Mark Power - 14 Years Photographing America, The Democracy of Photography & Why Stillness Matters More Than The Decisive Moment, E114

It was a universal language.

“But I think I wanted to start tapping into.”

I'm very good at making competent photographs. When is it exceptional? I have to work doubly hard with the way that I structure my pictures and the subtleties within it to expect anybody to spend any time looking at it. Where did Good Morning America concept an idea?

Come from and why did you start this? Huge project. I remember we were having a magnum AGM in Paris and a few of us would be moaning the fact that it was almost impossible to get

any funding anymore to do the work that we really wanted to do.

So that night was born the postcards from America idea. It's probably hugely pretentious thing to dip to make five books over a period of time.

“What is the intent with the subject matter with which you photograph?”

I'm more interested in trying to elevate the absolutely dead pan and ordinary into something interesting. Why do you want to elevate a banal scenario? Where does this desire to do that come from? That is a very, very hard question and I think a lot of it

is again, it's difficult to put into words. Let's slightly rephrase that because Mark power, welcome to the move podcast. What a pleasure is to have you on the show. Thanks for taking your time.

Oh, it's my pleasure. Let's, I know who you are. We haven't met before but, you know, I know who you are as photographer. I've been following your work for so long. I have a couple of your books and, you know, for me to sit here and talk to you

without blowing smoke up your backside. It's a genuine honour and privilege to chat to you. But for those that may not know who you are. Let's just start with kind of those kind of intros as to who you are, what you do. But what I really want to hear is kind of why you started photography,

why you still do it. What it is about photography that still captures your imagination. When I was at art school, I was, we were looking at a lot of painters and we were taught how to look at a Mark Roscoe painting, Mark Roscoe, the very exceptional great abstract, abstract, exact expressionist, American Russian painter.

And the idea being that you're supposed to focus behind the surface of the painting. Anyway, I went to London to see a huge Roscoe show and I stood in front of it.

“And I looked at focus behind and I got the paintings to kind of vibrate because that's what happens.”

And that was got so everything worked. And then I left and I had a timeout London in my bag. This was back in 1981. I saw that there was an exhibition by one of only two photographers that I had heard of. One of the photographers was Bill Brandt, the other was Don McCullin,

and there was a McCullin show on the South Bank in London. So I thought, well, I've got some time to kill, I'll go and see the McCullin show.

Never been to a photography exhibition in my life.

And it was a sort of retrospective. And I remember being in a room pretty certain. It was his work from Biafra. And there was me and a woman in this room, nobody else. And the woman was looking very closely at these pictures. So I thought, well, I'll go and see this McCullin show because I've got some time to kill. And I was, you were split up into several rooms.

And I think I was in the room with his Biafra and work, which is very powerful. And it was me and there was a woman in the room with me, nobody else. And she was looking very closely at these pictures on the wall. And she was gently crying to herself. And now I'm taking a big leap here.

But because she could have been crying for only number of reasons. But I still liked to believe that she was so genuinely moved by the pictures that, yes, it gave her this response. And also another leap would be that, let's assume, she'd had no photographic training about how to read a photograph. She just, she was just genuinely affected by what she was seeing.

And I think on the way home, I mean, I'm filling in gaps here because it was a very long time ago. But I think on the way home, I was thinking, well, why is it that to look at a painting and get the

so much more democratic than it could potentially really reach people deep inside without any training at all because of its ability to communicate. So it was that kind of democracy of photography. It was like a universal language that everybody, I know painting as well. But it was a universal language that I think I wanted to start tapping into. I'd been to art school for this was my final year. So this is my fourth year I'd been to art school. So of course I wanted to be an artist of

some kind, whatever that meant. Then I thought, well, maybe photography might be an interesting

“career to follow. But to be honest, Matt, I thought the only way you could be a photographer was”

to work for a newspaper, be it a national one or a local one or do weddings. I didn't know that there were such people that actually did photography, you know, made photographs for a living, their own work. Of course, back then it was a lot more difficult to do that. But I think I do genuinely think, and that's a very romantic story. I know, but I do think that was the the genesis of me wanting to be a photographer. I sort of messed around with it a little

bit when I was a child because my dad used to be the ships photographer when he was doing his national service in the merchant Navy. So he was an engineer so he worked down in the engine room. But he was also, he had this Voitlander camera and he used to take pictures around the ship. But also, and then he made an enlarger out of a flower pot and an upturned flower pot. He was very good at making things. And then he would take the lens off his Voitlander and put it on,

it's screw it into a fitting he made in the enlarger. So he could actually print these pictures. What was very interesting was that I discovered later on that he is his real thing was photographing because he was mainly stationed in the Gulf. So his real thing was photographing

these oil tankers that were always tiny in the distance a long long way off with the horizon

dead center in the image and always straight never off kilter. And so it's like of beches only years and years ahead of them because you can't hardly see these things. It's just like a little dark line where it's an oil tanker but he has a lot of these. So one day I might like to do something with these. I mean sadly he's no longer with us. But because he wasn't doing it for any other reason

“then he was interested in oil tankers and he didn't have a long way. I think that was all it was.”

But interesting and I remember him saying to me actually because there's maybe this explains a lot. I was like we all are. We weren't our parents to be proud of us. And I always struggled a bit

with my dad because I never had a proper job and he could never really until really late in life

when he finally thought maybe I did know what I was doing after all. I remember very close to his death. He said to me you know what about your career. He said you were right and I was wrong. And that was the first time he'd ever said anything like that to me. And of course it wasn't a game I was trying to win but it was a you know I wanted so much to have his backing really. He was supportive but he didn't really understand and he kept thinking why weren't you you know you've

got a degree so why don't you go and get a job as a graphic designer or as a you know as a painter or whatever. I played around with the environment I was little you know because he showed me how it worked and we went out and took some terrible pictures of trees and developed them. But I remember

him saying to me when I was relatively young that I must always get my horizon straight.

“And so I think that's you know the fact that obviously I've known for my very straight.”

It's how much he's looking down on me if ever I take the shipping forecast when I did the shipping forecast which is all full of pictures that are all wonky anguish. I think he really struggled with that. But I had you know I had I had him on one shoulder and had Paul Rees and Martin Par on the other you know saying good you know tilt is good and so I didn't know what to do. So you know so in the shipping forecast I think some are straight and some are wonky and it's not very it's not very consistent in that way.

