PODCAST: Episode 365: The Conversation with Bill Shapiro ‘Landscape Photography’

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PODCAST: Episode 365: The Conversation with Bill Shapiro ‘Landscape Photography’

07/05/2025

In this monthly conversation series Grant Scott speaks with editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro. In an informal conversation each month Grant and Bill comment on the photographic environment as they see it. This month they reflect on landscape photography.

Mentioned in this episode:
Alex Harris: @ourstrangenewland
www.newmexicomagazine.org/blog/post/photographer-alex-harris-returns-to-penasco-new-mexico/
Kit Young: @kityoung135
Geraint Smith: @geraintsmithphotography

Bill Shapiro
Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine; LIFE’s relaunch in 2004 was the largest in Time Inc. history. Later, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. Shapiro is the author of several books, among them Gus & Me, a children’s book he co-wrote with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and, What We Keep, which looks at the objects in our life that hold the most emotional significance. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Every Friday — more or less — he posts about under-the-radar photographers on his Instagram feed, where he’s @billshapiro.

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 book inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

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One response to “PODCAST: Episode 365: The Conversation with Bill Shapiro ‘Landscape Photography’”

Rob Campbell

May 7, 2025 at 9:35 pm

I think both of you had it right, but that was before you allowed yourselves to be sucked down into what looked to me as, eventually, not very different to any of the other art-speak and artist’s statement noises coming from that genre. I know, you don’t like the concept of genre too much, but at the end of the day, you have to use some kind of handle if you are to invoke a sense of what it is you are both discussing, and yeah, the word landscape does that pretty well.

Perhaps we might be tending to overlook something pretty basic: the urge to photograph, to be some kind of an artist, can be very strong, but in order to fulfil that drive, if it’s there, one has to find something to photograph. Myself, I always knew that the urge was about beauty, human beauty. It was easy to recognise, and the world was overflowing with photographs of beautiful people. The trick, then, was to find some beautiful people of my own and make more pictures of the same. Basically, it’s got much to do with human sexuality, and therein lies the key to recognition of what works and what can’t; it’s easy to photograph people you admire, but far from easy to achieve much with those you don’t. I could never photograph men successfully: I didn’t give a damn about them, other than as clients.

Coming out of that, the killer question: if you don’t have access to those beautiful people, what do you do? That’s why people seek alternatives. Unless one is blessed with the ability to set up the circumstances that provide those specimens – and yes, that’s perhaps what they ultimately become, but specimens bearing your personality writ large all over them – the alternative is to play golf. Or to shoot landscape. I can see why some prefer dealing with things that don’t answer back.

The other reason for shooting things that don’t particularly thrill is this: it’s better than facing an empty life. That’s where I am today, sixteen years after the death of my wife. For as long as my head still works, I have to find distraction where I can.

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