Gemma used to be a news photographer and came to be focused on collaborative practices that disrupt the linear, documentary method…from different starting points, Gemma and I have come to value the same questions of power, participatory processes and, I guess, the love, vulnerability and open possibilities of social engagement.

– Pete Brook

In this kind of work it is crucial for collaborative
projects to make visible the process of creation,
considering it an element as important as a resolved
image outcome.

On Thursday, June 8, Magnum Foundation presented Photography Expanded, a full day of presentations and panels on collaborative documentary practices. Gemma-Rose Turnbull led an inspired panel called Disruptive Participation and Radical Listening, co-presented with Sol Aramendi, Nina Robinson and Zohar Kfir. A lecturer of photography at Coventry in England, Gemma-Rose runs a website, “Photography is a social practice.” Committed to disseminating alternative forms of authorship, Turnbull observed that “photography heroizes the single auteur,” but that active listening “might set conditions for a more distributed authorship.”

Hanul Bahm

KSMoCA, Postcards From America, Magnum Photo Agency. Photo David Ewald.