The Messy Truth - Conversations on Photography

• Lisa Barnard - On Perception

  In this conversation Lisa Barnard talks to Gem Fletcher about her new exhibition, You Only Look Once, at c/o Berlin which considers perception in relation to both human and machine experience. She addresses the complexity of technological progress and the ecological resources on which its promises depend. Her research focuses on California, unfolding a multilayered, fragmented and nonlinear story that encompasses photographs, an immersive video installation, archival interventions, alternative printing strategies and AI-generated image analyses that weave together in the creation of a dense visual entanglement.Lisa Barnard is a British artist and lecturer whose photography focuses on real events. In her projects, she combines classical documentary methods such as photography, audio, video, and text with contemporary visual strategies and digital technologies. She brings together her interest in aesthetics and current debates on the materiality of photography with political questions surrounding new ecological efforts, technological developments, science, and the industrial military complex. Barnard is an associate professor and head of the online masters in documentary photography at University of South Wales. She regularly exhibits her work and has published three monographs: Chateau Despair (2012, GOST, supported by Arts Council England), Hyenas of the Battlefield: Machines in the Garden (2014, GOST, supported by Albert Renger-Patzsch prize), and The Canary and the Hammer (2019, MACK, supported by Getty Images Prestige Grant). Follow Lisa @lisacbarnard & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Liz Johnson Artur - On Taking Time

  I Will Keep You in Good Company, the latest book by Liz Johnson Artur brings together pages and fragments from over twenty years of her personal workbooks she has kept since the early 1990s. These books are a kind of private, experimental playground where she shaped her photographic language through layering, cutting, annotating, and assembling: a space for processing not only images, but life itself. Each page is a tactile surface, combining photographic prints on canvas, tracing paper, faxes, and photo stock with screen-prints, handwriting, and clipped texts. The result is a sensorial, intimate archive of moments lived and witnessed – of friends, family, strangers, lovers – held with care and attention. In this conversation, Gem and Liz talk about the workbooks and Liz’s journey making them throughout her career. They also talk about the power of stubbornness, finding your tools, overcoming shyness, how she has integrated her work into her life and the importance of being yourself within the institution. Follow Liz @lizjohnsonartur & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Vince Aletti - On Collecting

  In this episode Gem talks to writer and curator Vince Aletti about his most recent book Physique—which showcases rare photographic prints from the underground gay magazine of the same name—collated from his own private collection. Spanning the 1930s to the early 1960s, these photographs chronicle a hidden, coded world of homoerotic imagery. Physique reveals a forgotten chapter of American gay culture in which photographic prints served as a lifeline, connecting a community of men under threat while also providing solace, pleasure, and empowerment amid oppression. In their roving conversation, they talk about obsessions, Queer culture, FOMO, writing, the importance of incongruous connections, Bad Bunny and the evolving codes of masculinity.Vince Aletti is a writer, critic, curator and book maker. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and has also written for Aperture, Artforum, Document, amongst other titles. Vince was the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994 to 2005 and the paper’s photo critic for twenty years. In 2005, he won the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for writing. He has made many books, most recently, The Drawer and Physique made in collaboration with Self Publish Be Happy and Mack. Vince lives and works in ManhattenFollow Vince @vincealetti & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Charlotte Jansen - On Discovery

  In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to Charlotte Jansen, writer and Photo London curator. They discuss mechanics behind photography fairs, how she approaches the curatorial process and how this aspect of the industry can support the work of emerging artists. Charlotte Jansen is a British Sri Lankan author, journalist and critic based in London. She is the curator of Discovery at Photo London and writes on contemporary art and photography for The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New York Times, British Vogue and ELLE, among others. She is the author of Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze, and Photography Now.Follow Charlotte @omfgnoway & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez - On Collaboration

  In this episode, Gem Fletcher talks to photographers and longtime partners Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez about their collaborative project and book, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,” published by Mack. For the last five years, the two artists have traversed the border between Mexico and the United States, working together for the first time and ruminating on ideas about human connection, migration and the mechanics of photography itself. In this conversation they talk about the reality of collaboration, and how as they studied the borderlands they were faced with an unavoidable reckoning that, over time, offered them a deeper understanding of each other and their work.Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them. Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries.Andres Gonzalez is a visual artist based in Vallejo, California. His book “American Origami” (2019) won the Light Work Photo Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Book Awards. We featured “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,” his first collaborative project with fellow photographer, and life partner, Carolyn Drake, which saw them spend five years traversing the border between Mexico and the United States, capturing moments and characters from their individual perspectives.Follow Carolyn @drakeycake & Andres @andresvgonzalez & Gem @gemfletcher on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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