Zackary Canepari is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow whose work moves between documentary film and photography.  He began as a photojournalist in India and Pakistan before creating the Sundance-screened series California Is a place, a portrait of the golden state unraveling at the edges.

He later co-directed the feature documentary T-Rex (SXSW), following teenage Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields as she fought her way toward gold; the film was adapted by MGM into the narrative feature The Fire Inside. His Guggenheim-supported project Flint Is a place expanded documentary storytelling across film, photography, archival material, and immersive media, earning a World Press Photo Award and recognition as Multimedia Photographer of the Year at POYi.

His monograph REX won POYi Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture First PhotoBook Prize.

Zackary's documentary Fire in Paradise won an Emmy and an Edward R. Murrow Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. He received a second Emmy for directing The Gallagher Effect for The New York Times Presents (FX/Hulu).

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In episode 277, Zackary discusses, among other things:

• How he started in photography
• The experience of cutting his photographic teeth in India
• The complicated question of whether it's a good time to be a filmmaker
• His early project California Is a place, with his collaborator Drea Cooper
• Learning the ropes through experience
• His first feature documentary, T-Rex, and being smiled upon by the documentary gods
• Flint Town
• Thoughts & Prayers
• Fire in Paradise

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Jessica Dimmock’s work focusses on humanistic and intimate storytelling. She is the recipient of numerous international awards for her photography and video work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three World Press Photo Awards for short films, The Inge Morath Award from Magnum, the F Award for Concerned Photography from Forma and Fabrica, The Infinity Award for Photojournalist of the Year from the International Center of Photography, and The Kodak Award for Best Cinematography at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She is a Sundance Edit and Story Lab Fellow, and her first feature film The Pearl was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival and was executive produced by Impact Partners. Her clients include HBO, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Microsoft, The UNFPA, Aperture, Showtime and PBS. She is the co-director of the Netflix series Flint Town as and directed on the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries and AppleTV’s Home.

In 2007 Jessica produced a photobook entitled The Ninth Floor (Contrasto). 

Her most recent film, co-directed with her partner Zackery Canepari, is Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America, focussing on the USA's $3 billion active shooter preparadness industry and its effects on teachers and students, released in 2025.

In episode 276, Jessica Discusses, among other things:

• Current projects
• Her attraction to dark subject matter
• Her TV mini series Captive Audience
• Forming close relationships with her subject
• The random coffee shop interaction that changed her direction forever
• The chance encounter that led to her first big photography project and subsequent book, The Ninth Floor
• How the musician Moby played a part in her journey
• Serendipity and her project The Pearl
• The challenge of landing lucrative commercial work
• The Netflix series she co-directed, Flint Town
• Her most recent film Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America

Website | Instagram

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On episode 275, Philip discusses, among other things:

• His ‘cabinet of curiosities’ studio space
• A recent, powerful urge to photograph in Australia
• Why he left the newspaper world there in favour of Thailand
• His early project “The Cars That Ate Bangkok”
• His sense of anger at injustice
• His ‘near death experience’ on Sleeping Dog Mountain
• Process, shooting on film, and working close to the subject
• The influence of Koudelka’s book Exiles
• The ways in which his old home of Bangkok has changed since he was there
• Why he moved to France

Website | Instagram

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Joachim Ladefoged is a Danish photographer born in 1970. He has worked as a professional since 1991, and is a member of the international photo agency VII. Today he is a staff photographer at the Danish Daily Jyllands-Posten, but over the years he has worked regularly for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Mare, The New Yorker and TIME.

Joachim has received numerous awards for his work from institutions such as Visa D'Or, World Press Photo, POYi, Eissie, and Agfa, as well as Picture of the Year in Denmark. Over the years he has published 3 monographs, Albanians, Mirror and Time After My Time.

Joachim photographs everything with the same inventiveness and diligence, whether sports, war or commerce. His highly accomplished career has seen him master complex, violent news stories, commercial assignments, daily news, and rich, vibrant, and spectacular feature stories. Joachim is credited with being one of the driving forces behind the new wave of Danish photojournalism.

