• The challenges of photographing America
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- Interested in land use, social injustice.
- Detailed landscapes, story told in the layout of the book.
- Much easier to get photographs in the United States that the UK.
- Parallels with Trump Election and Brexit
•Collaborating with Poet Daniel Cockrill on Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment
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- Finished in 2010, published in 2016 bust before Brexit vote. Waited to publish after publishing so many books in the past.
- Self published. Can make more money doing it that way. So much more work involved in it.
- Rise of nationalism?
- ‘What is Englishness?’
- Cross contamination of work, poetry inspired photography, photography inspired poetry.
- Mix poems and photographs from different locations which resonate and change the meaning of each other.
- More photographers should seek out collaborations.
- Hold each other accountable
• How he nearly quit photography after getting into 25K debt…
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- Began to train as a carpenter after ploughing more money into sending work to photography magazines which didn’t pay.
• … and how being in Berlin ‘by mistake’ when the wall came down changed everything
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- Met with girlfriend in East Berlin just as the wall opened. Cleared debts in one night.
- Had no clue how to photograph a news event
• Why The Shipping Forecast sold over 10,000 copies
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- Inspired by a tea towel he had bought from the RNLI.
- Began teaching at Brighton, learned about American and German large format photographers.
- Invested in a large format (transitioned to digital in 2015).
- Thought it was a bad idea, realised it was a good idea after, when people told him it was their idea.
- Sold out in two weeks when it was made book of the week by The Observer.
- ‘Place based project’ vague project. All photos connected to the sea, but didn’t have to contain the sea as the subject.
• Why 26 Different Endings was by far his hardest project.
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- Conceptual, completely different to his style.
- Prefers to work anything he likes within a defined area.
- Had to be on the line at the edge of the map
• Tips on sequencing
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- Work with physical prints
- No one correct way in sequencing, but there are times where things are obvious.
- If it doesn’t fit, get rid of it.
Ryan Trower 