# Episode 380- London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins on the perils of photography, and art criticism, and why to give your viewers the benefit of the doubt

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conversation-art-podcast-420741/episode-380-london-based-photographer-and-writer-michael-collins-on-the-perils-of-photography-and-art-criticism-and-why-to-give-your-viewers-the-benefit-of-the-doubt
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Podcast: [The Conversation Art Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conversation-art-podcast-420741)
Published: 2025-10-11T21:09:56+00:00
Episode link: https://theconversationartpodcast.libsyn.com/epis-380-london-based-photographer-and-writer-michael-collins-on-the-perils-of-photography-and-art-criticism-and-why-to-give-your-viewers-the-benefit-of-the-doubt
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Duration seconds: 3410

## Resource

London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins talks about: The flat where he's lived for 35 years, which is getting 'Wallace & Gromit' crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he's happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we're also bludgeoned by advertising here, compared with the UK and Europe; how he sees our social media consumption as giving in to the impulsive at the expense of the rational, a battle he gives in to daily for a half hour on IG…and how sometimes, you just want to look at a panda falling out of a tree; why readers (of books) make better viewers of artworks; how when his photographs are printed at full scale (4 x 5 feet) you can walk into them and how part of photography's schtick is that it's nosy, that it admits everything in it; his takeaways from giving a presentation at the Hampstead Photographic Society , in which have the members bolted for the door at the break; the importance of 19 th century photography to understanding the history of photography, and how it's not shown enough in museums (at least in London); how he started studying politics, but switched over to art, initially stumbling into photography as an editor at a teenage girl's magazine, then moving to The Observer, and then he became picture editor at the Daily Telegraph, where he realized, amidst a more rushed editorial structure that went with predictable stock photographers, that the most interesting photography was not there to fulfill another's agenda, but in pursuit of independence, to fulfill its own agenda. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast,…

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