In episode 274, Joachim discusses, among other things:

• Having arthritis as a teenager and the impact it had on his life (good and bad)
• Starting his career as an intern at a local newspaper
• Moving on to ‘the best job in the world’ at national newspaper Politiken
• Winning the World Press Photo award
• Words of wisdom received from Magnum legend Constantine Manos
• Getting into Magnum… and being chucked out again
• Being part of ‘the new wave of Danish photojounalists’
• Why changing direction on becoming a father was “the right decision, but a hard decision”
• Why three photographers were just made redundant on his newspaper
• His approach to shooting and lighting portraits
• His book project Time After My Time
• Photographing his kids with the iPhone

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Lee Shulman is a visual artist, filmmaker, and founder of The Anonymous Project, one of the most significant archives of vernacular color photography in existence. Since 2017, the project has amassed nearly one million Kodachrome slides from the 1940s to the early 2000s — intimate, everyday images that might have otherwise been lost to time. Through curation and transformation, Lee reanimates these personal photographs, weaving them into compelling narratives that explore memory, family, love, and cultural shifts across generations.

Lee’s career also extends into film direction, notably with his debut feature documentary, "I Am Martin Parr," released in 2025. This film chronicles a road trip with renowned photographer Martin Parr, revisiting iconic locations from his oeuvre. Shulman's prior collaboration with Parr on the "Déjà View" project, which paired Parr's distinctive photographs with images from The Anonymous Project, laid the groundwork for their working relationship. The documentary provides an affectionate portrayal of Parr's artistic process and enduring work ethic, further cementing Lee’s engagement with the broader discourse of photography.

Born in London in 1973, Lee lives and works in Paris. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and Rencontres d’Arles, and is held in major collections such as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Photo Elysée in Lausanne.

Website | Instagram

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Featuring:

• Ed Sykes
• Ian Howarth
• Dina Litovsky
• Joseph Michael Lopez
• Mike Abrahams
• Ian Macdonald
• Katrin Koenning
• Tomasz Tomaszewski
• Mackenzie Calle
• Marc Wilson
• Paul Seawright
• Mohamed Bourouissa
• Anna Arendt
• Marjolein Martinot
• Rankin
• Tony Docekal
• Eli Reed
• Merlin Daleman
• Mike Brodie
• Paul Sng
• Ed Kashi
• Rachel Elizabeth Seed

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Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a Brooklyn and Los Angeles-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography, and writing.

In 2025, she won the Truer Than Fiction Spirit Award for her debut feature film, A Photographic Memory, which is also a New York Times Critics Pick.

Rachel’s work has received support from the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Films, the Jewish Film Institute, the California Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Maine Media Workshops, the Roy W. Dean grant, the National Arts Club, IFP, and many others. 

Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited worldwide, including at the International Center of Photography, and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries. Rachel’s writing has been published by No Film School, the Sundance Institute, and Talkhouse and she is Executive Director / Co-founder of the Brooklyn Documentary Club, a NYC-based filmmaker collective with 250+ members.

In episode 271, Rachel discusses, among other things:

• A summary of her mum’s character
• nature vs. nurture
• Her mum’s Images of Man interviews for ICP/Scholastic
• What inspired her to make a film
• How her own story became interwined with her mum’s
• Discovering a family archive of super 8 footage
• How she recreated the interviews using actors
• The importance of working with good editors
• The challenge of funding and financing
• Key advice for anyone wanting to make a personal documentary
• The fine balance between collaboration and having the courage of your convitions as director
• Writing for narration as opposed to for reading
• Sharing her personal stories as the film evolved over a ten year period - How to balance life and art
• ‘Selling the film’ and what that means in practice
• The Brooklyn Documentary Club
• Moving to L.A.
• Projects she has in development

Website | Instagram

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Featuring:

• Yasuhiro Ogawa
• Marshall To
• Lua Ribeira
• Gianluca Gamberini (L'artiere books)
• Eleonora Agostini
• Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
• Aletheia Casey

