Flow Photographica - Episode 30: INTRO TO FLOW PHOTOGRAPHIC Episode Overview In this episode of Flow Photographica, host Alex Schneideman reintroduces the podcast with a fresh vision, tracing his journey through photography—from childhood awe in a darkroom to founding Flow Photographic Gallery, becoming Artistic Director of Photo Oxford and the development of the Pictures from the Garden project. Alex reflects on: The early days of Photographica and its rebirth as Flow Photographica A transformative moment in a darkroom that sparked a lifelong passion for photography His journey through photography, from assisting in London studios to founding Flow Photographic The creation of Pictures from the Garden, a project honouring the late photographer Paddy Summerfield The role of publishing in a photographer's career and the importance of books in photographic storytelling This episode is a personal exploration of what it means to live a photographic life and an invitation to continue the quest for understanding the medium. Links & Resources Mentioned Flow Photographic & Gallery 🌍 Flow Photographic Studio & Gallery – flowphotographic.com Photographers & Projects Mentioned 📖 James Ravilious – An English Eye – Beaford Archive 📷 Paddy Summerfield – Mother and Father – Dewi Lewis Publishing 📚 Pictures from the Garden – A collaboration with photographers Jem Southam, Alys Tomlinson, Sian Davey, Vanessa Winship, Matthew Finn & Nik Roche Featured Photographers: Jem Southam – jemsoutham.co.uk Alex Schneideman - alexschneideman.net Alys Tomlinson – alystomlinson.co.uk Sian Davey – siandavey.com Vanessa Winship – vanessawinship.com Matthew Finn – mattfinn.com Nik Roche – nikroche.com Photography Institutions & Festivals 🏛️ The Bodleian Library (Holds Paddy Summerfield's archive) – bodleian.ox.ac.uk 🎨 The Photographers' Gallery (London) – thephotographersgallery.org.uk 📷 Photo Oxford Festival – photooxford.org Book Publishing & Design 📖 Want More – Published by Art/Books (Andrew Brown) – artbookspublishing.co.uk 📘 Dewi Lewis Publishing (Paddy Summerfield's publisher) – dewilewis.com 🎨 Herman Lelie & Stefania Bonelli (Book design) Connect with Alex Schneideman 📸 Instagram: @flowphotographic 🌍 Website: flowphotographic.com 🎧 Subscribe & Listen: Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. 🔔 Support the Show: If you love Flow Photographica, consider sharing, rating, and reviewing the podcast! TRANSCRIPT Ep 30 - INTRO TO FLOW PHOTOGRAPHICA Hello, Alex Schneideman here welcoming you back to 'Flow Photographica', a new look podcast that used to be called just 'Photographica'. I started Photographica as I start almost everything; to satisfy an urge - or obsession would be a better way of putting it. Back in 2016 when I recorded the first interviews podcasting was a relatively new medium and I wanted to see how it worked. I made almost thirty episodes and then I got busy with work and life and, what had started with a clear plan became fuzzy. And with the fuzziness, indecision and with that the dissipation of the creative energy required for this sort of endeavour. But much has changed since then, both in the photography world and for me. We had a big old lockdown which for some was a disaster and for others, many artists, was a boon - a time to take stock and to decide what was important. I started a Masters and, having never taken part in further education fulfilled a dream to go to university. Just before lockdown I moved the Flow studio from Portobello to Kensal Green, less than a mile but a world apart. And with that I opened a gallery dedicated to showing documentary work, Flow Photographic Gallery. When you put these two things together as well as a spell as Artistic Director for Photo Oxford (which would never have come about if it weren't for a Masters and a new gallery) then you will find me trying to forge something out of this amalgam while, at the same time, carrying on with my 'day job' at Flow making prints, scans and repro etc. The upshot of this desire to bring together these threads is this podcast and its renaissance. I love photography. I have loved photography since I was about eight when, in the late Seventies, my father took me to a photographic studio somewhere in London - this company made the catalogues for my father's kitchen supply firm. A kind man in a lab coat took me into a room lit red and smelling overwhelmingly exotic. He showed me to a bench where a strangely tall machine shone a light on to a white board. In this rectangular shape of light I could make out the dim form of a woman, ¾ length but in the wrong distribution of tones that made no sense at all. The shape of her was all that told me this was a person. He switched this image off and placed a piece of paper where the image had been. That strange image of a woman appeared again for a few seconds. The light went off