Chris Dorley-Brown / Aria Sharokhshahi

A check-in with the brilliant and inimitable Chris Dorley-Brown, on the state of play for young photographers, why his pictures are for people who haven’t been born yet and ‘will start being interesting in fifty years time’, and how he his main revenue stream derives from his U.S. agent selling prints of east London to ‘weed farmers and crypto bros’.

Here’s a short taster. To hear more, sign up as a member from £4 per month here.

And last week’s guest Aria Sharokhshahi returns to answer the bonus questions.

What is the thing you like most about photography or about being a photographer? And what is the thing you like the least?

Creatively, it is the most, for me, the most beautiful way I’ve found to express myself and to engage with other people expressing theirselves. And I love the kind of selective poetry you can make from reality. I love it. I love how beautiful it is. I love to look at it, and I love to talk about it. and then secondly - and I just wanna preface this with there’s nothing wrong working in Tesco, and there’s nothing wrong working on a construction site - but that’s what my chips were dealt to me with - was working on a construction site or working in Tesco.

Okay. Yeah. Like that could have been your fate if you hadn’t discovered…

Yeah, I didn’t, do well at school. I dropped out of uni ‘cause I, couldn’t do it, academically. and photography has given me everything I have in my life today.

That’s incredible, yeah. Wonderful. And the thing you like the least, if you had to identify something that you find difficult about it... Most people generally go with the lack of financial security here, but maybe you’ve got a different take or a different thing that you don’t like..

I think every artform has a lack of financial security, basically. I feel very lucky in terms of that. Man, I’m really struggling to think of something I don’t like about it…

That’s fantastic. Isn’t that great?

I guess the thing that I maybe don’t like about it is, it’s very UK specific, that I think the British photography scene is very insular - and it’s a little bit of a cool kids club. And I think that is a problem. How can we expect any new work to be made and new photographers to be coming up if everyone’s just like that? If I think, in the US, I spent quite a lot of time in the US, they’re much more open to new photographers and new work.

That’s interesting. I think one could even open that out to a general societal trait that I think the Brits do have, I think you could use that as a kind of a metaphor for wider tendencies, that the Yanks are just more open generally and we’re more closed generally.

Obviously, without mentioning any names, in London, there is your 10 people, and they all hang out together. They all go to the same things. And, from hearing other photographers talk about it, it feels like a very hard thing for them to enter into, you know…

That’s really interesting you mention that.

It’s essentially like social gatekeeping.

No, I talk about this a lot, obviously in private, not on the podcast. There’s certain things one can’t express publicly. But, yeah, it’s interesting that you make that observation because I think that gives me an indication that is a thing. One experiences these things, in a sort of subtle way, and you start to notice, oh yeah, there is a sort of cool kids club. And I fucking hate that shit.

Oh, me too, man. What a load of bollocks.

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