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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, The National Portrait Gallery, HackelBury Fine Art, Howard Greenberg (New York), Photoworks and, magazines including Photographic District News (PDN New York) and British Journal of Photography.  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; Rineke Dijkstra; Wolfgang Tillmans; Peter Lindbergh; David Bailey; Cristina García Rodero, Rankin and Helmut Newton.

 

Current interests include researching the work of Yousuf Karsh and, The Special Operations Executive (SOE 1940 to 1946) - the latter a fascinating period in British Inteligence - a time when modern technological espinoage emerged and inspired novelist Ian Fleming.  

 

In 2019, I jointly curated and edited SHOT IN SOHO - a book (Random House/Prestel) and an exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery,  London. The Guardian called the show  "a moving melancholic show that shuns the obvious" (Sean O'Hagan). The exhibition included talks, workshops. a silent film screening with live organ accompanyment and a drag and Soho music night at the gallery in Soho.

 

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