FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHER AND PHILOSOPHER STEVEN SEIDENBERG

This week, Steven Seidenberg is my guest, a photographer, philosopher, and writer whose work focuses on empty spaces, ordinary places, and the things most people pass by. His photographic books include The Architecture of Silence and Pipevalve: Berlin, and his work has been shown internationally, from Europe to the US and Japan. Alongside the photographs, he writes prose and poetry that explore similar themes, examining perception and what it means to truly notice what’s in front of us. It’s certainly one of our more thought-provoking conversations of late, as Steven even questions what a photograph actually is, if it’s not a printed, tangible, tactile thing.

From the mailbag, Andrew Larking writes about self-criticism, sharing a story that touches on depression and the instinct many of us have to try to push through it alone; Richard Rawlings writes about neurodiversity, and Jim Farmer reports on unexpected wildlife encounters that may or may not involve actual alligators a little too close to home! Also today, a chance to join in with a new community feature for 2026 called HERE AND THERE.

Email your stories, thoughts, and pictures to the show. If you can optimize/resize photos to 2,500 pixels wide, that’s always much appreciated. If you’d like to support this show and have access to further content and the midweek Extra Mile show, we’d welcome you as an EXTRA MILER. There’s also our thriving Facebook group, a safe place to meet and talk with photographers of all interests, the Photowalk YouTube channel, plus the show is featured on Instagram, VERO and X.

As well as our Extra Milers, we’re also supported by our friends at Arthelper.ai who make marketing easier, helps more people find your work, and keeps your voice true—so you can get back to what you love most: making art. Enter PHOTOWALK at checkout to receive 30 days of the pro version free.

PLEASE HELP TO BUILD OUR COMMUNITY BY SHARING THIS EPISODE TO YOUR FAVOURITE SOCIAL PLATFORMS

LEARN:

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.

Enjoy daily REFLECTIONS, Monday to Friday through you favourite podcast player apps: APPLE, SPOTIFY, AMAZON MUSIC, the show’s WEBSITE page, or by adding the RSS FEED to your podcast app of choice.

Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his images of scenes and objects of the banal, and for his pioneering use of colour in art photography. His books include Uncommon Places (1982) and American Surfaces (1999), photographs taken during cross-country road trips in the 1970s.

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French philosopher, literary theorist, and semiotician whose writings transformed twentieth-century thought about language, culture, and meaning.

Lynne Cohen was an American-Canadian photographer best known for her precise, large-format photographs of interior spaces like classrooms, offices, spas, laboratories, and waiting rooms, all photographed without people, revealing how environments reflect human activity and design.

Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street signs.

William Eggleston is an American photographer widely credited with bringing colour photography into serious art spaces. Working largely in the southern United States, his pictures focus on ordinary scenes, interiors, street corners, and overlooked details, photographed with a direct, unsentimental eye.

Robert Adams is an American photographer associated with the New Topographics movement. He is best known for photographing the altered landscapes of the American West, focusing on suburban expansion, industry, and the quiet consequences of human presence. His work is deliberate, restrained, and ethically minded, asking how people live with the land rather than simply how it looks.

New Topographics was a loose group of photographers who, in the 1970s, turned their cameras toward man-altered landscapes, suburbs, industrial sites, and everyday terrain, photographing them plainly and without drama to show how humans were reshaping the land.

Bernd and Hilla Becher developed a typological approach to photography by systematically documenting industrial structures such as water towers, blast furnaces, and cooling towers.

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

MUSIC LINKS: Gabriella Frances wrote today's playout song Breathe. 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.