Federica Belli The language of photography is among the most contemporary languages of our time, due to its versatility and its immediate impact on the viewer. What makes photography such a relevant language in our time?

Gemma Fletcher Photography has been our primary way of engaging with the world for a while now due to the accessibility of making and sharing pictures. We live in a culture that is obsessed with creating its own representations of our world. Visual literacy is at an all time high. Photography has become a way for us to read and respond to a moment in time in real time. Essentially all we have now is pictures. So many facets of our lives are mitigated through them. It’s both an approximation of reality and a way for people to reimagine. The act of taking and sharing pictures is a new form of social connection - we saw this reach an all time high during the pandemic. With regard to professional photographers - we are standing on shifting ground. Artists are redefining or reimaging the systems and modalities of the medium and its wider ecosystem. I think as storytellers, we have an enormous responsibility to fill the world with meaningful messages that provoke emotion and deepen consciousness. I think what is vital for the industry going forward is a greater sense of care - to harness the photograph as a site for building community and connection.

F.B. Creative director, writer, podcaster, photo director. The common purpose seems to lie in studying and fostering the evolution of the photographic language. On an emotional level, what is the motivation that brings you to all these endeavours?

G.F. Over time I have begun to realise that these multiple endeavours are so generative, not just as individual and distinct disciplines, but perhaps more resonantly in the space in between them. In the ways in which connections and dialogues open up between disciplines, between photographs, between ideas and between histories is so generative. I think above all else, being in conversation is where the real work happens - which is why I’ve inadvertently ended up investing so much of my time interviewing artists, mentoring creatives and being in dialogue in the community. This is both my research and my practice.

F.B. As a mentor, you face the long-term challenge of refining a photographer’s vision. Do you place the accent on harnessing the specificity of one’s language or rather on broadening their perspective?

G.F. Essentially it’s both. Photography can be an isolated profession and the process of making work is messily entangled with life. My approach to mentoring is to work with the photographer to push deeper into their work, intentions and goals and really interrogate the thinking. Engaging in a critical dialogue about the work, outside of the often generic portfolio review format, and getting into the real messy reality of making work can be revealing and a catalyst for better understanding who you are as an image maker. I think where young artists often struggle is the self inflicted expectation or pressure to do it all. I encourage image marks to resist the tendency to keep saying yes. Your career is long, it’s a constant evolution. Give yourself the permission to slow down, live more fluidly and focus on the work. It is important to understand and tune into your readiness. I think so much of this comes from the comparison trap fuelled by social media. Remember your on your own path. Great work takes time. What unites all of the great iconic artists and creatives I’ve interviewed is this unrelenting commitment to inquiry, and the act of animating ideas over and over again. It’s a practice not a destination. I find myself returning often to Carmen Winant’s essay ‘How we Practice’ in which she considers how the terms of practice for an athlete's body could offer insight for every artist's or creatives body. “Practice is the perennial state of being almost there,” she says. “The ever-making, searching, rehearsing and confronting the impossible.”

The Messy Truth Podcast. Image by Cathrine Hyland

F.B. Your insightful podcast The Messy Truth is a rarely opened door on what it means to be a photographer in times as fluid as these. With the current proliferation of photographs, being a photographer really is quite a messy role. Which explanation have you found for such messiness?

G.F. This might be an unpopular opinion - but I don’t think you can have it all, at once. I think we need to let go of this idea that time and capacity is endless and elastic. I think for many of us, the pandemic has reflected that the way we were living was manic and we were constantly depleted and stretched too thin, and unable to focus on what we were really passionate about.