A Photographic Life-399: New Year's Eve Special with Bill Shapiro and Fiona Hayes

In this special episode, editor, writer and curator of photography Bill Shapiro, art director, creative director and lecturer Fiona Hayes and UNP founder and curator Grant Scott look back on 2025 and forward to 2026 reflecting on photo exhibitions, books, social media, publishing and the expectations of the Twenty First Century photographer. Bill Shapiro Bill Shapiro served as the Editor-in-Chief of LIFE, the legendary photo magazine. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of LIFE.com, which won the 2011 National Magazine Award for digital photography. A fine-art photography curator for New York galleries and a consultant to photographers, Shapiro is also a Contributing Editor to the Leica Conversations series. He has written about photography for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Vogue, and Esquire, among others. Fiona Hayes Fiona Hayes is an art director, designer, consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ experience in publishing, fashion and the art world. She has been a magazine art director ten times: on Punch, Company, Eve, the British and Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, House & Garden,GQ India (based in Mumbai), MyselfGermany (in Munich), and Russian Vogue (twice). Between 2013 and 2019, as Art Director of New Markets and Brand Development for Condé Nast International, based in London and Paris, she oversaw all the company’s launches – 14 magazines, including seven editions of Vogue. She still consults as Design Director at Large for Vogue Hong Kong. She currently divides her time between design consultancy for commercial clients, and lecturing. Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. © Grant Scott 2025