The Inner Voice That Stops You Taking the Photo And Lies to Every Photographer, with Rory King - E122

If you have ever felt technically capable but creatively lost, this conversation shows you how one photographer turned a decade of pictures, and the hardest years of his life, into a body of work that is unmistakably his own.

In this episode I sit down with Rory King, an Australian photographer who works in black and white, prints by hand in the darkroom, and turned 10 years of images into his photobook 'Gumsucker', published by Charcoal Press after he won the 2023 Charcoal Publishing Prize at the Chico Review. We talk about how photography found him, the darkroom as an emotional practice, his mental health struggles that nearly ended his life, and what it actually takes to find your own photographic voice.

Other things we discussed:

• Why he refuses to scan film and prints everything by hand
• Photographing the same friends for over 10 years
• Handing close to 2,000 scans to his publisher and not seeing Gumsucker until years later
• The bushrangers and Ned Kelly project he first presented at Chico
• Whether the photography and publishing world is elitist and gatekept
• How to share your work and find community
• The role of family, friends, and sad music in his recovery
• Momentum, and why taking the picture matters more than the picture itself

Rory's links:
www.roryking.net
www.instagram.com/kingroary
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