In Conversation With is a visual discussion between two documentary photographers and recent LCC (London College of Communication) alumni. We aim to photographically cover a range of topics from history, community to lands and environments, driven from our background and family roots. This platform extends to photographers of any age, background and location to join our conversations, share their projects or work-in-progress while discovering other photographers and connecting with their works. We hope to form connections through our interests and the universal themes that we explore and raise a conversation, which many can respond to, interact with and partake in.
Can you tell us about yourselves? Where did you both study?
K&M: We both met whilst studying our MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication and started planning our collaboration close to the end of the course.
Michaela: I am a documentary photographer based between London and Bratislava. Raised in Slovakia, I became very intrigued by hidden histories and themes that rethink the notions of home, migration, the aftermath of conflicts and family roots. Visually examining former historically significant landscapes, I’m drawn to places and events that have over time become forgotten or hidden in our contemporary society.
Kristina: I am a Russian documentary photographer, born and raised in the Middle East and currently based in London. My interest lies in telling visual stories about hidden histories, family spaces, isolated communities and secrecy.
Who or what inspires your personal work?
Michaela: It’s often research or books in general but also various kinds of films, from older black and white ones to early colour films and contemporary films. When it comes to practitioners, I get inspired when looking at the work of Alec Soth, Diana Markosian, Ursula Schultz-Dornburg, Sam Contis, Edmund Clark and Aaron Schuman.
Kristina: I usually get inspired by the aesthetics of the environment, in which the project is based. As well as by various photographers and research-based practitioners including Rob Hornstra, Broomberg & Chanarin, Alec Soth, Trevor Paglen, Nanna Heitmann, Bieke Depoorter and Sian Davey.
What is In Conversation With? How did your ideas come to the surface?
K&M: In Conversation With started as a visual discussion between two documentary photographers and recent LCC alumni. We aim to photographically cover a range of topics from history, community to lands and environments, driven from our background and family roots. In Conversation With has since become a platform for visual discussions and extends to photographers of any age, background and location to join our conversations, share their projects or work-in-progress while discovering other photographers and connecting with their works.
The idea of co-founding a platform came right before we finished our MA degree. Whilst in the final stages of the course, we discovered that we worked well together in terms of critiquing and helping each other with various aspects of our individual projects. After our degree show and all the feedback sessions, we realised that our works complement each other and that we really enjoy collaborating together. Also, we really wanted to start something that would keep our creativity and dialogue going after the degree.
How do you continue the photographic conversation between the two of you when you’re miles apart?
K&M: We’re currently still both in the UK, which is mostly due to the COVID-19. Kristina was supposed to move back home in March but there were significant complications, due to the virus and travel restrictions.
But ever since the beginning of the platform, we have been speaking about how it will run from different countries, and we think it can bring an interesting twist to the photographic conversations. It will be interesting if Kristina could introduce the platform to Middle-Eastern photographers, while Michaela would still focus on the ones based in the EU.
Have you got any tips for staying motivated after university?
K&M: After finishing the MA, we, like many, faced the question of “What’s next?”… as people started dispersing back to their home countries. By creating this platform we are able to continue being creative whilst facing the realities of life after university. In a way, we keep each other motivated and on the right track by always planning, organising and creating new content for the ICW.
Michaela: Everything becomes without a doubt very different after university, so to keep myself motivated, I had to push myself to write things down. By putting everything into notes on my laptop, I began to categorise my work, interests and possible future plans. It makes me stay somewhat organised and it’s a place for me to write down anything, from books that I want to read, visual projects to check out or grants to apply to. Apart from this, In Conversation With has been great in keeping me going, we’ve also recently made a zine, where we combined our works together and it was such a good way to use our creativity and make a publication.
Kristina: Life after university is very different, no one really prepares you for it. I think the best thing that motivates me is my peers, people who are in the same boat and are trying to make it work. I am lucky that we started the ICW platform as a way to keep our creativity flowing, collaborating and creating new work together.
Can people get involved with what you’re doing?
K&M: Absolutely! We usually try to get as many people involved as possible based on the themes that we have or are currently exploring ourselves. For the Family Spaces theme we made a call out for photographers and visual artists to submit their works which has led us to feature three incredible photographers, Frances Bukovsky (US), Shannon Osborne (UK) and Dafne Salis (Italy). At present, we have started a new theme, Getting By – based on our self isolation/lockdown experience which we have now extended to an open call.
What are your goals for In Conversation With? Where would you like it to take you?
K&M: At present, we are excited to grow as a platform, especially internationally, as we are curious to find stories from photographers all around the world. We hope to make this a platform for sharing ideas, perspectives and research, therefore we are excited to incorporate more research-based work too.
We have recently made a small zine called Revisiting the Roots, and enjoyed the process of collaborating this way so much! Perhaps, the biggest dream is to make more publications and join more photographers from different places to be a part of our publications at some point. Another idea is to set up some research workshops or just workshops, where we could all discuss our work and how we want our future projects to grow. We would also love to start selling a range of prints online to showcase not only our work, yet also the work of others too.
Our website is currently in the works, so hopefully all of that will slowly start happening once we launch the website.