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!

Alys Tomlinson studied English Literature and Communications at the University of Leeds. After graduating, she moved to New York for a year and was given her first commission, before returning to London to study photography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She has recently completed a MA in Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage at SOAS, University of London, which connects with her long-term, personal project concerning pilgrimage. Tomlinson was named Sony World Photography Awards, Photographer of the Year in 2018, shortlisted in the 2019 Rencontres d’Arles New Discovery Award, exhibited as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize in 2017, won the Magenta Foundation/Flash Forward in 2008 and was shortlisted for the 2003 Jerwood Photography Award. Alys recently finished work on a feature-length documentary film Mother Vera co-directed with Cécile Embleton. Her book Ex-Voto was published by in 2019 by GOST and Lost Summer was self-published in 2020. Her latest project Gli Isolani (The Islanders) was also published by GOST in 2022 and she continues to combine commissioned work for editorial, design and advertising clients with personal work, which she publishes and exhibits.

“What does photography mean to me? That’s a huge question. I think I first started with photography and picked up a camera to satisfy my curiosity and to find out about the unknown. To take me away from what was my comfortable everyday life. I started to think about people and places, themes about identity and belonging. For me, a project starts from a sense of curiosity, a fascination or an impulse. A feeling that I need to find out more is what takes me and leads me in terms of my personal work. I also think that what really means a lot to me in photography is the people I meet and the worlds I am privileged to be part of and the worlds that are uncovered by me being there. That’s probably most true with my Ex Voto project where I visited different Christian pilgrimage sites in Europe including Lourdes, a small one in Ireland and Grebarka in Poland. It was in Grebarka that I met a nun called Vera. I love how these chance meetings can be so unexpected. I met her and took her photograph and that portrait became my favourite image of the whole series, the way she confronts the camera is very arresting. She has this incredibly powerful presence. That meeting led me to visit her in her convent in Belarus and I suppose that is what I love about photography and what it means to me. It opens up new doors and opens up these new worlds. I now consider Vera a close friend and I never expected to be good friends with a nun, particularly a nun living in Belarus but the access that she gave me to her world and the trust that was there and the intimacy that was there in this very sacred, hidden, secretive world was incredible. That is something that will stay with me forever. In some ways, I am working very much for myself and you could say that is quite selfish. It is about satiating my own curiosities and impulses but I also hope there is an audience that appreciates what I do. That the work may make people think about the world that we inhabit, the way in which we behave and how that can impact on other people’s lives. When I’m working on a project, I am very focused and always feel as if I am in the zone. I’m not thinking about much outside of the image-making and the storytelling I am engaged in. I’m immersed in the work and if I can help other people understand the world in which we live even in a small way, then that makes me happy and that makes me satisfied. I don’t really know what else I would do. It is what I do and it is what I know. It is what I am driven to do, so for me I suppose photography means everything. It is what I am and it is what defines me in some ways. If I can make people think and if I can give people space to think then that’s wonderful.” 

http://www.alystomlinson.co.uk

Further Listening: