For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!

Clare Strand is a UK-based artist who works with, but mostly against the photographic medium. Over the past 25 yrs, she has made work with found imagery, kinetic machinery, web programmes, fairground attractions and most recently, large-scale paintings and chamber music. She often rejects the default settings of the photographic medium and instead and without apology, welcomes a subtle, slow-burn, approach. Her practice is situated somewhere between control and a willful acceptance of chance. She has exhibited in venues such as The Museum Folkwang; The Center Pompidou; Tate Britain; Salzburg Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her work is held in the collections of MOMA; SFMoma; The V&A Museum; The Center Pompidou; The Kunstmuseum, Bonn; The British Council; The McEvoy Collection; The Arts Council; The NY Public Library; The Provincial Collection,  The Uni Credit Bank; The Mead Museum: Cornell University, The Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf andThe DZ Bank. Strand has produced four publications to date, including Clare Strand Monograph published by Steidl (2009), Skirts published by GOST (2014) Girl Plays with Snake published by MACK (2017) and Negatives for Fun with Clare Strand Photography published by Multipress (2019). Strand was one of the four nominees for the Deutsche Borse prize ( 2020). She is currently represented by Parrotta Contemporary Art, Cologne/Bonn. 

“Story One. My Sister. In my mum and dad’s photo album there is a square photo with a centimetre white border. It is an image of my sister fast asleep. The eiderdown is gold and the pillow is pink. Her right arm is bent up around her head, her short dark hair is messy, and her face is beautiful. When I saw this photo of my sister, I was so jealous and insisted my dad took a photo of me asleep but to my knowledge he never complied.
Story Two. Photo-graphy. When I was in fourth year primary school, Mrs. Rimmer wrote the word photography on the blackboard and asked us to put our hands up to read out what it said to the class. In my head I read it as ‘photo-graphy’. Annette Lawford put her hand up and said ‘photography’. I was amazed at this epiphany. I remember thinking what an interesting word it was and how clever Annette Lawford was.
Story Three. Lisa’s Bedroom. I must have been around thirteen or fourteen and I used to spend a lot of time at my friend Lisa’s house. She was and still is one of my best friends plus she had a TV, a phone, a sink, a sofa-bed and a constantly replenished biscuit barrel in her bedroom. Lisa’s parents had a lodger, whose job was to travel the country and photograph the displays of a popular fizzy drink. He used a Polaroid camera and had a stash of Polaroid film in the small box bedroom he rented. Lisa and I used to liberate boxes of the film and photographed ourselves. We had limited wardrobe but we scraped costumes together. An old woman, a builder, a student, an expectant mother and bit actors from the film Grease. During our visits to the box bedroom, we became aware that the lodger also kept a large quantity of pornographic magazines, which we studied with great interest. In retrospect, this entire episode may have been a seminal moment in my introduction to photography and its varied uses.
Story Four. Corrine Day. My secondary school was on the outskirts of Croydon. I didn’t enjoy school. At a particular low point, I had to see the Deputy Head to explain my concerns. She told me how she would look at people and write down their descriptions, and her thoughts about them. She suggested I do the same. I appreciated her response but I appreciate it even more now. The model Kate Moss was in the year below me. I remember her bringing her first fashion shoots for a teen magazine into school. Soon after, she started working with Corinne Day for The Face resulting in these infamous fashion spreads. The images they made had a profound affect on me. I was intrigued and anxious.
Story Five. Gordon. In a non-linear process I ended up studying on the Editorial Photography degree course at Brighton University. On the first day we were shown the film The Rebel. I had a packet of soft mints and I turned to my neighbour and offered him one. I found out later that person had to go to an
emergency dentist appointment as the mint had dislodged his tooth. This person has now been my husband for twenty-five years. Photography has punctuated my life in so many ways, however, unlike the Annette Lawford days, I’m less enamoured by the word, but maybe, when you have lived with something for so long, its only reasonable to feel a push and pull, a love and hate.” 
http://www.clarestrand.co.uk

Image: Clare Strand. Aerial Suspension. 2009
© Grant Scott 2026