In episode 230 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on not shooting the messenger, good conduct for photography competition judges, and taking inspiration from photographers, photography and anywhere else you can find it!
Plus this week, photographer Roland Miller takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’
Roland Miller is a Chicago native, who studied photography at Utah State University earning his B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees. For 14 years, he taught photography at Brevard Community College (now Eastern Florida State College) in Cocoa, Florida, where he was first exposed to the nearby NASA launch sites. He then taught at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois for six years before becoming dean of its Communication Arts, Humanities and Fine Arts division in 2008. In 2016, his project, Abandoned in Place: Preserving America’s Space History, documenting the deactivated and repurposed space launch and test facilities around the United Stated was published by the University of New Mexico Press. In 2017, Miller and Italian astronaut, Paolo Nespoli, completed a project collaboratively photographing the interior of the International Space Station. The project culminated in the publication of their book, Interior Space: A Visual Exploration of the International Space Station. Miller retired from higher education in 2018 to work full-time on his aerospace photography. Images from Miller’s Space Shuttle documentary project, Orbital Planes, have been exhibited at the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida and at The National Museum of Naval Aviation, Florida. A book of these images, Orbital Planes: A Personal Vision of the Space Shuttle, was published in the Spring of 2022. Images from Miller’s space-related projects are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; the NASA Art Collection, Washington, DC, and numerous public and private collections. Miller’s work has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, International Business Times, and numerous other national and international publications. www.abandonedinplace.com
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
© Grant Scott 2022
I was browsing Mr. Miller’s website, and stopped a while at the photograph of burnt thermal tiles when the shuttle reenters the atmosphere. One cannot help but think of the mesmerizing combination of science and manufacturing to achieve space travel… An amazing message conveyed by a photograph.
This is a very interesting podcast…