If you're enjoying this conversation and if you're drawn to this kind of slow reflective discussions we have on this podcast then I want to let you know about my free closed community book club which might be something that you generally find value it. The voice alchemy book club is kind of an

a photo book or a photo critique and we meet online to sit with it properly asking ourselves

“what it's meant to one another what we can maybe learn from it what ideas and actions we can take”

from it what it's wrestling with and what it asks of us as viewers and creators. It's a space for deeper introspection, long-form thinking and really honest discussions around photography, creativity and authorship. There's no pressure to perform at all, no chasing trends, no algorithms, no need to have everything figured out just honest or authentic connection with fellow like-minded creators, careful collaborative looking, thoughtful and meaningful conversation and a community of people

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be open and welcoming to you and your ideas. You'll find more details via the link in the show notes and I really hope to see you there. As my favorite book of yours which we're going to get to later but it really interesting moment looking at a photo with a lady kind of crying and

I always like the fact that you don't know for sure why she was crying and it's kind of like

played with your imagination and your your curiosity with photography. So with that so then what how you you were kind of inspired a little bit to learn a little bit more about photography but you completed your schooling in art and then took up photography after that. Yeah I did find art and then I took up photography and then so I graduated in June 1981 and then I got a job as a dustman. Pitch at the US is called garbage. I mean probably. I was going to have a

certainty for the term. Sometimes they just have to work it out for themselves.

Maybe I treat my audience like they're stupid which is probably not a good thing but

yeah but anyway I did that for about four months and saved some money and flew to Hong Kong ended up staying there for a couple of months when to Thailand stayed there three months ended up in Australia got a job or got several several jobs actually including one in a camera store but not enough. I was away for two years and I took with me a sketchbook, no paint but a sketchbook and some charcoal and pencil and stuff and

a very simple Fuji camera, Fuji camera, it's like a 50-pound 60-pound camera with a standard lens

“and I think it was it was quite tricky for me actually to sort of sit on as”

well you can imagine because you live in the US, you live in Southeast Asia but to just sort of sit down in the middle of a small town and start sketching you suddenly you know everybody's gathered around you watching what you're doing and I'm not comfortable with that. So I started to take pictures instead, make photographs instead and I think I was it's of course it seemed easier, I mean because on the surface it is easier to take a photograph

and to make a drawing of course it isn't it's quicker and insistent but of course the more you do it the more difficult you realise it is. So I continue to take photographs through that two years journey that I made. I was 213 roles of black and white 35mm film what I couldn't do was process any of it. So I was sending the undeveloped roles back to my parents back in Lester in England and so when I when I got home in 83 I set up a dark room there moved back with my

parents set up a dark room with my dad's help and I process the films and yes the film 213 is certainly better than film one but the progress that I made through that 213 was very very slow because of course I couldn't learn from my mistakes and I think that that sort of stayed with

every day and I'm looking at what I'm doing I'm looking at other people's work as well but I spend a lot of time really assessing and evaluating what I've just done and I think that's

“really important I think it's undervalued actually by a lot of people but you've got to learn from”

your mistakes you've got to be very self-critical and never be satisfied and I'm sure that comes

from two years of not being able to see any the results of anything I was doing. What do you mean what is undervalued exactly? Spending proper time looking at your work and thinking about what you're doing and learning from your successes as well as your mistakes I think that's you know yes we can learn from our mistakes but I think you know why something I'm very interested in is you know I think I'm very I'm very good at making competent photographs you know I can do that you know

with the standing on one leg but when is a competent photograph when does it rise to something

much better than that when is it exceptional and I don't know what the answer is and I wish I did

“because I could cut out a lot of wasted time but I think it's the act of spending time looking”

hard at the work and trying to understand why this picture is better than this picture because it is difficult and it's confusing because I edit and sequence my own work generally with a little with some help from Stuart Smith in a ghost my put the publisher that I work with but Stu generally leaves it to me to get on with and then occasionally we come together and we discuss and we change things but you know to be able to have the confidence to be able to do

that myself because I think a lot of photographers do spend a do struggle a lot with their editing and sequencing and they need somebody else to come and do it for them I've just made myself understand what I think is good and bad and so therefore and why pictures work together and that's all so I spend much much much more time doing that than I do actually going out making work you know

“because I think it's part of the job but also we're emailing all the time we do we're doing all this”

stuff well now we have a relationship with with photography that is so fast you know you have digital photography that basically does everything for you anyway and you can learn in an instant how to take better photography you've got YouTube to tours you got you know we live in a world of abundance these days where you can now we've got AI agents and AI it's like learning is is just at your fingertips at whatever speed you want to learn at and I think one thing one thing I'm noting if

to be a world I mean whether it's a little bit to um is the terrible niche is that people are reverting back to more analog ways and experimenting and dark room using film because I think it's it's more of a hands-on way of learning photography and you have you develop a better relationship with failure than you do with success and I think that's extremely grounding and I think it's extremely powerful to learn in that sense rather than just knowing how you can get better through just seeing

something on social media or seeing something on the back of an LCD screen I think you're right yes you can learn all sorts of things from YouTube videos but the nothing beats actually spending proper time with your own work and trying to understand you know why something is this is better than that

or indeed looking at other people's work in books or in exhibitions and I always used to say to

students it's all very easy to go and say oh I really like this but but try and ask yourself why you like it and then pick something off the shelf that you don't like and try and understand why you don't like it and ask yourself these difficult questions right things down so you know right paragraph about a paragraph about what you are trying to do with your camera with your work out there so that's it's it's really just about that idea of uh because I do know a couple of photographers

that are constantly making more and more more pictures and spend very little time just slowing down and really assessing what it is they're trying to do and I'm not saying that what they're doing is necessarily wrong it's just not me interesting that you said you still have this kind of pursuit of trying to find out why a good photo is good and why a bad photo is bad certainly in your own work which I find extremely refreshing but also for someone with your pedigree and yours

I was going to say before you did it's like sometimes sometimes an image can speak louder when it's amongst other images right and you can kind of understand why that one image works works well because it's surrounded by other images that kind of elevate it and this this this beauty of secret this whole art and itself of sequencing editing is and you talk about those people that

“that need other people's sequence I'm one of those guys I think I know what I'm doing until I go”

to someone like Chico I go to portfolio review and they're like no no no what are you doing this is so I think it's it is subjective but there is there is there is a skill in this art in the edit and the sequencing which I find so enjoyable and intriguing and if that's kind of the next step you know you take a good photo everyone can learn that take a photo but how do you how do you make something of it amongst other images and a story and a you know and a rhythm and a journey

that people take but when we come to single images because I don't really think of single images anymore but you you mentioned it and I think that lady that was crying that image if you ever thought why first of all can you describe well that image can you remember what that image was but why do you think she was she might I know you don't know for sure she was crying at that image or how it

made a feel but it's it's incredible how images can be so emotive like that but did you ever kind of

question what what is it about this image that well it was clearly I don't remember which image it was but I'm pretty certain it was the working maiden be after a witch was I don't know if you remember but be after a witch hit by a terrible famine many people died including many