and he removed the paper and placed it in a tray containing a pale liquid. He rocked the tray. In the red gloom a sheet of white paper with nothing on it floated in the liquid. And then a faint image appeared out of nowhere. I began to recognise that the forming image, no denser than a murmur, actually contained infinite and recognisable detail. In this instant I felt the profound magic of photography. As the image continued to form the man removed the sheet and ripped it in two. I was shocked - whoever was in that picture would be terribly upset. He placed one half of the image back in the same tray and the other he put in to a second and then third tray where he left it. After perhaps a minute he removed the second shred of paper and followed the process he had with its other half. Suddenly the room was illuminated and he showed me how one piece of paper contained a denser image than the other which had spent less time in the first tray - the developer. This was magic. He washed and dried those bits of paper and gave them to me in a glassine slip. Those shreds of paper are long gone but something had indelibly changed in me, in my soul, and from that moment on I wanted to know photography, to be become photographic. Later at boarding school, where I had a reasonably unhappy time, there was a darkroom and then photography became a sanctuary. I was a fish out of water - arriving as a plump'ish, Jew'ish boy from London into a sealed community of sons of the landed gentry who knew not only each other but where their own DNA had developed for perhaps a thousand years and more. Like a fish doesn't feel wet I had no idea I was that different to anyone, until I arrived at that remote school, deep in the middle of a beautiful English nowhere. My apparent 'difference' and a certain belligerence got me noticed, and not in a good way. I was reminded that being a Jew was a bad thing (it wasn't something I had ever thought about so I didn't know why it meant so much to them) and was physically attacked in ways that would be criminally investigated now, but this was the Eighties and you didn't talk. The school had a darkroom that was shambolic and unloved. But happily it was neglected on the whole and I discovered that here was heaven. Again that smell of dev, stop and fixer became inextricably linked to a sense of wonder and the potential for deep satisfaction. I spent every minute I could here. Nobody taught photography at the school so it was a case of finding your way through trial and error. The number of thin, pink rolls of film I disappointedly pulled from the Paterson reel still sting to this day - the great pictures lost to ignorance. But the joy of developing a roll of film that you could then make an image from; burning and dodging until you got just the right balance, hours eaten by joy and ignorance of the world around you - that darkroom was the making of me. A footnote - I took both O and A levels in photography without one bit of input from the school. I failed both. I left school with one D in English - a technical pass if not a recognised one. Luckily I had never even thought of going to university. After a few years as a commie chef and generally working in various London restaurants I found my way into photography by assisting in studios in London. I worked with a photographer called Peter Rauter, then a leading advertising photographer who became a great friend and mentor. Peter was hugely talented and frustrated. Despite our friendship and the allure of a successful career in commercial photography I knew this wasn't for me - However it gave me a classical training in the medium and I got to know the network of labs, now almost disappeared, around London that sprang from the newspaper world around Fleet Street. After completing my apprenticeship in studio photography I left - disillusioned and confused. And feeling myself to be a failure - to have had this opportunity to work with amazing equipment, travel the world etc, etc and all for nothing. A dead end. I had f****d up and a life in photography was apparently not for me. I left and did other jobs, never loving my work but falling in love and getting married to Sophie, a bookseller. I hated my work, mainly with computers now, and I was awful to be around. But, in about 2000, Sophie went to a bookfair one weekend and somebody, who knew Sophie well enough to know that her husband had at one time been a photographer, gave her a book to give to me thinking I might like it. It was a casually kind gesture and it changed my life. The book was 'An English Eye' by James Ravilious. Not only are the pictures breathtaking and humane, like HCB but with more heart, but he gave his recipe for processing and his photographic technique. Ravilious lived in a small rural community in Devon. From the 1970's to the 1990's his photographic life was s
