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PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 11: Plus Laura Beltrán Villamizar
In episode 11 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the relationship between music and photography, what makes an ‘expert’ and buying cameras.
Plus this week photography editor and writer Laura Beltrán Villamizar takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’
Laura Beltrán Villamizar is a photography editor and writer born in Bogotá, Colombia.
She is the Projects Picture Editor for NPR (National Public Radio), working with the organization’s growing efforts to shape their visual journalism enterprise. She is also the founder of Native www.nativeagency.org – a non-profit platform dedicated to the promotion and development of visual journalists from under-represented regions and communities. Laura has written extensively on localised non-western photography for Nieman Reports at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She is also is a teacher in photography and visual journalism and has set up festivals and educational labs for non-western photographers and documentary makers in Ecuador and Nigeria.
Before founding Native, Laura worked at World Press Photo, where she led educational programs in Latin America and co-produced the yearly Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam.
Prior to joining World Press Photo, she was Associate Photo Editor for Revolve Magazine where she oversaw long-term features, international commissions for print and online, and curated the magazine’s emphasis on visual storytelling.
Laura has served on the jury for The Catchlight Fellowship 2018, The FENCE at Photoville in 2018, and The Sinchi Photography Competition for Indigenous and Native Photographers in 2017.
She was also selected for the Alexia’s Foundation Seminar: Latin America: Stories That Drive Change (Miami, 2017). Laura currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book #New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019.
