A Photographic Life - 247: Deborah Parkin

In episode 247 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed picking up some odds and ends concerning social media, engagement, truth versus fiction and hanging photographs. Plus this week, photographer Deborah Parkin takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Deborah Parkin lives with her family and animals in the wild North Pennines, Northumberand. Her work is rooted in family life and her environment utilising a variety of mediums, from large format to digital and traditional alternative processes such as Wet Plate Collodion, Bromoil, Albumen, Cyantotype and Silver Gelatin. Before becoming a photographer and mother Parkin spent many years in academia researching for a Ph.d in Women’s War Writing and teaching as well as gaining an MA in Holocaust Studies. Her passion for photography started in earnest with the birth of her son as his arrival prompted a need to record the life of her new family. Parkin's photographic work has been exhibited and published worldwide including Japan, U.S. U.K, Bulgaria, Iran and China. It is also held in private collections, museums and galleries including the Fox Talbot Museum (UK), the Centre for Fine Art Photography (U.S) and the Charlet Gallery (Paris). www.deborahparkin.co.uk 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). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts. © Grant Scott 2023