“people and thousands of children so I think she was she could just have been a humanitarian who was”

just moved by you know that what was happening on you know in this part of the world that hardly anybody knew where it was you know that this kind of thing and and photography of course is very very good at that and bringing that world into our into our living rooms or into the gallery

walls it's always strange to see work like that in a gallery and you've got to get that in an

art gallery setting and you've got to get that balance right but I suspect it wasn't because it was it the photograph itself was you know it didn't necessarily need to be constructed beautifully or anything it was that I'm sure it was the subject matter well though my colleague of course famously said when he was accused of beautifying war he would say what you want me to do take a bad photograph and because he knows that he knows that the way to engage people is to make images which

work you know and then if you've got some very strong subject matter on top of that then people are going to engage with it they're going to look at it of course that's the way you draw people it isn't and especially in this day may have no you know we have such a shorter tension span that that is very very important and I'm very well well aware of that and I'm not photographing famines or or death and destruction so I have to work doubly hard with the way that I

structure my pictures and and the subtleties within it to expect anybody to spend any time looking at it so that you know but I also know Matt that I'm not trying to change the world and I know that my audience is relatively small I'm not like I was when I first started out where I thought that you know grandiosely that I was doing something important because I don't think I am anymore

“I think it's just you know there are some people out there that like what I do and I'm”

I'm totally grateful for that and never a day goes by when I don't think how lucky and fortunate

I am to be doing what I've done and you know to be asked by people like you to go and I pick you know to chat about myself like this you know for an hour or so so you know I'm very lucky I'm a very very lucky boy but it's been it's been a struggle it's it do hate it has been difficult and so I was just thinking just going back a little bit something popped into my mind about spending time with your work you're not just making more and more and more of it

is you know we hear about novelists for instance who are you know they travel around on buses and they listen to conversations they look out of the window and they get a real life experience which then they go home and they they close the door of their their office and they write a novel which is based on this thing you know it's not you know Marcel Pruse may have been able to write a novel in bed but most people are actually I most people are actually going out

and experiencing the world and bringing those experiences into the work that they're writing about and I think you know photography isn't much different from that in a way we have to go out and we have to collect information and then we have to come home and we have to kind of write that novel

bang on about this but but I I think that I think the word storytelling with photography is so bandied about these days I don't know if it means anything everybody says all I'm a storyteller

“and I think well I'm not really sure you are actually and and I don't really know what that means”

anymore so I I'm I'm interested I don't know what I am and obviously you know my last my latest book fashion intentionally doesn't go anywhere it just goes in the circle and ends at where it begins and in fact the final picture in Good Morning America Volume 5 will absolutely refer back to the

first picture in Volume 1 so it hasn't gone anywhere so I'm not I'm not it's not like a linear

story as such so it's forgive me if I'm you know being I just just something that I find is a little bit I'm a it's a bit tiresome for me like everybody's a storyteller these days and I'm not sure that's true but now we've just lost our fellow audience no I agree with you I think I think one thing I've learnt even even in the recent Chico week which I can't stop talking to people about probably to the point of boredom but is not putting these not having this like feeling

this gravitas and this self importance of putting labels on things and telling people you're like there's poet and you're trying to tell this story and because you know I went in there having this specific narrative and specific it's more like an expression that I wanted to get across in the images you know it was just saying like just chill chill fuck out a little bit like it's it's okay just have nice photos and figure out where they go together and just appreciate the photos

“for the photos and find your own voice within that I think we hide behind these words and these”

phrases too often and I think we can just if you really analyze what a lot of people say in these

situations it's totally meaningless it's always like what you think you're supposed to say

but but you're at another I of course I know that if I present because I do I work in sequences but I also you know I think I'm still making singular images that one could take out and put on a wall or just look at on it's own and yes within all of those images are stories I'm I accept that because but because I'm not revealing everything or too much then what I'm interested in is how that sparks the imagination of the viewer and how each person can take it in their own way

which is you know really going back to the history of painting was particularly abstract painting because that's exactly what that does as well you shouldn't ever tell somebody this is what this

work is about yes and so I'm always I'm always really vague but that's not because I necessarily

can't do it it's just because I don't want to do it this whole idea of captioning is something that I'm sort of having a little bit of a tricky relationship with at the moment particularly with magnet because of course if I put pictures in magnets I picture library then I'm supposed to of course I'm supposed to give as much information in the key wording and you know tell you otherwise I'm never going to sell that picture to a magazine I might if they don't know what it is so it's a bit tricky

“but you know we are I think we're just different people to different audiences I work just”

changes and you know according to who we're targeting it it's not it's not rocket science after all and you know I've been asked a couple of times to do other podcasts for specifically for street photography podcast and my immediately I say well I don't think I'm a street photographer but what do you think about that and then they come back and say well you know that's fine and we're interested in that other approach and then I go off on one about these labels and not

wanting to be categorized as something or other you know it's just I'm a photographer and then that's what I am and so these words I think can often twist down I'm happy to go on a street photography podcast by the way but that's not what I would class myself as although I work outside on a street so what does that mean? I live on a street yeah I have a really tough relationship with any label even like things like I have this argument with my mum about swear words and granted like there's

a time and a place for for surveying especially around children and I agree with kind of like this societal construct that we we want to kind of outlaw swearing and saying situations but they're

as you start doing that you end up pigeonholing yourself and you end up kind of performing to those

labels and then it becomes a status game and it's just like it's all just nothing it's all just arbitrary letters put together and maybe I'm going into something as a little bit too metaphor

“for this conversation but I I totally agree with you I think there's people when they're learning”

then they're kind of trying to find their way you know people talk about when people ask me about style and for I just like it's so tight I don't it's just too limited it's like just going take photos and take photos more it's more important it's trying to understand what you care about and that takes a lot of like that takes a lot of inner work and takes a lot of experience

a lot of practice a lot of failure and then the rest just comes after it so I you know I

totally agree with you and for you and your images and the way you you photograph and you know there's this storytelling aspect that you do and don't want to kind of have in your images I mean it's inevitable that there's like you said there's going to be a story part in your images and that I love the subtlety that you have and you you mentioned subtlety earlier what are you look what are you looking what we need press the shutter button and you know you have something

composed and I know you do things very intentionally and and it's in a much more mindful and slow

“manner what is it then you're looking for because I look at your images and I think”

it takes me a while to figure out those subtlities and these nuances these beautiful little messages that you put in put in the image are you is this like a very intentional for you or are you kind of like looking for the moment that everything kind of comes together and it's a really difficult question to answer but can you just kind of give us an idea of that process of you in your photography flow and and behind the camera what you're looking for

through that viewfinder yeah this is a very very hard question and I think a lot of it is again is difficult to put into words let's slightly rephrase that because we all know that feeling we get on the back of our neck when we think we've got a really good picture and sometimes it isn't sometimes it isn't and I am surprised by the way that an image will work and how it will last I think the last thing is really difficult you know how we tend to have

