Collective Eye
By Collective Eye Podcast
This is a grassroots podcast that has no host.
We are not looking for one voice to define us, but rather a collection of voices that make up who we are.
Episodes centers around issues that are pressing to our community, from parenthood to personal projects, safety, finances to decolonizing the lens.
Email: collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com
Collective Eye Aug 23, 2022
Creating Communities of Practice with Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz and Claudia Leisinger
Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz and Claudia Leisinger are two documentary photographers who within their photographic careers have greatly valued communities of practice. In this episode, Hanna-Katrina, founder of Photo Scratch and Claudia, co-founder of Collective Eye Podcast discuss the benefits and needs for these spaces. Both photographers shed light on the power and function of creative, grassroots communities, which challenge the established creative industry in hopes to make it more accessible for all.
Bios
Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz is an award winning documentary photographer and artist from London. Her work focuses on narratives about place, people, history and the environment. She completed her MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication in 2014. Since then her work has been recognised by The Royal Photographic Society Environmental Bursary and IdeasTap Innovators Award. She was recently nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award by Brett Rogers OBE and has previously been nominated for the Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award by James Brabazon. Major clients include The New Statesman, The Royal Shakespeare Company, musicians Johnny Flynn and Dry Cleaning, among many others. She is the founder of Photo Scratch, an Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London, on the advisory committee of Women Photograph, and her print sales are represented by isle. As a freelance picture editor she has worked for The Sunday Times, Reuters Wider Image and most recently as commissioning visuals editor at Hyphen.
Claudia Leisinger is an award-winning freelance photographer and videographer focusing on portraiture, documentary photography and audio-visual pieces.
Since her MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography at the LCC in 2007, she has consistently worked for periodicals (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BuzzFeed, The Big Issue) charities, institutes and think tanks (Red Cross, BMW Foundation, Earth Security, Chatham House), commercial clients (Airbnb, Keds, Christies, Hunter) and various artists and galleries.
She also works on self-initiated, long-term projects. Her audio-visual piece “The Last of the Billingsgate Fish Porters” was selected for Night Contact, London’s first-ever Multimedia Festival and published in the Guardian UK. The photos were shown in a solo exhibition at the MAZ Gallery, Switzerland.Her portraits have been exhibited internationally as part of Portrait of Britain, Portrait of Humanity, KL International awards, and Eyes on Main Street. “In Common” , her latest series, was published as a zine in 2022 by Another Place Press.
She is a founding member of the Collective Eye podcast team, and part of Women Photograph and The Journal.
Episode Credits
Conversation between Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz and Claudia Leisinger
Podcast Editor: Nicola Muirhead
Introduction: Lina Collado
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Nicola Muirhead, Lina Collado and Claudia Leisinger.
Find additional resource links on our website www.collectiveeyepodcast.com, thank you.
Decolonizing the Lens with Tahila Mintz and Dakota Mace
Tahila and Dakota are two indigenous visual artists whose work amplifies and visualizes the narratives of indigenous communities across the Americas. In this episode, Tahila and Dakota discuss how they have challenged a predominantly and historically white point of view within the photographic industry by way of their artistic practices.
Through their extensive work they have become important ambassadors for their communities by exploring themes of family lineage, community and identity, all within the context of their ancestral land. Their work is currently being exhibited at Photoville.
Bios:
Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. Mace received her MA and MFA degrees in Photography and Textile Design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BFA in Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts. As a Diné (Navajo) artist, her work draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. In addition, her work pushes the viewer's understanding of Diné culture through alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking.
Her work as an artist and scholar has been exhibited nationally and internationally at various conferences, collectives, museums, and galleries, including Textile Society of America, Weave a Real Peace, Indigenous Photograph, 400 Year Project, Wright Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, Kemper Museum of Art, and the Wallach Art Gallery. She is represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City. www.dakotamace.com
Tahila Mintz works across multiple platforms to amplify the voices of Indigenous people and the natural world. She is an Indigenous Yoeme and Jewish woman who focuses on ancestral relationships, gender equilibrium, contemporary Indigenous issues, and recuperating knowledge that has been unraveled by colonialism. She is a Water Protector and a Land Guardian whose home is in her Yoeme community in Sonora and in the Haudenosaunee territory of upstate, NY.
