BEN SMITH

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A Small Voice Podcast & Photo Forum special with George Georgiou

From the new series 'In The company of Strangers: Americans Parade'  © George Georgiou

I’m really happy that next Tuesday, July 11th, I will be co-hosting a special A Small Voice Podcast ‘live’ event with the fabulous Photo Forum, which, for those who aren't aware of it, is a free to attend monthly meet-up here in London ‘by photographers for photographers’ founded in 2008 and organised with great dedication and commitment by Travis Hodges.

This collaboration came about after I got to know Travis and his co-curator Megan Pietersen through starting the podcast and attending photo forum myself. I think we bonded over our common goal of finding the very best photographers in London to speak - in their case in front of a live audience and in my case in front of a microphone. Both being London based, we were inevitably drawing from the same well of talent for our potential guests. So when Travis suggested that we might do something together I was all in immediately.

The special guest on the night is the internationally acclaimed British photographer George Georgiou, who, along with his wife, Vanessa Winship, has been a friend for over 20 years. Under the theme of ‘community’, George will be presenting a variety of images from his two previous book projects Fault Lines: Turkey/East/West and Last Stop and introducing his new work from the USA: In The company of Strangers: Americans Parade after which I will host a live Q&A session. George is a very thoughtful artist and an insightful and incredibly smart bloke. Oh, and in case I didn’t mention it, he’s quite a promising young photographer. so it’s going to be a really rewarding presentation and I’m looking forward to it enormously. Hopefully if it goes well, there will be more of these in the future.

This is strictly a live event and will not be recorded so be there if you can. I’m looking at it as a kind of Summer celebration, meet and greet, friend catch-up, photofest, post-Arles after party all rolled into one. George, having decamped to Folkestone on the Kent coast, and increasingly of late to a remote village in the wilds of the Bulgarian countryside, is rarely in London these days so catch him while you can. And if geographical happenstance prohibits your attendance, you can seek solace in listening to George’s candid, revealing and deeply personal podcast appearance on A Small Voice here.