanted to be in the middle of the party, and I wanted to be on this dancefloor with the young women, but I couldn’t. And so with a camera I was there just photographing it.”
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Ian Howorth is a documentary photographer based in Brighton, UK. His work deals with themes of identity and culture. Through Setanta Books, Ian sold out his first book, Arcadia, in 2019 and published his second, A Country Kind of Silence, in 2023. Ian’s work has been featured in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, It’s Nice That and Huck.
In episode 248, Ian discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“Wim Wenders and Robby Müller [In Paris Texas] happened to hit on something that made sense artistically but also looks beautiful aesthetically, and that for me is the perfect marriage. Not everyone can achieve it, but that to me became very important. I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t smart enough to do that. But at the same time I knew the power of colour - I knew what it did, I understood my emotional response to it. And that was enough for me to pursue it at the time, and I would figure it out later.”
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Ed Sykes is a photographer and visual artist based in London.
Ed’s practice focuses on landscape and changes to the environment as a result of natural processes and human activity. This approach is in conjunction with a re-working of photographic materials and a disruption of traditional photographic production. The processes and effects of climate change are often replicated during the image making process itself. The series 1000 Degrees used a blow torch to melt photographic negatives at a heat similar to the furnaces that propelled the Industrial Revolution. The work Hanging By A Thread pushed this same notion to the picture frames which were sourced secondhand and then the wooden surrounds were charred in a similar way to the subject matter of wildfires. Other approaches have involved sanding and abrasion echoing the effects of coastal erosion and also the use of soluble paper, the dissolution of an image in water, mimicking flood damage.
Ed was the recipient of an Arts Council grant for the project Eco Matters and Sustainable Processes. This saw Ed travel along Britain’s east coast and to some of Europe’s fastest eroding coastlines, embedding a new creative approach to climate change, environment and the anthropocene. In 2021 he was nominated for Prix Pictet Award with1000 Degrees, a response to the historical, industrial exploitation of natural resources in UK.
In episode 247, Ed discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“As a photographer, you want something that drives you on. You need to find something that is close to your heart. And if you have that, you’re gonna go the distance. You’re gonna persevere, you’re gonna get up at four in the morning with the slim chance of getting one picture, because it’s important to you.”
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Featuring:
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Featuring:
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Stephan Vanfleteren's career began as a staff photographer for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. He continued to contribute to its weekend magazine as a freelancer until 2009.
His radical black and white social documentary work covers the disappearing phenomena of everyday life in his homeland, Belgium. Over the years, Stephan has worked in conflict zones such as Kosovo, Rwanda and Afghanistan and he is a six time winner of the prestigious World Press Photo awards among a number of other international prizes.
Stephan's intense portrait photography captures the essence of humanity in subjects ranging from the ordinary man to top politicians, sports idols and celebrities.
He has exhibited in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Liverpool and Verona and his books include: Elvis & Presley (Kruse Verlag, 2001) a road trip across America dressed as Elvis Presley with photographer Robert Huber; Flandrien (Mertz, 2005) on the Flemish obsession with cycling; Belgicum (Lannoo 2007) an enigmatic portrayal of Belgium and Portret 1989-2009 (Lannoo 2009). His most recent books are Atelier published by Hannibal Books, an ode to the ability to observe, represent, elevate, and ultimately, connect, and Present, a journey through his oeuvre, with expansive personal reflections and stories from three decades of encounters and photography, from street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide of Rwanda, from storefront façades to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic wall, from still lifes to intense portraits, and Charleroi – Il est clair que le gris est noir.
In episode 244, Stephan discusses, among other things:
Referenced:
“I was very scared of success. That was maybe my luck. Success was something I had difficulty dealing with. People are complimenting you on your work at the beginning and I’m just accepting that but it was difficult. And it helped me because I never arrived. I was on my way and the doubts were still there. If you think you know how to do it, it’s time to leave. Sometimes if I think ‘ok, I can do that pretty well, Of course other people can do it better, but it’s time to change, to have another approach…’ So I had that in the early beginning, that feeling that I have to change. I love to begin something new.”
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