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Between Two Worlds - On Contemporary Art

Episode 101 of the The Messy Truth - Conversations on Photography podcast, hosted by Gem Fletcher, titled "Between Two Worlds - On Contemporary Art" was published on November 24, 2025 and runs 61 minutes.

November 24, 2025 ·61m · The Messy Truth - Conversations on Photography

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Summary

Welcome back. To celebrate reaching the 100th episode of the podcast, I collaborated with the team at the International Centre of Photography in New York City, to host a one day salon. My motivation was to gather the community together in person and start talking about where we stand in photography. Titled, Between Two Worlds, the salon was an attempt to describe the feeling of existing in two image worlds, the one we think we know, and the new one emerging. We can sense that this new image world operates differently to the one we were socialised in—and yet it’s unclear exactly how.Before you dive in, I wanted to share what I told the audience at the salon - there are no tidy or easy answers here. In fact my expectation is that these conversations will involve a lot of complexity and contradiction, but holding space for, and embracing this chaos, is in my opinion, the urgent work that needs to be done. In this session on contemporary art. I’m joined today by three brilliant artists, thinkers and writers - Farah Al Qasimi, Charlie Engman and Gideon Jacobs.What we understand an image to be is becoming completely reimagined. As photography slowly loses its utility value as a communication tool, does it have the opportunity to be a slippery, strange and miraculous medium of possibilities? From where we stand today, what is the work of art? And what role does photography play in those ideas and gestures?Projects mentioned:Charlie Engman - Cursed Farah Al Qasimi - Toy WorldGideon Jacobs - On ImagesFollow Farah, Charlie, Gideon & Gem on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] Thank you to the whole team at ICP for collaborating on this project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Description

Welcome back. To celebrate reaching the 100th episode of the podcast, I collaborated with the team at the International Centre of Photography in New York City, to host a one day salon. My motivation was to gather the community together in person and start talking about where we stand in photography. Titled, Between Two Worlds, the salon was an attempt to describe the feeling of existing in two image worlds, the one we think we know, and the new one emerging. We can sense that this new image world operates differently to the one we were socialised in—and yet it’s unclear exactly how.


Before you dive in, I wanted to share what I told the audience at the salon - there are no tidy or easy answers here. In fact my expectation is that these conversations will involve a lot of complexity and contradiction, but holding space for, and embracing this chaos, is in my opinion, the urgent work that needs to be done. 


In this session on contemporary art. I’m joined today by three brilliant artists, thinkers and writers - Farah Al Qasimi, Charlie Engman and Gideon Jacobs.


What we understand an image to be is becoming completely reimagined. As photography slowly loses its utility value as a communication tool, does it have the opportunity to be a slippery, strange and miraculous medium of possibilities? From where we stand today, what is the work of art? And what role does photography play in those ideas and gestures?


Projects mentioned:

Charlie Engman - Cursed 

Farah Al Qasimi - Toy World

Gideon Jacobs - On Images


Follow Farah, Charlie, Gideon & Gem on Instagram. If you've enjoyed this episode, PLEASE leave us your feedback in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to The Messy Truth. We will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected] 

Thank you to the whole team at ICP for collaborating on this project.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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