Episode 12: Hardworking, Loving & Courageous – May/June 2009

filmwasters.com: podcast

Despite our best efforts to the contrary Episode 12 is an all English, all-male affair with Filmwasters hosts, Ed Wenn, Damion Rice & Leon Taylor taking one of their favourite documentary photographers, the much-travelled Colin Summers, through his podcasting paces. Also getting in on the act – albeit briefly – is Leon’s pet hound, Woody, who we suspect is also a big Colin Summers fan.

This episode was supposed to be a photo journalism special, but inevitably things drifted off-topic pretty quickly and Leon had a time of it trying to edit together something even vaguely cohesive. Fear not though, there’s a lot of good, sensible stuff here in amongst the jokes and the general photography-related chatter. In particular documentary photography is covered in some depth; including a discussion of Colin’s current series, This Is England.

We also discuss the sad passing of Bill Jay, a giant of photographic commentary whose work has made a big impression on us on lots of levels. Visit his site to find out why.

Faves/picks/recommendations this time round are as follows:

• Colin recommends Robin Bell’s Silver Footprint exhibition at the Independent Photographers Gallery in Sussex, UK until June 20th.
• Leon recommends Tim Rudman’s excellent exhibition, The Colourful World of Black and White, which is on at the Lightbox gallery in Woking, UK until July 26th.
• Ed raved about an oldish book he discovered on a friend’s shelf recently, a Time-Life publication from 1980 glorying in the title, Photographing Children.
• Damion had two picks. The first is Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip a book from 1935 by Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, Erika Wolf, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Anne O. Fisher. His second pick is the project currently being undertaken by our good friend, Gordon Stettinius, to publicize, document and research the life and work of Gita Lenz.