In episode 22 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering unexpected events, inspirations and situations, the responsibility of Instagram takeovers and the importance of collaboration.
Plus this week photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen 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?’
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a Finnish photographer who has worked in Britain since the 1960s. Intending to pursue photography as a career, she was apprenticed to a fashion photographer in Helsinki for a year before studying photography in London in the 1960s, and co-founding the Amber Collective in Newcastle in 1969. From 1969 Konttinen lived in Byker, and for seven years photographed and interviewed the residents of this area of terraced houses until her own house was demolished. This work resulted in the book Byker. Konttinen’s next project was a study of girls attending dance schools in North Shields, their mothers, and the schools, resulting in the book Step-by-Step. The book was an influence for the film Billy Elliot. www.amber-online.com/collection/byker
The image discussed in this podcast can currently be seen in the Women by Women exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead until the 30th of September, 2018. http://baltic.art/whats-on/exhibitions/idea-of-north
Girl on a Spacehopper, 1971. From the series Byker, 1970’s © Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, courtesy Amber / L. Parker Stephenson Photographs.
You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto
and on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701
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.
His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay will be screened across the UK and the US in 2018.
© Grant Scott 2018