She has been photographing for 20+ years, in over 40 countries, and received her MFA from the University of Texas. She is a Photographer, Film Maker, Cultural Technologist, Ancestral Scribe, and the Founding Executive Director of OJI: SDA’s Sustainable Indigenous Futures. Her organization creates an ancestral knowledge land-based curriculum for k-12, runs a media-intensive summer camp for Indigenous youth, and provides disaster relief and other models of community support. www.tahila.net
Episode Credits
Episode: Tahila Mintz and Dakota Mace
Podcast Editor: Claudia Leisinger
Introduction: Nicola Muirhead
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Lina Collado, and Nicola Muirhead.
Links and Resources:
Indigenous Youth Media Camp: https://www.ojisda.org/mochik-ania-camp-turtle
400 Years Project: https://www.400yearsproject.org/
Our show at Photoville JUNE 4-26: https://photoville.nyc/exhibition/made-in-land/ (we are directly under the Brooklyn Bridge)
Photoville in general: https://photoville.nyc/
The Psychology of a Portrait with Kit Ryall and Debbie Castro
Kit interviews Debbie about the psychology of portraiture, a storytelling element that both photographers greatly value.
Debbie’s conceptual series uses her documentary photography background as a basis on which she investigates and carefully crafts highly personal stories. She employs various mediums within her photography like audio, video, image manipulation, and collage, in order to transform these stories into tangible experiences.
In this episode, she talks about her journey into photography and the questions that led her to find her voice as an artist. How her background in psychology and psychoanalysis help her investigate the inner landscape of her own world, and that of her sitters.
Debbie Castro is an Irish visual artist. She uses conceptual documentary photography to investigate highly personal subjects centered around portraiture and relationships. Her work always originates from the fracture between a personal interest or observation and the perception of other people. Inspired by Albert Camus' quote that "life is a hospice, never a hospital," Debbie believes in the necessity of confronting even the most uncomfortable subjects through her practice.
As a graduate of the University of Westminster with an MA in Photography, Debbie has had solo and group exhibitions in Ireland, London, and New York. As an experienced facilitator, tutor, and Director of Training, Debbie has led numerous workshops and professional development programs to support early-career photographers. She is currently working as a coordinator at the London Institute of Photography (LloP) where she is developing an online educational platform app for photographers.
Kit Ryall is a documentary-inspired freelance photographer based in Sheffield, UK. She has worked in the picture industry for over 15 years - starting her career working in picture archives and agencies. In 2009 she completed her Masters's in Photojournalism and since then has worked as both a photography trainer and freelance photographer.
After living in London, she spent two years in Berlin and now resides in Sheffield, in the north of England. She works making images and films of people - whether that be portraits, families, or small business branding. She is inspired by the "everyday" and particularly our domestic surroundings. She strives to give her work an authentic, quiet, and sensitive quality, documenting her subjects as best she can.
Episode Credits
Episode: Kit Ryall and Debbie Castro
Podcast Editor: Claudia Leisinger
Podcast subeditor: Lina Collado
Introduction: Lina Collado
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Nicola Muirhead, Lina Collado, Claudia Leisinger.
Links and Resources:
https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk
www.domestika.org/en/courses/2094-introduction-to-digital-photography-in-manual-mode/debbiecastrow
Leveling Up: A conversation between Suzanne Plunkett and Tabatha Fireman.
Episode 6 is a conversation between fellow photographers Suzanne Plunkett and Tabatha Fireman, the founder of ‘ShotByWomen’.
