A Photographic Life - 166: Plus Fabio Ponzio

In episode 166 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on rules in photography, how you don't learn, if you don't hear what you need to hear and travel instigating work. Plus this week photographer Fabio Ponzio takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Fabio Ponzio's interest in photography began in 1976, during a trip to the Balkans. In 1977 he made his first photographic journey across northern Europe, travelling on a scooter and between 1978 to1980 Ponzio continued his travels into Germany and across Great Britain. He worked for the Italian and international press from 1980 to 1987, and co-founded two photojournalism agencies. In 1987, returning from a trip to Istanbul, he embarked on a lengthy photographic project in search of Eastern Europe, travelling through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Albania. In 1989 he documented the fall of the communist regimes and in 1991 he received the 'European Kodak Award of Photography'. In 1993 he received the Mother Jones 'Foundation Award for documentary Photography', and in 1998 the 'Leica Oskar Barnack Award'. Ponzio continued to travel across Eastern Europe from 1987 to 2009 and in 2003 travelled to Georgia with his friend, the writer Rocco Carbone and began a series of trips to the southern Caucasus. In 2007 he was commissioned by MAXXI in Rome to document the Italian landscape, a project that instigated a series of travels in Western Europe in 2008. In 2020, East of Nowhere, a collection of twenty-two years of work, was published with a preface written by Romanian-born German novelist Herta Müller, the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. www.fabioponzio.com Fabio Ponzio’s contribution is read by his daughter Charlie Ponzio. Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and 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). Grant's book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/ © Grant Scott 2021