Læs

The first thing I want when I arrive at Glasgow’s Hampden Park on a warm summer’s night is a cold beer.

On a chilly morning on a frozen estuary a meter above the river Pirita in northern Estonia we sparked up a chat with a fisherman we’ll call John.

British photographer Val Wilmer had her earliest work published 50 years ago. She started the first women’s-only photo agency, campaigned for women’s and civil rights, and is one of Britain’s leading experts on jazz and blues.

We will probably never know the proper names of some of our favorite photographers of the last century. You see, these people were not working for the sake of artistic glory. Instead, they served a totalitarian state apparatus.

That was the 90s, when identity politics were new and exciting and when Catherine Opie was pretty much the official documentary photographer of the lesbian/gay/transgender/BDSM/radical-performance-art community.

I had my first interview the day after the first call; I guess they weren't joking about that shortage.