“this understandable opinion that the the last thing we did is the best thing we did and and”

and it I made a mistake in one of the good morning America books putting in a couple of pictures that from a trip I'd finished two weeks before you know and probably looking back I wouldn't put either of them in because it didn't this those pictures just didn't last so I'm looking for

you know I'm interested first of all about in the structure of the picture so the structure of

the picture it's got to have some kind of balance and I don't mean in a kind of geometric uninteresting way I'm challenging myself to keep reinventing that framing but I do have this tendency to work 80% of the time add a certain distance from something particularly in the states when I was trying to emphasize my foreignness there by by standing at a certain distance I'm not it's not very intimate work if you like so so I've got I've got I'm dealing with

the structure of things and you know and and I use that word you know this is something that I've learned a lot of things some Stephen Shaw over the years but Stephen Shaw talks about how painters compose pictures and photographers structure them because painters can add things to remove things they can do whatever they like with the reality but we are stuck with it and so we have to arrange whatever is there in the frame to make that frame balance and work in

some way and by the way balance can also be the opposite of that so you can also use that framing to make slightly uncomfortable frame that doesn't look right but actually is so it and so it's a little bit difficult to look at and I like that very much but it's much harder to do that actually intentionally so and then of course the content is important I want to have layers of information I try to make these pictures of the sharp right across the frame so that

not one there's no one thing in the image there's more important than anything else so it's again they were democratic they're democratic photographs and as much as I'm not telling

but within that this rectangle you can look at lampose you can look at dogs you can look at

whatever you want to look at whatever you're interested in which plays with our preconceptions our prejudices all sorts of things which is kind of interesting and sometimes there's a degree of decisive moment although generally speaking there isn't for all sorts of technical reasons there's often not pictures of there's not often not people in my pictures unless they're really still because I'm often on slow shutter speeds I'm also I'm not very keen on that kind of

classic photojournalistic picture of you know person walking through a frame I don't I try to avoid

“that kind of thing so I think there's a there's a silence and a stillness in photography which I really”

love and so there tends to be nothing moving in my pictures so I'm not there's no moving cars

I try not to go out when it's windy because I don't or if I do then I tend to stay away from anywhere where there's trees because I don't want trees to be moving so it's I mean it all sounds ridiculous but but I I think for me if there's all this movement in the sky and so forth it it takes away from the absolutest stillness and then it becomes a kind of um it's a bit of a cliche but a moment between moments so when almost nothing is happening so I'm not really chasing

the decisive moment where something really important is happening and look I must make this picture at this moment or it's gone it's actually I'm more interested in trying to elevate the absolutely dead pattern ordinary into something interesting because I know that I know that the very active making a picture and putting it even putting it on Instagram little and putting it in a book or putting it on a gallery wall is elevating it so and we can photograph an infinite number

of things is overwhelming the number of things out there that one could photograph so you making those decisions but I've learned from experience Matt that the more exciting and interesting the subject matter is in the first place the more difficult it is to make a picture of that that is actually reflects what the experience of being there I remember a long time ago being in a in a a car factory and it was an extraordinary place with robots and noise and it was dangerous

and it was smelly and you know I had all these other the all these things that photography can't capture and and actually it was the first time that I had um it's first time I'd used the digital camera in a in that kind of situation I was actually lucky enough to have Marie

Marie it was then my system with me I don't always have an assistant by the way and um and I was

looking at the image on the screen in this sort of cacophony of noise and smell and danger and you know and uh and I just looked at it and thought that's terrible and I tried to take another

“and I said Marie I think I've just lost all my talent overnight you know and and he was brilliant”

he just said no it's because you're looking at it in the situation that you are in you you know you can't hope you can't we and we talked about later that we can't make a photograph of something which is so multi-dimensional because a photograph is extremely limited and and in the past of course when we worked on film when I'd worked on film I would you know take the pictures I would take the film along to the lab and then maybe a week later I would get some contact

sheets back so in that week that the past between the real experience the photograph that I received a week late all at a lot of that memory disappeared because they no longer in the place and so that the um contact sheets themselves become the memory because photographs are very good at

“that being sparking memories so that was that was the reason that that was the moment I think”

when I realised that you know we might chase these really exciting places to photograph but actually it's impossible to and it's much it's much more interesting or much more or a successful generally to go to somewhere where or be in a place that doesn't really have anything going for it at all because your photograph can elevate it into something well at least get to the level of what it was like to be there so that there's so many questions yeah that was a bit all

off in different directions too but what is the intent with the subject matter which you photograph in terms of what you know you talked about stillness and there's almost like this contemplative nature to to your images so that I have another question about that later but what why do you want to elevate a banal you know scenario is it just because you kind of you think it's more interesting

“than what people may first look at it or why where does this desire to do that come from?”

Well of course I'm not by far in a way that not the first person to do to try to elevate the everyday into something you know consequential into consequential into something consequential but I'm just attracted to those places and I think that if I don't know I wouldn't so I could say that I really get excited by the fact that someone is willing to spend time looking at a picture almost nothing and enjoying it for its beauty or it's you know a silence or

whatever or something that they might get from the picture that's difficult to put into words and it's it's why I think I've drifted further and further away from being a photojournalist which is where I started which was all about chasing the moments and chasing something exciting you know and when I years and years ago when I first started I was lucky enough to work for a national

newspaper and it was always being sent to something where an event was happening where

somebody famous was where there was it was always the subject was right there in front of you and there was not much room around it to do anything else and certainly that's not what the picture editor wanted you to do you had to take the picture of the of what a why you were there and I think it's a sort of a like a little personal rebellion against that that I don't think

“you have to be somewhere overtly interesting in order to make interesting pictures and”

so the first picture in volume one of Good Morning America which is obviously an important picture because I knew I was going to be making five books so that first picture is going to set out your store so it's working it's it's referring to all sorts of things because it's a a diverging railway track which talks about division in America it talks about um it talks about my love of American Westons specifically but it's also about that idea about going left or right

when you are a photography walks like I do that you know we are constantly faced with the

choices of which way do I go now because I've never been here before and and I think in the past

I would probably get really angry with myself because I clearly chose the wrong way because I didn't find anything interesting and the day was ended night to leave but nowadays I just don't care about that because actually the the less that's there the more I like it so it's that's not to say that I'm avoiding spectacular things of course I'm not but it creates a totally different challenge for me and I have to remind myself not to be disappointed by you know I go to Grand Canyon

and I can't make a photograph of Grand Canyon that gets anywhere near the magnificence of being there the you know the experience of being there so I try to do something else I don't

“ask me to put that in words but I think it's self explanatory um there there's there's a beauty”

and you know we talked about the fast pace existence we live these days so having someone who can show us these imitable but like beautifully beautifully mundane if that's not unlocked more and like that's this this way of looking at life that is this often gets overlooked right and I think we're all culpable of of overlooking so many kind of this this more everything's beautiful right we just we need more of that we need really more of like the sensationalism we need more kind of this

external beauty and more is chasing more and more and more but as always you know what what I think

said to you apart from so many other people was that you you bring us back down to the the often overlooked smaller just as beautiful if not more things that we would normally just drive past rather than walk and and notice so yeah we're very grateful for that I this very kind and thank you for that

