102 - Hannah Starkey

04/03/19 • 77 min

A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Quietly contemplative yet intensely evocative, Hannah Starkey's photographs explore the physical and psychological connections between the individual and her everyday urban surroundings. Since the beginning of her career, the artist has worked predominantly with women as her subjects, collaborating closely with actresses as well as anonymous acquaintances she meets on-site to develop intricately textured scenes. Stark architectural backdrops and strong associations of color and imagery heighten the sensation of her compositions on both a formal and associative level, triggering personal interpretations and a deeper mediation on the experience of the visual world at large.

Born in Belfast in 1971, Hannah currently lives and works in London. She received a B.A. in Photography and Film from Napier University in Edinburgh in 1995 and an M.A. in Photography from Royal College of Art in London in 1997. She has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, which include the Vogue Condé Nast Award (1997), the 3rd International Tokyo Photo Biennale’s Award for Excellence (1999), and the St. James Group Ltd Photography Prize (2002).

In 2000, she presented her first major solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Other important solo presentations include Twenty-Nine Pictures at the Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, UK (2011) and Church of Light Altarpiece, a site-specific commission for St. Catherine’s Church in Frankfurt (2010). Her work has also been exhibited as part of important group presentations at Tate Liverpool, Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, France, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, and the National Portrait Gallery in London, among other museums worldwide.

Hannah’s photographs are in the collections of the Tate in London, Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

In episode 102, Hannah discusses, among other things:

The influence of cinema
Not wanting to be highbrow
Using a breadth of disciplines technique and languages
Breaking down the barriers to different types of photography
How her process usually works
The commodification of women in advertising photography
The influence of her mother and her upringing during The Troubles
Some of her hopes for her own daughters

Referenced:

Hackney Flashers

Gallery/Dealer

“I think if I can bring images out into the world that depict this energy, and - empowerment’s a tricky word but - this power that’s coming from this next generation, in one image, then that’s kinda my drive, that’s my motivation.”

In episode 102, Hannah discusses, among other things:

The influence of cinema
Not wanting to be highbrow
Using a breadth of disciplines technique and languages
Breaking down the barriers to different types of photography
How her process usually works
The commodification of women in advertising photography
The influence of her mother and her upringing during The Troubles
Some of her hopes for her own daughters

Referenced:

Hackney Flashers

Gallery/Dealer

Previous Episode

101 - Poulomi Basu

Poulomi Basu is a storyteller, artist and activist. Her name sounds like ‘follow me’ with a ‘P’.

She was raised by her mother in Calcutta, India and found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home as soon as her studies were complete so that she may follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.

Since then, Poulomi prefers the path less trodden. She has slept in the wilderness under a cloudless sky staring at a million stars in search of a guerrilla army whose story strikes right at the very heart of modern India’s global ambitions, through to divided families eking out an Alaskan existence on the last rocky outpost of American soil.

Time and again, she has found herself amongst ordinary people who quietly challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of the world in which they live: rural women in armed conflict, a mother's pain for a son lost to ISIS, to the wonder of a near blind child reaching for the light.

Poulomi is forever in awe of the resilience shown by those in extraordinary circumstance, by those who are bent but not broken. Her work has become known for documenting the role of women in isolated communities and conflict zones and more generally for advocating for the rights of women.

Poulomi was featured alongside Hilary Clinton as one of the one of the 'Amazing women from around the world giving their best advice' by Refinery29. She was part of the VII Mentor Program. She is based between New Delhi, India and London, UK. She has covered issues across Asia, Europe and America. She is co-founder and director of Just Another Photo Festival, a festival that democratizes photography by taking photography to the people and forging new audiences.

In episode 101, Poulomi discusses, among other things:

The severe anxiety disorder that struck her out of the blue.
Her sometimes violent upbringing in a patriachal home.
The influence of the cinema of Satyajit Ray and the French new wave.
Blood Speaks - the ritual of chaupadi.
Using Virtual Reality as part of her storytelling practice.
The curious tale of how she won the foto evidence book award only to have it withdrawn.
Her forthcoming book project Centralia .

Referenced:

Satyajit Ray
Lee Friedlander
[Raghubir Sing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghubir_Singh_(photographer)
Raghu Rai
Souvid Datta
David Bowie

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bloodspeaks.org

“We should be bold and make experimental work. Without experimenting you can’t go to the next level, if you don’t take risks you’ll never make great work. And I firmly believe that.”

Next Episode

103 - Todd Hido

Todd Hido is an American photographer born in Ohio and who for many years has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He received a BFA from Tufts University in Massachusetts, and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of Art in San Francisco. Todd’s images have featured in many publications, have been exhibited widely and are included in various prestigious public and private collections, most notably, Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco which holds the archive of all his published works. He has over a dozen published books to his name, including a mid-career survey entitled Intimate Distance: Twenty-Five Years of Photographs published in 2016 by Aperture, and his most recent monograph is Bright Black World, which was released by Nazraeli Press in 2018 and is already sold out.

In episode 103, Todd discusses, among other things:

Discovering photography at school as a C and D student
BMX as his first subject matter
How the houses at night series began as an ‘establishing shot’
Why he values his education as a commercial photographer
His mentor, Larry Sultan
The joy of being lost in the fog
The influence of Jim Dow
Collaborating with his female subjects
His most recent book Bright Black World

Referenced:

Robert Frank
Larry Sultan
Raymond Carver
[Robert Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adams_(photographer)
Sally Mann
Tina Barney
Jim Dow

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

“The thing that I always say about meaning and art is that the meaning of the image resides in the viewer. And I think that’s a really true thing. Like in music, what’s the meaning of a song? It means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. And there’s an intention of the artist, but that’s not always what’s the most important thing.”

Episode sponsored by PicDrop, The Charcoal Book Club and Findr.