Books/Projects mentioned:

• Lost in Kyoto, Yasuhiro Ogawa
• Blank Notes, Marshall To
• 44 Irvine Street 1970-1971, Susan Meiselas
• Agony In The Garden, Lua Ribeira
• Calling The Bird Home, Cheryl St. Onge
• Another England, Phil Toledano
• A Study On Waitressing, Eleonora Agostini
• Flowers Drink The River, Pia Paulina Guilmoth
• Fishworm, Pia Paulina Guilmoth & Jesse B. Saffire
• A Lost Place, Aletheia Casey

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Ed Kashi is a renowned photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator who has been making images and telling stories for 40 years. His restless creativity has continually placed him at the forefront of new approaches to visual storytelling. Dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times, a sensitive eye and an intimate and compassionate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his intense and unsparing work. As a member of VII Photo, Ed has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. 

Ed’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking has produced a number of influential short films and earned recognition by the POYi Awards as 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year. Ed’s embrace of technology has led to creative social media projects for clients including National Geographic, The New Yorker, and MSNBC. From implementing a unique approach to photography and filmmaking in his 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook, to paradigm shifting coverage of Hurricane Sandy for TIME in 2012, Ed continues to create compelling imagery and engage with the world in new ways.

Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Ed’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated fourteen books.

In 2002, Ed in partnership with his wife, writer + filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books, and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues.

In 2019, The Enigma Room, an immersive installation, premiered at NYC’s Photoville festival, and has since been seen in Israel, the Netherlands, South Korea, and New Mexico, USA.

HIs new book is, A Period In Time: Looking Back While Moving Forward, 1977 - 2022.

In episode 269, Ed discusses, among other things:

• Wanting to contribute to positive change
• Donating his archive and why
• A lesson learned on being assertive
• His new book A Period In Time
• Publishing extracts from his journal entries
• Editing language in response to modern sensibilities
• Seeing the impact of identity politics in the USA
• His book project with his wife, Julie, American Sketches
• America being less divided than we are being led to believe
• His interest in ‘advocacy journalism’

Website | Instagram

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Paul Sng is a bi-racial British Chinese filmmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland whose work focuses on people who challenge the status quo. He has directed six feature documentaries, including Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche (winner of BIFA 2021 Best Documentary, BIFA 2021 Raindance Discovery Award), Tish (Sheffield DocFest 2023 Opening Gala film) and Reality Is Not Enough (Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 Closing Gala film). Paul strives to make bold and creatively ambitious films that connect emotionally with audiences, working collaboratively with great teams to tell stories about outsiders and amplify rebellious voices. In 2022 he was named as a BAFTA Breakthrough Artist and directed Folding, his first short drama film, funded by Screen Scotland and BFI Network.

In episode 268, Paul discusses, among other things:

• Growing up in London with a single mum
• Having outsider syndrome… and imposter syndrome, and using that to your advantage
• His educational history, including a couple of false starts
• Making a feature as his first ever film with the ‘confidence of ignorance’
• The importance of finding a good Producer (and what their job involves)
• The important questions he asks himself in considering whether to make a film
• Structure and working with an editor
• Applying the same narrative principles to documentary as are prevalent in fiction
• The creative treatment of actuality
• Finding an audience
• Currently in production, Little Warrior

Referenced:

• Trainspotting
• Symposium, Plato
• Bruce Lee
• Jackie Chan
• David Yip
• John Woo
• Wong Kar-Wai
• Colin McArthur
• Sleaford Mods
• Nathan Hannawin
• Bruce Robinson
• Orson Welles
• Rebecca Mark-Lawson
• Jennifer Corcoran
• Moonage Daydream
• The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard
• The Man In The White Suit
• Emma Butt

Website | IMDB page | Instagram

Episode sponsor:

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Fearturing:

• Merlin Daleman
• David O’Mara
• Jem Southam
• Martin Parr
• Christoph Bangert from Photobus
• Ayesha Jones
• Mark Power
• Tom Shaw

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