Why Photography Matters

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, con ...  Show more

In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key t ...  Show more

In this episode, we conclude the first series of episodes about the basics of photography by chatting about storytelling with photography. At the end of the day, we are telling stories with our photos. What makes a great photo? A lot of this lies in the eyes of the beholder. Thou ...  Show more

Food photography is about much more than beautifully presented dishes in cookbooks - it’s also being used to change the way we think about what we eat.Emily Thomas meets three photographers to discuss some of their most powerful images - from a bloody scene in a Thai slaughterhou ...  Show more

How do you consider yourself as a photographer in terms of the work you do? Is it important to tell your viewers how you define your work as being a particular kind or made with a particular camera, or does the work you make define you instead? If I make more images, like the one ...  Show more

Its hard to imagine a more ideal guest for a photography podcast than the wonderful Ralph Gibson. Gibson checks all the boxes—a straight-up master of the medium, a man of insights and tales, with a comprehensive understanding of photography from the nuts and bolts to the conceptu ...  Show more