FEATURING PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER PAUL MOBLEY

This week’s guest is Paul Mobley, one of America's most accomplished portrait photographers, a man who has spent his career looking people in the eye to tell their stories through photography. He trained under Annie Leibovitz in New York, went on to shoot for some of the biggest names in advertising and editorial, and has pointed his lens at everyone from Adam Sandler and Daniel Radcliffe to Amy Schumer and Bill Burr, as well as major brands like Apple, Ford and American Express. But it's his personal work that sets him apart. Paul has spent years driving across the United States, well over 100,000 miles of it, making four books that document ordinary Americans living lives most people never stop to notice. Farmers, firefighters, everyday heroes, and centenarians in all fifty states who've lived through world wars, the space age and the digital revolution and still have something to say. He shares stories about how he puts sitters at ease, plus a tale where it could have all gone wrong with Mike Tyson, until a pigeon showed up.

Also, in the mailbag as we walk, between my chat with Paul, you are about to be introduced today by Phil Ferris to an Australian urban poet who is the gem in my life I didn’t know I needed, but now I’ve found him, I need to share his name with you. Wallace Shackleton shares his memory of the Camino by bike, a slight warning for reasons that will become clear; Richard Rawlings’ letter is most likely to make you itch, and we check in with Raja Bhagavatula, who has found his own magical place on earth, in Scotland, next to an oil rig.

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MORE ABOUT names, words, THE MUSIC and places FROM TODAY’S SHOW

Join us on the Black Isle near Inverness for the Scotland ‘26 retreat, staying on a working soft-fruit farm with Highland views. The retreat includes small creative workshops, from photogravure printing to sound and writing sessions, plus plenty of time to walk, talk and make photographs together.

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Annie Leibovitz is one of the most celebrated portrait photographers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, best known for her decades of work with Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, where she created some of the most iconic images in American cultural life, from John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono hours before his death, to a naked and pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of a magazine that had never done anything quite like it before.

Billingsgate is London's most famous fish market, with roots going back over a thousand years to a wharf on the Thames where traders have been selling fish since at least the medieval period, though it didn't become an official market until 1698, and while it moved from its old City of London home to Docklands in 1982, it's still one of the largest inland fish markets in the country.

Last week's guest on episode 527, was Ruth Guest, a photographer and cyberpsychologist, who studies how technology shapes the way we think, behave, and see ourselves. Ruth brings both disciplines together in a practice that asks important questions about who we are in an increasingly online world, and her photography reflects that same curiosity about human connection and what happens to it under pressure.

Darby Hudson is a writer and artist from Melbourne, Australia, known for his typewriter poetry, spoken word videos, and a darkly comic, aphoristic style that's gathered millions of views on social media. He spent years sitting by a train station in Melbourne writing on an old typewriter, a gift from an ex, sometimes tucked in the bushes. His books include Darby, Love... and You're Going To Be Ok, and he was also poet-in-residence on the set of Adam Elliot's animated film Memoir of a Snail.

Memoir of a Snail is a 2024 stop-motion animated film from Australian director Adam Elliot, a gently devastating story about a woman named Grace whose life is marked by loss, clutter and loneliness, told with dark humour and handmade tenderness.

The Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient pilgrimage routes across Europe that all lead to the cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, where the remains of Saint James are said to be buried. People have been walking it for over a thousand years, and while plenty still do it for religious reasons, just as many go for the walking, the solitude, or simply to see what happens when you put one foot in front of the other for several weeks with nothing much else to think about.

Harry Benson is a Scottish photojournalist whose career has spanned more than six decades, best known for his extraordinary access to the Beatles; he was on the plane with them when they flew to America for the first time in 1964, and went on to photograph virtually every American president from Eisenhower onwards, as well as some of the most defining moments of the twentieth century.

Swampy is the nickname of Daniel Hooper, a British environmental activist who became a household name in the 1990s when he spent a week living underground in a tunnel to protest the building of the A30 road in Devon, becoming an unlikely celebrity face of the direct action movement at a time when eco-protest was finding its way onto the front pages.

MUSIC LINKS: Flintwith Ziv Moran wrote today's playout song Hey. Music on the show is sourced primarily from Artlist and also features in Michael Brennan’s Spotify playlist GoFoto. For Apple Music users, follow this playlist.

Kelvin Brown’s flickr Photowalk inspired group - join by invite by clicking on to THIS LINK.