In episode 298 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the importance of the ‘why’ over the ‘how’ in photography, avoiding the need for a ‘style’ and why subject matter should be based on your passions and interests.

Plus this week, photographer Virginia Turbett 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?’

Virginia Turbett was born in 1957 in rural West Sussex and is a British rock music and social reportage photographer best known for her photographs of bands, fans and street culture between the years of 1977 and 1987. Turbutt was a dedicated and devout music fan who spent three nights in July1967 crying into her pillow because her Mum and Dad wouldn’t let her see the Monkees play at Wembley Arena. In the summer of 1971, her life changed when she met three guys from Bristol who introduced her to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory on a cassette, in a tent on a North Cornwall cliff top. “I went home and ordered the entire back catalogue, then advance ordered Ziggy Stardust. Waiting for the albums to arrive in Baldwins music shop in Midhurst or, after Virgin started, be delivered to my very rural home was as exciting as Thursday mornings when I’d get off the school bus and go straight to the newsagent for my NME – my bible. I would skip off school, pay all my babysitting money to go and queue for tickets at venues far away to get the best seats at the front. I loved Alex Harvey, Beefheart, Lou Reed etc but Bowie was the main man and I saw him many times including at Hammersmith on July 3rd 1973, when he killed Ziggy.” In 1977 Turbett was asked by a good friend to photograph the Sex Pistols recording Pretty Vacant for Slash magazine. A year, and many punk gigs later, a chance meeting with a Sounds journalist led to a collaboration which lasted a few years – photographing Punk, Rock, Pop, Heavy Metal, Mods, New Romantics, Skinheads, Two-Tone, Ska, Reggae, the fans, style and fashion of the time. At the same time, Turbett was working on a left-wing paper photographing social and political stories. In 1979 she was asked by the Editor of Smash Hits magazine, to photograph features and interviews and she continued working on the magazine until she gave up photography to look after her two children in 1987. Turbett contributed to many magazines of the late 70’s and 80’s including The Face, Sounds, Smash Hits, and Record Mirror creating images of artists and musicians including the Pistols, Clash, Blondie, Iggy, Andy Warhol, Frank Zappa and Nick Cave. Turbutt now works from her home in South Devon selling prints from her archive and contributing to publications, films and TV, exhibitions and record covers. https://virginiaturbett.com

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is 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), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.

© Grant Scott 2024