‘ShotByWomen’ is a picture library whose mission is to raise the stats in published women-created content, ensuring that future generations are provided with a fairer, more truthful, gender balanced visual representation of the world.
Bios
Suzanne Plunkett is a veteran photojournalist who has worked as a staff photographer for the Associated Press in New York where she covered the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and is known for her iconic photograph taken that day. That photo helped propel her on to assignments in Afghanistan, a three-year stint in Indonesia during which she covered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, then on to London where she worked on staff for Reuters on one of the world's most competitive news beats before carving a career as a successful freelancer.
Tabatha Fireman is a freelance photographer who has worked in entertainment news since 1997. She began her career as a darkroom technician at EMI Records. At different points throughout her journey, she worked within the offices of Redferns Music Picture Library and Getty Images. In 2019 Tabatha launched Female Perspective as a photo agency representing an all-female roster of talent. Throughout the pandemic she has planned and built the SHOTBYWOMEN platform, which launched on International Women’s Day 2022 as the world’s first international image library to house content created exclusively by women, spanning all areas of photography.
Additional links to references
Female Perspective is a photo agency providing a platform for established women photographers to showcase their work.
SHOTBYWOMEN is a brand new image library filled with exceptional content created exclusively by women and feminine-of-centre photographers from around the globe.
Episode Credits
Episode: Suzanne Plunkett and Tabatha Fireman
Podcast Editor: Suzanne Plunkett
Podcast subeditor: Claudia Leisinger
Introduction: Claudia Leisinger
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead, Claudia Leisinger.
Email us at collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com.
Follow Collective Eye on Castbox, Google podcast, Spotify, Anchor and on our Collective Eye Instagram. Thank you for listening,
Collective Eye podcast team.
Mentorship & Growth: With Lina Collado and Kate Wool
Kate Salisbury Wool is a photographer and artist who has lived in Alaska since 1993, where she moved from her hometown of Asheville, NC. She is a member of @womenphotograph, the @thejournal_collective, and is a partner with @forfreedoms,@wideawakes, and @wideawakesalaska. Kate has had work recognized, published, and exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Publications include Americans for the Arts, The Washington Post, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Art Newspaper, Together We Rise, The Women's March Organizers and Condé Nast, Politico, and more. See katewool.com for info and work.
Lina Collado García is a freelance documentary photographer and educator, born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and living in Jackson, Wyoming since 2013. She is a member of @womenphotograph and @thejournal_collective. Lina's work has been published in Puerto Rico, as well as the U.S.A. Publications include @audubonsociety, @jacksonholemag, @elnuevodia, as well as exhibited in several national museums around the country. See linacollado.com for more info and work.
Credits
Episode: Lina Collado and Kate Wool
Podcast Editor: Lina Collado
Podcast subeditor: Nicola Muirhead
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead
Links:
Follow Collective Eye on Castbox, Google podcast, Spotify, Anchor, and on our Collective Eye Instagram.
Thank you for listening,
Collective Eye podcast team.
Fame & Finances: With Laura Elizabeth Pohl and Fati Abubakar
For this fourth episode of Collective Eye we are excited to share an insightful interview and discussion by Laura Elisabeth Pohl in her podcast Creative + Moneywise; a podcast focused on the financial challenges faced by photographers in the industry and tactful ways in which freelancers can support their creative path in the field.
In this podcast Laura tackles the financial complexities within our industry and replaces them with clear insights and good practice.
In Fame & Finances photographers Laura Elizabeth Pohl and Fati Abubakar talk about how Fati handles money and how she dealt with online fame after her photography went viral.
This episode originally ran on Creative + Moneywise in January 2021.
Bios
Laura Elizabeth Pohl is an American photographer, filmmaker and Certified Financial Education Instructor living in South Africa. Over the years, she’s collaborated with international NGOs including Catholic Relief Services, Jhpiego and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to tell visual stories about their work. She founded Creative + Moneywise as a resource to help photographers understand financial issues and make money decisions that better reflect their values and the life they want to live. Before switching to photography, Laura worked as a business reporter covering stocks, bonds and foreign exchange in Seoul and New York.
