Photography Down The Line

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to David Brittain. Since 1980 David Brittain has been engaged with photography as a writer, reviewer, editor of 'Creative Camera', documentary maker, curator and academic researcher. David wrote 'Inside Photography: Ten Interviews with Editors' (2012), 'The Jet Age Compendium: Paolozzi At Ambit' (2009), edited 'Creative Ca...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Matthew Arthur Williams. Matthew Arthur Williams (b. 1989 London) is a visual & sound artist, freelance photographer and DJ. Living and working in Glasgow. Matthew's work, which takes a multi-disciplinary approach, sits to continuously encourage a different narrative and is primarily interested in the documenta...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Nicky Bird. Nicky Bird is an artist and Reader in Contemporary Photographic Practice at the Glasgow School of Art. Her current solo show Legacy at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, (27 April-6 June 2021) looks back at over fifteen years of her work. Nicky’s work investigates the contemporary relevance of ‘found’ artefac...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Arpita Shah. Arpita Shah is a visual artist and educator based between Edinburgh and Eastbourne, UK. She works between photography and film exploring the fields where culture and identity meet. As an India-born artist, Shah spent an earlier part of her life living between India, Ireland and the Middle East before s...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Tracy Marshall-Grant. Tracy is an Arts Director & Producer specialising in the production of photography exhibitions, festivals, education projects and workshops. She is currently Festival Director of Bristol Photo Festival and previously directed LOOK Photo Biennial 2019 while Director of Development at Open Eye Ga...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Louise Fedotov-Clements, Artistic Director, QUAD & Director, FORMAT International Photography Festival. Louise has been the Artistic Director of QUAD since 2001, and is the Director of FORMAT, which she co-founded in 2004. An independent curator since 1998 directing commissions, publications, performances and exhibi...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Christina Riley from The Nature Library. Christina Riley is an artist based on Scotland's west coast. Using photography, found objects, writing and installations, her work draws acute attention to the details of the natural world with a particular focus on the sea's edges. In 2019 she was longlisted for the Nan Shepherd...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Francis McKee. Francis McKee is an Irish writer and curator based in Glasgow. His most recent books include How to Know What’s Really Happening (2017), Even the Dead Rise Up (2018) and Dark Tales (2019). McKee has been Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow since 2006. He is a Research Fellow at The Glasg...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Norman McBeath. Norman McBeath is a photographer and printmaker who lives in Edinburgh. The National Portrait Galleries in Edinburgh and London have over seventy of his portraits in their collections. His collaborations with poets include Plan B with Paul Muldoon, The Beach w...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Roberta McGrath. Roberta McGrath writes on the history, theory and politics of photographic representation. She has worked as a lecturer and researcher at universities in the UK since the early 1980s. From 2004-15 she was Reader in Photographic Theory, History and Criticism at Edinburgh Napier University. In 2014, McGra...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Frances Scott. Frances Scott (b. 1991) is a photographer from Orkney, currently based in Glasgow. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2014, receiving first class honours alongside an award for her Critical Journal. Her work often focuses on journeys made through a landscape of personal significance, and since 20...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Finnish born Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a founder member of the Amber Film & Photography Collective. Based since 1969 in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England the collective established Side Gallery in 1977, dedicating it to socially engaged documentary photography. She works both as a pho...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Alan Eglinton. British visual artist Alan Eglinton tells his own story through his cross-disciplinary projects. His emigration to France at an early age, his wedding proposal to his South Korean partner or his working process are a few examples. His photographs and texts are very often of a poetic nature. However, he kn...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Alan Dimmick. Alan Dimmick was born in Glasgow in 1961. He bought his first camera (a Russian Zenith) in 1977, the same year that he converted the toilets in his secondary school annex into a darkroom. He went on to study photography at Glasgow College of Building and Printing from 1979–82 and was a founding member of G...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Brittonie Fletcher. Brittonie Fletcher (MFA) is a British-American artist, educator and curator currently based in Edinburgh. Her work of the past decade has focused on connection to place, belonging and community - often tying in politics and the personal. She is an active member of Edinburgh LoFi and the Calotype Soci...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Louise Mclachlan. Based in Edinburgh, artist Louise Mclachlan works predominantly with digital photography. Finding it the most ideal tool to create, Mclachlan draws inspiration from many mediums including painting, performance, sculpture and cinema. In recent years Mclachlan has explored her own relationship within cre...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kieran Dodds. Kieran Dodds is an award-winning photographer based in Edinburgh. After reading Zoology, he trained at the Herald newspaper group in Glasgow becoming an independent photographer after picking up a string of accolades including a 1st prize World Press Photo award for his self-assigned story: The Bats of Kas...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kara Bell, Sarah Newall, Zoe Cook and Kyle Bruce, some of the current Stills Academy participants. Stills Academy runs twice a year as part of Stills School, an alternative photography school for 16—25 year olds who face barriers to accessing the arts. The Academy supports young people to develop photography skills at a...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Wendy McMurdo. Wendy McMurdo is an award-winning photographer who is interested in exploring the ways in which technology influences early learning. She exploits the artistic possibilities offered by scientific progress in her work and raises questions about the effect new virtual technologies have on human beings. Rece...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Rebecca Marr. Rebecca Marr is a photographic artist born in the Highlands who lives in Orkney. She settled there after a residency over a decade ago with the Pier Arts Centre. Rebecca works across digital and analogue photography, often with the darkroom technique of photograms. Predominantly concerned with documenting...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Mhairi Law. Mhairi Law is an award winning photographer living and working on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Using medium-format analogue photography, her creative practice is focused primarily on landscapes, reflecting social and environmental themes. Previous projects have looked at rural environ...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Chloe Dewe Mathews. Chloe Dewe Mathews is a photographic artist based in St Leonards on Sea, England. Her work is internationally recognized and has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Her work has been published in newspapers and magazines such as the Guard...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Thomas Whittle. Whittle’s practice encompasses photography, painting, drawing, publishing, organising and writing often bringing these mediums together. His work attempts to navigate the duality of definition, ambiguity of usefulness and diluted purpose of the quiet and unassuming two-dimensional image. The work in...

This special episode is hosted by photographer, Kat Gollock, during the week in which she was due to exhibit a new body of work at Stills as part of the Projects 20 exhibition series. Gollock's guest is EA Hanks, a writer based in Los Angeles who graduated from Vassar College with a Bachelor of Arts. Hanks has written for The Awl, Jezebel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Vanity Fair and Time Mag...

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Robin Gillanders. Gillanders is former Reader in Photography at Edinburgh Napier University. He has several works in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, the V&A, London and National Portrait Gallery, London. Publications include Little Sparta, Portrait of...