A Photographic Life - 37: Plus Christopher Anderson

In episode 37 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the acceptance of photography as a part-time profession, and a new research report titled The State of News Photography 2018, published by the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam. Plus this week Grant re-visits a recorded conversation from 2011 with Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson in which Anderson speaks about discovering photography, the personal connection he has with his images and his intention when creating his iconic Haiti refugee body of work. Christopher Anderson was born in Canada and first gained recognition for his pictures in 1999 when he boarded a small wooden boat with Haitian refugees trying to sail to the United States. The boat, named the Believe In God, sank in the Caribbean. In 2000 the images from that journey received the Robert Capa Gold Medal. Anderson's early work from conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/ Palestine earned international acclaim and awards such as two World Press Photo Awards and Magazine Photographer of the Year. In 2004, he began traveling to Venezuela to document the country under the presidency of Hugo Chávez. The resulting book, Capitolio (RM 2009) was named one of the best photographic books of 2010 at the Kassels book Festival in Germany. In 2011, Anderson made Capitolio into an app for iPhone and iPad, the first photographic book to be made into an application for such devices. His current work crosses genres, from documentary to art to portraiture of celebrities such as Lady Gaga. Anderson was one of the early members of the VII Photo Agency but he resigned from the agency in 2004 and joined Magnum Photos in 2005. He has served as a contract photographer for Newsweek and National Geographic magazines and is currently the first 'Photographer in Residence' at New York Magazine. www.christopherandersonphoto.com You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 on Player FM https://player.fm/series/a-photographic-life and Podbean www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/i6uqx-6d9ad/A-Photographic-Life-Podcast Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. He is currently work on his next documentary film project. He is currently work on his next documentary film project Woke Up This Morning: The Rock n' Roll Thunder of Ray Lowry. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay has been screened across the UK and the US in 2018 and will be screened in the US and Canada in 2019. © Grant Scott 2019