I mean I'm really making it up as I go along most of the time but but I you know I've made

“30 visits to the US right and I spent two years my life in total if you add up all those days”

and and working every day and the number of places that I've actually been to then I'm supposed to go to if you read a guidebook and say you go you know this is great this is great this is great let's go I don't go to any of those play I did go to Grand Canyon I went to Mount Rushmore but beyond that very little have I actually been to then I'm supposed to go to because I feel that what's the point you'd be going there because everybody else is there photographing it and I'm

what you know I'm not going to elevate myself to think that I could do anything better than other people and so I'm I'm going to places that aren't necessarily photographing that I'm not I'm really not putting myself on a pedestal here but there's something very pleasant about being stopped in the street and somebody absolutely gobsmacked me you're there in their little town in Nebraska you know why I know and you come all the way from the UK to do this and you've got

funny looking camera and it's it's a it's a it's a it's a wonderful thing really that and very stylish I I know that feeling a lot having shot around where I live in Indonesia and South East Asia and so almost every time I know why you why you so interested in just like this village in rural Indonesia but I feel like the color of our skin and our accent and heritage is almost like a passport for extra access you know more you know there's much easier for us

because they welcome you in always someone new and they've come all this way to which is there's

this such a wonderful result in that I think but um tell why we're talking about good morning America let's talk about good morning America because it's you know taking up so much of your

“time in a big part of your personal work over the last where you have to correct me how many years”

decade probably 14 years tell I'm interested in as a as a as a Britain from Britain and you know just like me you know outward looking in terms of other cultures and wanting to photograph it where did the Good Morning America concept and idea come from and why did you start this huge project?

Well I've always wanted to do a long term piece of work in the US from as far back as I can

remember while certainly soon after I became a photographer but with you know financial issues time commitments because I I taught in a university for 25 years albeit only one or two days a week but um it's still tied tied me down so I couldn't I couldn't do that kind of thing and then I left teaching and I but I think the well I know that

“where it started and again it very very fortunate really is I remember we were having a”

Magnum AGM in Paris and a few of us went to this bar and we're sitting around this table and we were bemoaning the fact that it was almost impossible to get any funding anymore to do the work that we really wanted to do you know in the past and I'm old enough to remember this that you you if you were quite good at writing imaginative proposals you could you could write to the Sunday Times and you could say I would really like to do this story and um and it will cost

this much money and they would quite often just give you the money to go just cover your expenses and then if they used it they would give you more and and we could you know because there was relatively few photographers about then that because we only had printed media there was no internet or anything it was it what I wouldn't say was easy but it was definitely possible but these days you know there's there's precious few editorial commissions and it's there are they're not

very interesting and they said you know they actually pay less than they did 20 years ago so it's really it's really impossible and so we're all sitting around this table these you know on magnum pals and we're all sort of making work and just losing money hand over fist and trying to try to work out how how this is possible and so that night was born the postcards from America

would go to a place and we all decided the US was a good place to do this work so yeah we were

“sitting around this table and and and and decided amongst ourselves that we would”

like to work in the US and and the idea was that small groups of us would go to a part of the US and we would live in the same place in a rented house or something and we'd go out every day with local students we wouldn't get paid the students wouldn't get paid but somehow rather we'd be able to raise we thought collectively we could raise the money to cover our expenses which is all we wanted to do we didn't want to you know but it but it was a huge so the original idea

interestingly was to pit together put together a group of maybe five photographers who didn't get on with each other who would the idea be the end of the evening we'd come back and we'd show

“each other the work that we'd done that day which is you know quite um we're quite of terrifying”

experience but even more so if you're it's all very well being with with your best mates you know in the agency and you know I feel comfortable with them but showing your work to people who you know really don't get what you do or don't like what you do and vice versa that was the original idea and then just became two problematic so we ended up being bunch of friends doing it and I did three I did three visits to the US under the postcards umbrella between 2012 and 2014

and um and it was great I mean it was really you know the one thing about Magnum is that it really does raise your game you know you are surrounded by some really extraordinary people and and in that kind of very intimate situation you you can't do anything else other than work very hard to because there's some competition sets in this inevitable and um and I learned a lot from

that but it basically I just I made some work some of which went into the good morning America books

and then um and I was used to working with local assistance with so I had I had local student we all had at local student art student with a sort of photography student with us who would sometimes drive us around it just look after us or tell us where well you know if we said we'd like to go to a place like this they would know where it was and then when that all finished I kind of got used to being with somebody in the US and so because I didn't have anybody anymore

it all it peated out for about six months and then I did a workshop in London where uh and in that on that workshop was a fellow called Dean Berner who uh was an American uh from Arkansas but living in Nashville he was a very good slide guitar player was a session player in Nashville in the country music scene and we got on really really well and at the end of the workshop I just really liked him and I and I thought I could spend time with you and I asked him

if he would like to accompany me on some trips and we worked out financially how that would work and um and then he came Dean came with me probably about four or five of the trips that I did

“uh and then I think then he got uh in to do an MA to uh at Yale which is great uh and I think”

partially with some of the work that he was doing with me and the chat so we were having I think it was all helping both of us and then so we kind of drifted apart and I started to work on my own I was much more comfortable and confident and I could do it on my own um I don't know looking back why I was so obsessive that I must have somebody with me because I didn't take I take

as many I take as many risks now risks now as I used to but um but yeah that's that's basically

how it grew and grew and I think um it didn't take me long before I thought I want to do this for a decade I'm gonna I'm gonna really do this properly and I didn't really think about how many trips per year I wanted to take or how long they would be in those early days um and I certainly didn't think about going to every state which I've now done because at some point I can't just because I had some spare time I'd count step up the number of states that I actually

I'm a photographer I'm a collector anti so I've got to collect the move so hence my latest and last month was to Hawaii um because it was the most tricky and expensive and it's all self-funded so it's quite difficult to do this and um yeah so that that's the genesis of it and it kind of grew like these things do you know with my uh university back at teaching background um I I learned that rightly so students should have some idea of what they're trying to do

“because I think when you're 19 or 20 years old just wondering around aimlessly photographing anything”

is quite difficult to you know not to be overwhelmed by that but what I don't think is right is that students should know exactly what they're doing before they even step outside

so I always think there are two types of photographers I'm really simplifying here but

there are the kind of people who work out exactly what they want and then they go and almost like butterfly collecting those photographs so I I would put tar in Simon for instance in that bracket um because she she builds a project in her head and then she she does it and um um me up and and that and I am so impressed with that but my my brain doesn't work like that because

“it's just not it's it's not that logical or smart and so I tend to work out my ideas by the”

actor just as simple actor doing it and students I worked I've soon realized loved to hear this because of course most of us do that you know we we step out we don't really know what we're doing or we think we do but then by the actor doing it or ideas and the the word idea is also problematic but what we are looking for or what we're trying to do it evolves over time doesn't it and uh

and that's okay and that's absolutely okay which is why I always say that I collect pictures

in the first place and then I bring them home and I try and make sense of them and so if we talk about America a little bit further um it wasn't long before I realized that um well there are huge advantages of being in a place which is both familiar and done familiar at the same time which it the US definitely is there's no language barrier and I know this because I did a five year project in Poland where there was a language barrier and that was quite tricky to do in

comparison to America and then there's this idea that we think we know America because we've seen it on television or a movie or heard about it in songs yeah almost everywhere you go this needs to be a song that you pops into your head about that place which is fantastic um but um it was a game with that um now let's let's disappear it because I'm talking uh the familiar and unfamiliar of America yeah I think it was a bit be sure that I should write things down

um don't worry about it it'll come back to me um don't worry so what is it that uh pieces these five volumes together well what kind of what is the thread that's you know goes through the mall if there is one I hesitate to use story and narrative and stuff like that but what what is what is it that you know if you'd to provide a synopsis of this you know credible body of work

what would you what would that kind of elevator pitch be well the first the first thing I would say is

that it's not an original thing to do you know um being uh being a a foreigner in America

“oh yeah that's what I was going to say so it's passed in a year still that you know I'm going to”

re-wind a little bit but um I soon realized that uh I now go for all my trips ended up being three and a half weeks long because I thought that that was a good time because I have to get over the jet lag first of all and then I've got three I've usually three solid weeks of making pictures and then I started getting bored blind just want to go home and uh so and I realized that by bringing that work so it was about collecting pictures now and making sense later let's

what I was talking about so you got I go there I went there I have to think in the past tense now I went there collected pictures came back and thought about the experience and tried to make

or a very it's it's it's it's uh it's it's it's very precious to be able to do that because if I'm

if you're an American you are every time you open your front door you're back in that landscape again every time you turn the television on you're back in that landscape again and there's no respite

“so there was something really important to me the felt really important to be able to”

go there make work come back and look at it quite dispassionately from myself a distance which gets us back to the idea of you know what we did yesterday is our best thing we've ever done because I'm less inclined to do that because I'm looking at it you know out out out of context and

so yeah so that was and so where where were we going with it now I forgot where we were before

the you were asking me about where the the five books how they relate to each other so it's not a particularly original idea for any any person to photograph America it's the most over photograph to country in the world by a long way the history of photography is very America in men is so many ways and yet people keep making work there because it's a fascinating place and it's certainly not unusual for someone from somewhere else like Robert Frank for instance

I'm not putting myself on that pedestal but you know he was a foreigner working in the states in the 50s so and and I'm a foreigner but what probably is original is the fact that I'm making publishing the books as a work in progress so I'm sort of working it out as I go along and so when I started the work in 2012 firstly with a post-cast in America and then it evolved

into Good Morning America which was my work solely so it started in 2012 the first book

“volume one I think came out in 2017 or 2018 so five six years have passed since I started so”

I had plenty of work to choose from but I knew at that moment that I was going to do five books and so therefore I can't make volume one about the Northwest and volume two about the Southeast because I finished here and I'm continuing to go to the Northwest and the Southeast I can't like what I can't make the first book about industry the second one about landscape the third one about people you know those kind of things I can't do that either so because I haven't

finished yet so what happens is that there were weaves in and out of different ideas and the pizza itself which is fine so the books should read as if here's somebody who is going through

“this experience and their idea about the US is sometimes shifting sometimes not but I might even”

go through periods where my the kind of pictures I'm making is slightly different not that maybe very subtle but I might happen so it's I mean it's probably usually pretentious thing to do to make five books over a period of time and why would anybody buy all five of those especially if they miss number one that's another thing to talk about but I'm really it's it's it's such a privilege to be able to do these but it's a real challenge and you see now

that I'm slowly putting together volume five which is the last book I can no longer say to myself oh that picture can go in the next book you know you know this one doesn't quite fit so I'll put it in the next one because there isn't going to be a next one so now I'm realizing that I've got to kill some of my babies you know but my best friends and because they just simply not going to go in I've got far too much work to go left over to go into volume five by the way each

book that comes out that can go right to the I can select pictures from right from the beginning of the work in 2012 so I tried to put a picture from 2012 in every book so it's not like when volume one came out all of the work I'd made before that is now dead and I've got to start again so I'm I'm constantly I even came I even thought that at one point that wouldn't it be fun if

something in a different kind of context to sort of show that how a picture might be read according

to where it is in a sequence I didn't do that because in the end I just thought that's just been a bit bit bit smarter so what's the point in that so so I didn't do that and I won't do that and so I'm coming to the end of volume five and of course I'm thinking to myself do I have to come to some kind of conclusion and then I realize that no I don't really and that's not just a easy way out it's the fact that you know the US as we know is going to continue a pace doing

whatever it does without me photographing it so what's you know so what any conclusion that I might

“come to has to be a deeply personal thing more about me than about the country I think surely”

I can't do anything else I know what the last picture is and I know that it will circle back to the beginning of volume one I'm excited about that I think conceptually it works and it is absolutely emphasises this idea that it's it's a very deeply personal connection and it's not and that that is it's prime it's it's really about my experience and my connection with the place rather than anything else of course because their photographs they give you all this information so

yes and historian can look at those pictures or somebody in politics can look at those pictures and see very distinct different things that they can attach themselves to but I think for me it's got it can only ever be I'm going to use the word poetic experience because that's essentially that's it's you know what is it about it's it's about if it's about anything it's about the US

since Obama was elected for the second I started just before Obama was elected for the second

term and I'm finishing where we are now is Trump in his second term and a lot of water has put past under the bridge and it's a slice in time I hope it will become a so an important historical document with time that's all photographers think that that's that's something else and beyond and everything else I've had a fantastic time doing it I've really enjoyed doing it and I'm I'm I'm

“kind of proud of the work and let me tell you something else as well which I think you're you know”

is so I did I went you've just come back from Chico I was there last year and and I was one of the reviewers and one of the speakers and I remember we had to meet in the hotel I know we're supposed to meet all the all the reviewers who're supposed to meet a lunchtime to have lunch together and get to know each other those most of the Chico crowd know each other anyway but for us outsiders anyway I was I didn't make it to lunch because I wanted to I was in Wyoming I wanted to make pictures

and so forth so I decided I'd meet them in the evening in the bar before dinner so I was walking through the hotel to the bar at the back and I was so terrified Matt I was just thinking I you know because some some of the people I really really respect in American photography or in that room and I knew they were and I was thinking nobody's going to know who I am and I'm going to be standing in the corner belly nightmares you know and I'm just going to feel so awkward and just want to go home

and and I've walked in and not only did people know who I was and recognized me but what was

