I was recently listening to an interview with former Beastie Boy, Mike D (Michael Diamond) on Radio X. He was speaking with one of my oldest friends, the radio DJ, John Kennedy. I have known John since we met at school, aged thirteen. We were both obsessed with music and art, and we still are.

In the conversation Mike D spoke about a band both John and I liked as teenagers, The Raincoats. A recent album by the band’s singer, Gina Birch inspired Mike to go back and make music. It made him realize that time was passing and that life isn’t forever.

Now, there is no shortage of academics who have written worthy, long and in-depth treatise on the relationship that photography has with memory and time. This is not one of those. In a sense this is a collection of roughly connected thoughts, shared to perhaps connect with you.  Let me know if they do.

Mikey D’s realization of personal mortality reminded me of the importance of remaining in touch with those influences we had as teenagers. They stay with us, but can get forgotten or dismissed as the years pass. I think there is also a societal pressure to think that new things are better than old things and that to focus on the past, is to not move forward. This can happen, but I’m not talking about living in the past. Just appreciating it’s importance in our cultural make-up.

Inevitably as a photographer, photography will be part of that make-up, but it will not be alone. Sadly, I do not have many photographs of my teenage adventures, but I do have a few, and those I have capture moments that have been frozen in time. That is photography’s most important power. That of stopping time.

The pressing of a button acts as a full stop for a moment. A pause button for our own mortality. That is no great revelation, however let’s place that moment into our creative impetus in the present. This connection with the past directly connects us with our younger selves. It brings back a sense of possibility, a sense of wonder as to what can be achieved. The excitement of youth.

Cynicism is an inevitable reality as the years pass, something our younger selves had yet to develop. An awareness of our own impending mortality also comes into focus the older we get. Mike D’s response was to rediscover that teenage spirit and that connects with me. The importance of having fun. He initially tried to use the analogue processs of his past, but soon realised that digital had production benefits. One song led to another, and an album supported by live performances became a reality. The album is called Thank You. The reviews have been mixed, but I don’t think that matters. What does matter, is recognising the impetus to continue making new work whatever your age.

This is the challange for the seasoned photographer, looking to retain the pure essence of the photographic image we experienced at the beginning of our journey with a camera. As Picasso stated, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” To meet this challenge I think we need to encourage our restless spirit, our sense of inquisitiveness, to remain relevant to others, but most importantly to ourselves. Photography relishes the past. This is what I saw, not what I will see. Not even what I am seeing. It is a medium that embraces the past as a matter of fact. As proof that we were there, as proof that we were here.

It is this proof of our existance that photography achieves so well. It is what we leave behind that is something of ourselves and those we have met and interacted with. We exist within a state of mortality, mortal, but destined to die. Remembered through photography.

At the time when I was listening to The Raincoats, as a teenager, I was also reading books by Albert Camus, the French philosopher, novelist, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, political activist and former goalkeeper. Pretentious maybe, but I was not alone in the early 1980s as a moody, overcoat wearing reader of L’Étranger or La Peste, whilst listening to Scott Walker singing the songs of Jacques Brel. Camus said this, “There is not love of life, without despair about life.” To me this is the perfect description of many photographers relationship with photography. Including my own.

It can be infuriating, dissapointing and dispiriting. It can be exciting, inspiring and life confirming. It can lift you up and knock you down. Make you cry and make you smile. Photography has the power to invoke all of these emotions, it is part of our mortal existance if we choose to adopt its possibilities. To accept its inevitable creation of nostalgia, is to accept our own mortality and I am good with that. I’ll just end this series of loosely disconnected thoughts, with some words from that Mikey D album I started this article with, “Start with the goal, then lost in the deadline, Don’t see the road ahead, responsibility, Try to please everyone, it′s killing me, I don′t know a lot about it, I wish I had the time to count it, It looks right, but I doubt it, Does it matter anyway?

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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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: Mikey D and his band 5D