In this special episode of The Conversation series Grant Scott speaks with award winning photographer Marc Asnin. In an informal conversation they discuss photography in the first twenty-five years of the 21st century based on his project Act One: A Century in the Making.

Act One: A Century in the Making
Act One: A Century in the Making is a major new photography publication and exhibition examining the first twenty-five years of the 21st century that brings together the work of more than one hundred internationally recognized photographers alongside leading scholars, journalists, historians, writers, and public intellectuals to examine the defining political, cultural, emotional, and social realities of the first twenty-five years of the 21st century. Published by Other/Side Editions, the project positions photography not simply as documentation, but as a form of cultural memory, inquiry, and artistic testimony. Through themes including war and conflict, migration, race in America, political division, technology, identity, and environmental crisis, the publication reconstructs context around images at a moment when photography is increasingly experienced in fragmented and decontextualized ways. At a moment when images are increasingly consumed out of context and historical memory exists under constant pressure, Act One seeks to create a space for reflection, connection, and deeper public understanding. Contributors include photographers such as Andrea Bruce, David Maisel, Eugene Richards, Ken Light, Martin Schoeller, Peter van Agtmael, Platon, and Stephen Dupont, alongside essays by scholars including Joia Mukherjee, Lizabeth Cohen, Mark Danner, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Fred Turner. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/68b6bf3489b2866ff94dab74/t/68b748b17606c33219faf40a/1756842161214/Act+One+Project+Summary.pdf

Marc Asnin
Known for his long-term documentary work exploring memory, family, identity, and American life, Asnin is the author of Uncle Charlie and Final Words. Over the course of his career, he has received numerous honors, including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award, the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in Humanistic Photography, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. www.marc-asnin.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 foto8 magazine, 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.

©Grant Scott 2026

Image: Marc Asnin