“much more important to me was that all of those people had all my good morning America books they”

had them at home which is just and and saying to me that they thought they really saw the what I was doing was important and bigger and they were and and as as a foreigner I was perhaps able to know I was able to see some see their country in a way that perhaps they couldn't and and you can imagine how much that did for my confidence I mean it was just I suddenly really deeply believed in what I was doing where it's before I wasn't really sure 13 years later

and this and this this comes from somebody who for so many years had had a very deep suspicion of photographers who thought they could get under the skin of another country just simply by spending a lot of time there you know assimilating themselves you know learning the language and so forth and therefore you can get you can become part of that culture you can be

come part of that place and you can say something really profound about it and I I've never

I got from that from Polish people it was very much the same response of getting from these

cheeko boys and girls in in in Chicago um was that maybe a foreigner can bring something something new to the table in in a way that a local person can't and also I realized

“and this is really important that struck me when I was doing the work in Poland that it's”

it's much easier for someone like me from the outside to do a kind of a survey of a place than than for a local person to do it because if and I know this because it's I have the same problem when I work here in the UK we we understand so much about what we're looking at we get we get interested in details I don't mean you know a fly on the end of a stick or something but I mean we are we generally speaking work that comes out of anywhere by a photographer from

that place tends to be very specific about a certain subject and I'm not really doing that it reminds about everything and anything and and I think that I've tried to do that in the UK

and I just can't and I always so so what I might say to very simply illustrate that is that if I

see a big pile of rubbish on the street outside I know that it's there because the bin men are on strike if I see that somewhere else and I don't know that information I might be looking at that pile of rubbish as a thing of beauty for instance a very different way of looking at it and

“so that explains why I think that that's that's how I managed to keep going through all these”

years and keep going back and spending all this money was that I felt I didn't deep inside I felt to myself that there is a point to doing this there really is and then when I went to Chicago and heard that well it was everything I could possibly have needed to inspire me to finish now that's wonderful and it's also also quite inspirational to know that even someone like yourself is fueled by fueled with or you know embodies a lot of self doubt even when they're doing the work and

after the work and you know it's almost the British thing as well that we're kind of almost too humbled in that respect or self-deprecating but yeah it's kind of refreshing to hear that even when you're invited as a reviewer and the keynote speaker that you still you know we just want I've talked about this all the time even at Chico we just want to be loved you know essentially at the end of the day we use we use our photography as a conduit for that like like my photography

and you like me and I just want to be validated and and belonging in this world where where I see

other you know heroes of mine in so yeah I was going to say that I've always been someone who

quietly gets on with it I've never been a networker I don't go to parties I don't go to openings I don't like any of that stuff and and then so I make a book and it amazes me that by some our other it crosses the Atlantic or goes somewhere else and it reaches the homes of people that I know and respect in in our wonderful industry for wonderful better work so you know it's the way that these things filter through without you even doing anything I mean Instagram which I'm quite active on

is is I suppose push myself out there but it took my daughter several years to insist that I did it because she said it'd be really good for your career you know you've got to do this I'm not interested in that I kept saying and of course now yeah when we start when I started Instagram by the way chili my daughter she was she was going into my archive and she was posting pictures on my behalf and and I thought that's great she's connecting with what I'm doing she's my daughter

that's lovely and everything and I agreed to give her a penny for every follower that I got and by the time I'm very quickly I got to 50th house that I had a 500 pounds I just thought I'm not doing this anymore I'm going to take over and do it myself I can't afford this

“yeah you're you need to change your profile photos while this is the mark power of of”

10 20 years ago I think the well you know it's handy if ever went on a dating site you know that's what they're going to do obviously I'm taking the piss but uh uh we don't have enough time but I wanted to touch upon briefly what the chico fellow said about what why they felt

about what you were doing that they felt was important um I think it's the dogged determination to just

keep going with this um it's really second thing um just just I mean it might be as much as anything

matter the fact that I'm just not asking myself why I'm doing it I'm just doing it because I can't

“think of anything else to do but I think that's that would be a little harsh on myself um I think”

it is we all know as we all know as photographers how difficult it is to go out the front door and start making pictures I know you know it gives you the highest of all highs but it's hard work and you know believe me I would much rather do the washing up or who for the stairs then go out and take pictures I'm you know I really don't I find it real I'm real struggling I'm not alone in

that um because it is you know it's it's physically demanding but it's also mentally very hard

and uh and which is why there's the three and a half week period is it's like my maximum I remember that black um you know he was going out off for nine ten months at a time and I just said how do you do that I mean how how can you possibly keep yourself it active and interested for such a period of time and um he said well I don't work every day and sometimes I take time off and I go to the cinema and stuff or I go swimming or whatever uh I'm paraphrasing but

I'm sure he does something and uh but he also says that what it is is it's a routine and you said you do a routine as well you get you check into a hotel you download your pictures or whatever you go to bed you get up in the morning you're out at first light you go out and you have your adventures you come back to it it's maybe the same hotel maybe a different one and you do the thing same thing over and over again so I don't do much emailing uh well I'm away I just concentrate

on working and it's that very simple uh repetitive nature that that gets you through it

“because I know that when I'm at home my life is so much more complicated there's so many other”

things to do and which is I think again is about why for me it suits me going somewhere else you know

to do the work rather than answer my front door which I really struggle with because I'm always

thinking oh the weather's wrong for me you know I can go home and I can read up and well I can do some I can oh the stairs need her to train I'll go and do that as you can convenient to ease what um so now you're putting the the final touches on uh falling five um when is that but when are we gonna see that in the world you know uh well we're supposed to be on press in June but um it's it's it's meant to have three or four texts in it so I'm still negotiating that

um you know by other people so there are other people involved all of sudden the texts

“are important there's a Q&A with me but there's also a political text yes yes because I think”

there hasn't been any texts as little bits of introduction that I've written um so I wanted it to be you've got to put that working context because I realize that if somebody picks up these books they'd have to pick up volume five or the whole set but if they pick them up in 20 years time not understanding what's going on in the world at this moment it's going it's going what how's it going to be looked at how's it going to be read so you just really do need I feel you

I need somebody to write a text for instance about what's happened in the U.S. and in the world but primarily in the U.S. since 2012 when I started um and then eventually I think probably a little down the line there will be a steward knife steward ghost is an I talk already talking about making one book later on maybe four or five years down the line which really takes the best of all five books and matches it all together into something else and maybe it's some

unused pictures as well because I know from experience the pictures that you overlook at the time come back with a vengeance later on and so I I can see that happening and in that case we can just use the same text in that book as well so tell me what the next few years looks like for you I mean as a bagged in photographer and you know arguably I'm sure that kind of world is you know struggling be just because of the world we're moving into

what there's more books you're going to turn attention to home or you're going to have just

at the moment I'm feeling tired but I don't know what that is I think you know it's maybe just

getting a little louder and I definitely want to make some work here in Brighton where I live I got my I shouldn't really say but I got my bus bus I got free travel on buses and I thought well you know I've got a bus stop outside my house I can just get on a bus go somewhere go for two or three hour walk and wherever I end up getting a bus home again so as I don't have to park anywhere I just go on walks and I can you know explore my city where I've lived for most of my life