Fati Abubakar is a documentary photographer, photojournalist and public health worker in Nigeria. She specialises in documenting cities and towns, highlighting both the positives and negatives of each location. She focuses on health perspectives, using photography as a medium to highlight problems at the community level. She also has an interest in documenting cultures, conflicts, urban poverty, rural development, and humanitarian issues. Fati has a special interest in creating counter-narratives for underrepresented communities. Her current work is a personal project to showcase her hometown of Borno State at the time of Boko Haram. The project entitled “Bits of Borno” has gained critical acclaim and has been published in media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, Reuters, CNN, Voice of America, Newsweek Europe, and others. She has been commissioned to work with UNICEF, international Alert, Action Aid and other organisations.
Credits
Episode: Laura Elisabeth Pohl and Fati Abubakher
Podcast Editor: Laura Elisabeth Pohl
Podcast subeditor : Claudia Leisinger
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead
Links : Creative & Moneywise Podcast and Bits of Bonro
Follow Collective Eye on Castbox, Google podcast, Spotify, Anchor and on our Collective Eye Instagram.
Thank you for listening,
Collective Eye podcast team.
Self Defense: Jodi Hilton in conversation with Alison Baskerville
In this episode, Jodi Hilton speaks with Alison Baskerville, a former British Army soldier, a documentary photographer, and personal safety trainer and founder of ROAAR, a UK-based safety training collective tailored to women and non-binary people of the media community.
In their conversation, Alison talks about the importance of recognizing how our own identity shouldn't be a barrier to safety, and what we can do to build a support network and mental resources to prepare ourselves to face our challenges.
Alison also shares stories from her extensive experience in the field, both as a military and civilian photographer, who challenges gender stereotypes in her documentary and portrait photographs.
Jodi Hilton is a photojournalist and volunteer organizer with Trauma Training for Journalists, a group dedicated to providing basic life-saving skills training to local journalists working in insecure and war-torn regions who may lack the resources or ability to travel to training offered elsewhere.
Bio:
Jodi Hilton is a Boston-based freelance photojournalist. Her work is focused on stories of migration, minorities and marginalized people.
Alison Baskerville is a British documentary photographer and artist. A former-soldier-turned-artist, She is the founder of the safety training movement ROAAAR and co-founded Powering the Matriarchy Together (P.M.T).
Credits:
Conversation between: Jodi Hilton and Alison Baskerville
Edit: Jodi Hilton & Claudia Leisinger
Introduction: Lina Collado
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead
Links and Resources: ROAAR, Trauma Training for Journalists, By Us, For You: A Personal Safety Guide , RISC Reporters Instructed in Saving Collegues
A Collective Eye production in partnership with The Journal.
Email us at collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com.
Follow Collective Eye on Spotify and on our Instagram feed.
Spirits Unseen: An interview with Myrto Papadopoulos
In this episode documentary photographer Nicola Muirhead interviews photographer and filmmaker Myrto Papadopoulos on her personal project ‘Spirits Unseen’.
‘Spirits Unseen’ explores the isolated villages of the Pomak minority in the Greek region of Thrace. Papadopolous talks about the themes within this work, her methodology in telling long-form stories and both the gifts and challenges of pursuing personal documentary work.
Bios:
Myrto Papadopoulos is a Greek photographer, educator and filmmaker based in Athens, Greece. Her work focuses on long-form narratives, investigating the limits of Documentary Photography and the medium itself, pushing the traditional boundaries of photography with her visual narratives. She has worked with major international media outlets and organizations such as Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, TIME Magazine, GEO, The New York Times, WSJ, The Washington Post, DIE ZEIT, BBC, ARTE TV.
