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TWO main themes have emerged when writing on photography -  the growing influence photography has on contemporary art and the capacity for photographic documentation to shed light on history.   How can photography, in the service of history, be more objective and thorough?  How do we detect and address selectivity and bias?

 

My writing has appeared in books by Prestel, Kehrer, British Journal of Photography, The National Portrait Gallery, HackelBury Fine Art Howard Greenberg (New York) and PDN Magazine (New York).  Subjects have included: Photography and the Weimar Republic; the so-called 'Arab Spring'; Birth of the USSR;  Segregation in US Southern States  - through to revisionist appraisals of exponents within the photography canon.

 

I have had published interviews with William Klein; Bill Brandt; Rineke Dijkstra; Wolfgang Tillmans; Peter Lindbergh; David Bailey; Cristina García Rodero, Helmut Newton and Rankin.

 

In 2019, I  jointly curated SHOT IN SOHO. Current interests include researching The Special Operations Executive (SOE 1940 to 1946) - a fascinating period in British Inteligence and guerilla warfare history - a time when modern technological espinoage emerged and inspired novelist Ian Fleming.  

 

SHOT IN SOHO is a book (published by Prestel / Radaom House) and an exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, London from18th October 2019 until 09th February 2020.   Please see -  thephotographersgallery.org.uk  - for Soho related talks, film programmes and music events.

 

Soho, London.  Photograph by Kelvin Brodie, coutesy of NewsUK Archive.