40 or 45 years and of course I've photographed here a little bit but not intensively so I very much want to do that and the other thing I'm doing or trying to get off the ground is that a lot is a big project in China which is very ambitious because it's tricky working in China and logistically it's not like going to the States and just renting a car and going it's you

“know you have so many things to say you have to consider that said it's a lot easier to work”

there than I thought it would be I'm not being arrested every five minutes but I haven't done a great deal but I the idea is that I do a series of workshops in China and then that pays me the money to get out where it pays me for me to get out there and then the money that I earned in the workshop I just plow into making the work so I stay on an extra two or three weeks afterwards and I'm not trying to do a good money China kind of ambitious thing like that but it might be something

it might cross a three year period perhaps have you see it feels to me like you know we all think we know what America is but China is this real close book we don't really we see these mad things on Instagram that half of which we don't even know if they're real or not and and I think

“I think we I for one want to know I want to explore it a bit but I'm very interested in”

the modern China I'm not interested in going to a little place in the mountains where nothing's changed for 300 years I want I want to go to the cities where things have been built fast and because it is phenomenal so we'll see if that comes to anything so one is one is really easy because it's outside my friend or one is the other's logistically tricky you might find you might find your photographing China easier than photographing in Brighton given how close you are

to to the city and you know as what you explained earlier but yeah I mean China I've spent a lot of time in China and it's difficult yeah it comes with it's no problem I think because it's so exotic and I'm so aware that you know how do I avoid these these cliches of the you know the the western looking at this country you know to westernize with the precious little knowledge I have of it it's tricky but was that the way you want to move though in terms of you know getting

money for your photography there's no money in photographs that's just I mean obviously you probably get some hopefully you get decent money from but it's not like life changing stuff right we just do it for the love of doing it and you know what how do you see the photography industry changing or how has it changed in terms of photographers earning money for photographing things

because it's obviously changed a lot since you first started and it's only changing faster day by day

right so you know you obviously concerned about that maybe you are maybe you aren't but what what is are you exploring different avenues now and in the business side of photography um it's a struggle day-to-day to be honest I don't get much work anymore I don't really understand

“why that is but I think a lot of people are saying the same thing I hope to be honest want to”

do avoid doing workshops at all all cost because I taught in the university for 25 years and I just had enough but now I'm realizing that it plays me decent money for it's very generally pretty

unstressful I don't really have to do too much advanced preparation for it and and it always

makes me feel good at the end when people are you know happy well hopefully happy with what they've how follow they've got it strikes me that everybody's on their own little ladder and everybody

levels and you have to accommodate that but um I've got plenty of experience as a teacher so it's

it's not really a two tax I can talk about pretty much anybody's work I get there are I have

“tricks to give myself a few more seconds to think about what to say but um but yeah it's I think”

I'm sort of reconciled the fact that it's it's probably what I'm going to be doing I also like the way I like during COVID I did a couple of quite intense online workshops where nobody that I was teaching was able to go anywhere also apart from outside their own front door so we had these people in the workshop moreover the world and we're making work in their local vicinity and talking about it and it was probably the best workshop I've ever done I think actually workshops work very well online

I mean there's nothing beating you know actually being in the same room as someone but they can work

which of course means you can do teach you from anywhere you know so I got a camper van I could be in the mountains in Switzerland if I've got a signal I can I can and a bit of money for an hour and a half and I do online mentoring and so forth it seems clear to me that because everybody sees themselves a photographer these days um which is fine and I think that's great but everybody is also very keen to look what most people are very keen to learn and and go up that

you know there their respective ladders a little bit and so you said earlier I could run a workshop and I could settle that like that it's not quite as easy as that but but there is such a demand for for teaching and it is you think you think that these days everyone just learns on YouTube but there's still such a you know growing demand for learning with with humans in person or online you know in that live scenario which is really really nice to know and and the way that

the student there's participants all tend to stick together afterwards they make a little group and they support themselves each other for years to come and that seems to happen every time

“the only thing I regret and I don't know the way around this I mean I like Alex posts”

uh uh Alex has done a you know he does his in person workshops in his house now sometimes and he managed to get some sponsorships so one or two three people can come for nothing and it's sort of a little bit heartbreaking that the workshops works up generally a bit expensive but you just come back from Chico it's expensive to do it and um and so it does cut out so many people from the equation you quite often would be the most interesting people you know but um you know that's why it's

awesome to have you on the podcast for the people can watch and listen to your advice for free but um that's the best we can do for them at this stage yeah I've got nothing else to say that's it yeah yeah I've touched barely any of my notes there's so much like we could talk more about and maybe I say this to everyone but I'd love to to do another conversational meet you in person or have you in our book club because there's so much like I want to talk about especially

with your books 11 books you know we haven't even touched upon those we touched upon good more numerical or a bit but 16 books 16 books that 16 I do apologize that's I will fire my my research system if I had one but yeah it just goes just goes to show how how fruitful these types of conversations are but how you know how how hugely important your journey in photography is to other people as as hopefully as much as yourself so thank you for taking the time

today I'll let you go and enjoy your Tuesday morning in the UK but um yeah just want to say thank you and um which is the best I like with volume five I will be one of the ones pre-ordering I'm sure

and um keep up the incredible work it's a true inspiration oh something bless you Matt

“I mean it's time here it's been a pleasure speaking to you and if you want to do this again”

because we you said you love the shipping forecast we haven't even talked about that so let me touch on it I think um I've run a book club and you know without putting on the spot to invite you now I'd love to we do photobook reviews and I have the shipping forecast at home and it's on my list to sit with my community for an hour and talk about this wonderful book so that might be a nice little opportunity to get you on for 10-50 minutes to say hi and talk about the book so

oh easy I'm you know I'm I'm easy honestly no problem I'll be wonderful

after the beach now no I'm off a dinner six p.m. okay all right you take care you take care too

thanks Mark bye bye everyone bye bye

“if you stayed with us conversation until the end there is a good chance you're someone who”

values depth reflection and taking time with ideas rather than just rushing past them that's the spirit

behind my voice alchemy book club it's a monthly space where photographers and creatives are

like come together to sit with meaningful work photobooks books essays and long-form projects

“and talk honestly about what they're seeing feeling and trying to make themselves it's quiet”

it's thoughtful and intentionally human it's no pressure to perform no need to have answers we're all just figuring it out it's just time and space to reconnect with others you're

“work and you're thinking so if that sounds like something you'd benefit from you can find more”

information via the link in the notes and the description but I hope to see you there