A Photographic Life - 208: Plus David Butow

In episode 208 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the role of the viewer in photography, sadness within documentary photography and why art directors can be an important factor to photographic success. Plus this week photographer David Butow 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?’ David Butow is a freelance photojournalist whose projects and assignments have taken him to over two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru, Yemen, Zimbabwe and Ukraine. Born in New York and raised in Dallas, he has a degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. After college he moved to Los Angeles and worked in newspapers before beginning a freelance career for magazines in the 1990's. From the mid-90's through the late-2000's he worked as a contract photographer for US News and World Report magazine covering social issues and news events such as post- 9/11 in New York, the Palestinian/Israeli Intifada, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the death of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. More recently, his photographs of events such as the China earthquake in 2008, the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Hong Kong protests of 2019, January 6th and various projects in the U.S. have won awards including from World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International and White House News Photographers Association. From 2017-2021, he was based in Washington, D.C., doing primarily political assignments at the White House and US Capitol for TIME, CNN, Politico, NBC, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and other clients. After four years in Washington, D.C., he relocated to Los Angeles. He is currently in Western Ukraine and Poland. www.davidbutow.com 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 Scott 2022