Gem Fletcher is joined by curator and writer Charlotte Cotton for a candid conversation about the state of photography institutions, industries and systems, and how we might choose to retool them for the future. Can we re-animate the foundations of photography as a cultural arena and build anew? How do we participate in imagining a future that maintains our agency and supports us to make and disseminate visual stories? Is it possible for us to create more expansive practices that support independent thinking and preserve our intellectual properties? How can we cultivate new community standards that support many, rather than a few?
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Charlotte Cotton is a curator, writer and creative consultant who has explored photographic culture for over twenty-five years. She has held positions including curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and founding Artistic Director of the Tasweer Photo Festival, Qatar. She is the author of The Photograph as Contemporary Art, first published in 2004, chronicling the rise of photography as contemporary art in the 21st century. Photography is Magic (2015) surveys over eighty artists whose photographic practices shape the possibilities of our contemporary, Postinternet image environment. Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self (2017) addresses the complex intersections of our rights to be seen and heard while claiming the privilege of privacy. She is the founder of two photography discussion websites: Words Without Pictures (2008-09) and eitherand.org (2012-15) and co-founder of narrative.new, an instrument to help writers tell stories better (2025). Launched this month, the book Love Pictures is a collaboration between photographer Jess T. Dugan and Charlotte centers around a series of conversations between the two focusing on core themes that inform Dugan’s practice, including gender and identity, family and politics, writing and language, the book as object, and the dynamics of the exhibition space.
Gem Fletcher is a writer, cultural programmer and podcaster whose work explores photography, art and contemporary culture and how they shape and inform who we are and how we live. Her work has been published in Foam, Aperture, Dazed, It’s Nice That, Creative Review, 1000 Words and The British Journal of Photography. She also hosts The Messy Truth podcast, a series of candid conversations that unpack the future of visual culture and what it means to be a photographer today. Now in its tenth season, Gem explores reflections on criticism, starting out, mental health, politics and success with guests like Antwuan Sargent, Catherine Opie, Farah Al Qasimi, Carmen Winant and many more.
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Image credit: Genesis Báez, Constellation (2024-2025)