Featuring:

• Mimi Mollica website/Instagram
• Keerthana Kunnath website/Instagram
• Mikael Buck website/Instagram
• Chris Dorley Brown website/Instagram
• Shaw & Shaw website/Instagram
• Mal Woolford website/Instagram
• Imogen Forte website/Instagram
• Quetzal Maucci website/Instagram
• Richard Eyers website/Instagram

Website | Instagram

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• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

Born in Lyon in 1984 represented by Ibasho and galerie écho 119, Chloé Jafé is an artist and a photographer trained at the École de Condé in Lyon and at the UAL Central Saint Martins School in London.

She has been able to create a unique personal voice in the world of documentary photography. Those close to her say bluntly that she photographs with her gut, using the camera as a key to understanding the strange and the foreign. Her obsession and intuition has enabled her to access secret worlds. Her ability to connect to her subjects has meant her work really is exceptionally personal – the world through Chloe Jafes eyes.

She worked and immersed herself in Japan and Japanese culture from 2013-2019 creating a trilogy of work. The images are raw, black and white, tender and ferocious. She reveals an unprecedented vision of hidden parts of Japanese society. Her trilogy, composed of the chapters “I give you my life", "Okinawa mon amour" and "How I met Jiro", highlights the little-known and subversive sides of a place where modesty is paramount.

Critically acclaimed, her work on the women of the Yakuza was rewarded by the Bourse du Talent in 2017 and exhibited at the Bibliotèque nationale de France.

Attracted by sensitive and difficult subjects, often marginal, Chloé Jafé does not hesitate in her practice to push the limits of the photographic medium by working directly on prints, in acrylic and brush. Each of her series has resulted in a limited edition book, bound and handcrafted by the artist.

In episode 233, Chloé discusses, among other things:

• Photography as ‘a tool’
• Her first trip to Japan
• Moving there
• Hostess job
• Meeting ‘the boss’
• The women of The Yakuza
• The significance of tattoos
• Painting onto her prints
• Her trilogy of books: I Give You My Life, Okinawa Mon Amour and How I Met Jiro
• Finding abandoned negatives
• Adventures in publishing

Referenced:

• Paolo Roversi
• Sarah Moon
• Yakuza Moon
• Jake Adelstein
• Reminders Project
• Teun van der Heijden

Website | Instagram

“I was sure this project was mine. I had to do this. You know, I think I was frustrated that I was the right person to do this, and it was my mission. I was sure about that.”

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• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

Featuring:

• Lydia Goldblatt Website | Instagram
• Kamiar Maleki Website | Instagram
• Michelle Sank Website | Instagram
• Gered Mankowitz Website | Instagram
• Alys Tomlinson Website | Instagram | Mother Vera film
• Fariba Farshad Website | Instagram
• Charlotte Jansen Website | Instagram
• Andi Gáldi Vinkó Website | Instagram
• Anne-Marie Beckmann Website
• Renée Mussai Instagram
• Valérie Belin Website | Instagram
• Matt Stuart Website | Instagram
• Chloé Jafé Website | Instagram

Photo London: Website | Instagram

• Become a full tier 1 member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of previous episodes for £5 per month.
• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

Featuring:

• Silvia Rosi Website | Instagram
• Arko Datto Website | Instagram
• Yvonne Venegas Website | Instagram
• Tim Clark
• Marta Bogdanska Website | Instagram
• Michele Sibiloni Website | Instagram

Referenced:

• Walter Guadagnini
• Luce Lebart
• Bruno Latour
• Timothy Morton
• Daisy Hildyard

Festival: Website | Instagram / Collezione Maramotti: Website | Instagram

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• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

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

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

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

In episode 230, Julia discusses, among other things:

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

Referenced:

• Oleksandr Komiakhov
• Daria Kolomiec

Website | Instagram

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

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• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

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

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

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

In episode 229, Michael discusses, among other things:

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

Referenced:

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

Website | Instagram

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

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• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.

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

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

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

Valerie lives and works in Paris.

In episode 228, Valerie discusses, among other things:

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

Referenced:

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

Website | Instagram

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

• Become a full tier 1 member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of previous episodes for £5 per month.
• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.