As I approach the 100th episode of The Messy Truth Podcast, I’ve been reflecting on how much photography has shifted since I began the project in 2018. At that time, media was changing, a shift was happening in the artworld—both in how it functions and how young photographers were beginning to infiltrate a space which was previously closed to them—cornerstone publications were disintegrating, the attention economy was peaking, the way information and value circulates was shifting. There were a lot of things happening at the same time. Now, seven years later, photography is rapidly changing again, new challenges have emerged on multiple planes. My hope is that the podcast can be a space to have messy conversations about where we have been and where we might go next. New episodes coming soon!
NEW EPISODE of The Messy Truth podcast: I chat to Ahndraya Parlato about her latest book, TIME TO KILL an interrogation of gendered aging, unpacking the ideals of beauty, caretaking, and maternal and domestic duty imposed on women over the course of their lives. In our roving conversation we keep returning to the the inbetween, the murky - this subversive space with many questions but few answers, where you embrace the complexity rather than tidy it up. Episode available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast. @ahndraya_parlato
The Messy Truth x Peckham 24: Charlotte Cotton
Saturday 16th May at 4PM
Gem Fletcher is joined by curator and writer Charlotte Cotton for a candid conversation about the state of photography institutions and how we might choose to retool them for the future. Can we re-animate the foundations of photography as a cultural arena and build anew? How do we participate in imagining a future that maintains our agency and supports us to make and disseminate visual stories? Is it possible for us to create more expansive practices that support independent thinking and preserve our intellectual properties? How can we cultivate new community standards that support many, rather than a few?
Image by the brilliant @genesis__baez
TICKET LINK IN BIO
@peckham24photo@pimcharlottecotton
The Messy Truth x Peckham 24: Vinca Petersen
Saturday May 16th, 2:30pm
Gem Fletcher speaks with artist Vinca Petersen about her new body of work HULALA. Featuring photographs, text and personal ephemera, the project is a multivalent exploration of home and collectivity tracing four years of change and upheaval in which Vinca reimagined her life from scratch, becoming part of the small remote community of Crofters in Skye. HULALA is a sprawling diaristic window into the space between old traditions and new rituals, independence and community and strength and vulnerability. The work, which is on show at Peckham 24, builds upon some of the values in her cult work No System, but from a new perspective - thirty years on in a very different world.
TICKET LINK IN BIO
@peckham24photo@vincapetersen
I’m back at Peckham 24 this year with a series of conversations with radical thinkers and artists. Ticket link in bio or on Peckham24 website.
Session 2: Saturday 16th May, at 12:30am
The Messy Truth x Peckham 24: Cian Oba Smith & Max Ferguson
Gem Fletcher speaks with artists Max Ferguson & Cian Oba Smith about the ways they use photography to unravel ideas around time, space, memory and the scars left behind. The discussion will explore the individual artist’s latest work presented at Peckham 24; Cian’s Among Flowers, Tears and Rain, a documentation of knife violence in London and Max’s The Tower Block, which reflects on the role of The London College of Communication building, that has served thousands of students since its inception.
Slide 1: From Among Flowers, Tears and Rain by Cian Oba Smith
Slide 2: From The Tower Block by Max Ferguson
TICKET LINK IN BIO
@maxferguson@cianobasmith@peckham24photo
I’m back at Peckham 24 this year with a series of conversations with radical thinkers and artists.
The Messy Truth x Peckham 24: Amelia Abraham & Bernice Mulenga
Session 1: Saturday 16th May, at 11am
I’m thrilled to speak to artist Bernice Mulenga and author Amelia Abraham about the ways in which photography intersects with pleasure, politics, and protest in Queer nightlife. The talk will explore the connections between #friendsonfilm, Bernice’s ten year project documenting the people who shape contemporary LGBTQ+ BIPOC dancefloors and Amelia’s latest book Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife which charts an expansive visual history of queer nightlife. Together they will discuss the ways in which Queer artists, past and present, have been informed by the dancefloor and used it to dream new modes of being into existence.
Slide 1: Bernice Mulenga, Priince & Majeesty, 2021, fromSex,Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife by Amelia Abraham (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.
Slide 2: Linda Simpson, Linda Simpson, Gillian, Honey Dijon,and Candis Cayne at Wigstock at the Palladium, 1995,from Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife by Amelia Abraham (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.
@amelia_abraham@bernice.mulenga@peckham24photo
TICKET LINK IN BIO
After a year of quietly collaborating, I’m excited to present HULALA by @vincapetersen at Peckham 24. Come and celebrate with us!
Featuring photographs, text and personal ephemera, HULALA by Vinca Petersen is a multivalent exploration of home and collectivity. Based in the heart of a rural community in Skye, she traces four years of change and upheaval, exploring the space between independence and living in community, strength and vulnerability and old traditions and new rituals. Curated by Gem Fletcher, the exhibition builds upon some of the values in Vinca’s cult work No System, but from a new perspective - thirty years on, in a very different world.
HULALA opens at Rabbet Gallery in Peckham, as part of Peckham 24 on Friday 15th May at 6pm and runs until Sunday 17th May. @peckham24photo@vincapetersen@spectrumlab
I’ll be in conversation with Jane Evelyn Atwood @thephotographersgallery on Tuesday 12th May discussing Too Much Time , her remarkable book that stems from a ten-year investigation during which she accompanied incarcerated women in forty prisons across nine countries in the 1990s. The work is shortlisted for DBPFP26. Get tickets at TPG 💫
For this month’s column in @creativereview I spoke to @daniela_spector about her family archive, the material possibilities of her practice and her powerful work, I forbid you to forget me. 💚
Spoke to @kircherabdul about their powerful new book New Genesis for @dazed
At the centre of Abdulhamid Kircher’s latest photo book, New Genesis, is his friend Sierra Kiss and her young family. The book is, in part, a love letter to a friend in need, bearing witness to the complexity of a life impacted by a collision of homelessness, addiction, young motherhood and domestic abuse. While Kircher’s unflinchingly honest photographs will likely draw people to this work, it’s the first-person immediacy of Kiss’s writing which makes you stay. Her texts, pulled from spoken word testimonies and short diaristic statements finely layer all her emotions as she navigates life: rage, confusion, fear, fantasy, self-hatred, despair, love and devotion. Kiss’s voice is unique and unapologetic, laced with dark humour and a profound directness, made more potent by the sacred journal-like form of the book. Together, Kircher and Kiss create a line of undeniability, mining the darkest depths of survival with tenderness.