Nicola Muirhead is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller from the island of Bermuda, currently based in London. Nicola’s practice is rooted in exploring the lived stories of individuals and communities as they exist in a time and place, often encapsulated in layers of the past. Each body of work is research-led and collaborative in approach when working with people, incorporating a range of visual tools to convey the complexities of the human experience. Her work has been published in TIME, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC, National Geographic, and the Guardian, amongst others.
Credits:
Conversation between: Nicola Muirhead and Myrto Papadopoulos
Edit: Nicola Muirhead
Introduction: Jayme Kaye Gershen
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead
Links and Resources: The Pomak Culture Centre, IMED Incubator, Spirits Unseen
A Collective Eye production in partnership with The Journal. Get in touch with us via email at collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for listening, from the Collective Eye Podcast Team.
Parenthood & Photography: A conversation by Kisha Bari & Ali Lapetina
In this episode, friends and photographers, Kisha Bari and Ali Lapetina talk about parenthood and photography. Ali and Kisha discuss navigating freelance work and childcare balance, mental health, creative bandwidth, financial obstacles, as well as finding the silver linings during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bios:
Now based in NYC, Kisha Bari is a Fijian/Italian photographer, artist and storyteller born and raised in Australia. Passionate about people and their stories, Kisha’s portraiture, documentary and public artwork focuses on humanitarian and social justice issues and building connection.
Ali Lapetina is a mother, photographer and artist based in Detroit, Michigan. Her practice as a documentary and portrait photographer is rooted in collaborating with communities through long-form visual storytelling focused on social justice and women’s issues. Ali is also the Founder and Executive Director of the community arts non-profit Women of Banglatown.
Credits:
Conversation between: Kisha Bari and Ali Lapetina
Edit: Claudia Leisinger
Assistant Edit: Jayme Kaye Gershen
Introduction: Claudia Leisinger
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead
A Collective Eye production in partnership with The Journal. Get in touch with us via email at collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for listening, from the Collective Eye Podcast Team.
Intro
To launch our podcast properly, we want to introduce you to the fabric of our collective, the stuff we’re made of, by telling you our origin story. In this episode we hear from the founders of The Journal, learn about the importance of collectivism from our members, and listen to the words of some industry leaders who have been friends of our collective since the beginning. We also hear from the podcast team about how this audio journey began, and where it’s going. Look out for our first season, coming soon!
We’ll be talking about Parenthood, Safety, Finances, Personal Projects, Mentorship, and Decolonizing the Lens (just to name a few).
Podcast Founders: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Gershen, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead, Kisha Bari & Tahila Mintz
Intro Episode Credits
Contributing Voices Narrator: Ghadah Alrawi
The Journal Founders: Charlotte Schmitz, Hannah Yoon
Friends of the Journal: Maggie Steber, Sarah Leen, Ilgin Deniz Akseloğlu
Journal Members: Anne Ackermann, Anita Pouchard Serra, Ans Brys, Clara Vanucci, Claudia Leisinger, Eva Verbeeck, Ghadah Alrawi, Isabella De Maddalena, Jackie Molloy, Janet Jarman, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Jen Osborne, Kisha Bari, Laurence Philomene, Laura E Pohl, Lina Collado, Mala Hayati, Marie Tihon, Nancy Borowick, Nyimas Laula, Nyancho NwaNri, Oksana Parafeniuk, Quetzal Maucci, Sofie Puttfarken, Tarina Rodriguez, Tira Khan, Tracy Barbutes
Podcast Team: Claudia Leisinger, Ghadah Alrawi, Jayme Kaye Gershen, Kisha Bari, Lina Collado, Nicola Muirhead, Tahila Mintz
Edit: Jayme Kaye Gershen
Music: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen (composition), Philipp Quante (piano), Bobby G (drums)
A Collective Eye production in partnership with The Journal. Get in touch with us via email at collectiveeyepodcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for listening, from the Collective Eye Podcast Team.