The Photowalk

This week, we're taking you to Mongolia, travelling across the vast open steppe in Russian UAZ vans, meeting nomadic families, and discovering a way of life shaped by the land, the seasons, and the animals that depend on it. Along the way, you'll find traditional Mongolian hospitality, yoghurt vodka, ancient standing stones, wild horses, and a fair bit of bouncing around on roads that barely deserve the name. With our fellow adventurers and local guide Shuren, we explore ruined monasteries hidden in the mountains, hear extraordinary stories of Chinggis Khaan and visit places where Mongolia's remarkable history has left some painful reminders. Recorded as we travel, with the voices, laughter and experiences of the people alongside us, this is a Photowalk adventure through one of the world's most extraordinary landscapes. Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond. Links to all guests and features will be on the show page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week and Arthelper.ai, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily.

Marc Asnin joins me to talk about ACT 1: A Century in the Making, an ambitious book and exhibition looking at the first twenty-five years of this century through photography. More than 100 photographers, six continents, nine major themes and work by names including Eugene Richards, Platon, David Burnett and Albert Watson. We talk about what those photographs reveal about the first twenty-five years of this century, and what Marc discovered when he began looking at them together as a record of the times we've lived through. We also explore Marc's own documentary work. Uncle Charlie grew into an almost thirty-year portrait of his uncle and godfather, Charlie Henschke. Final Words collected the last statements of 578 people executed on death row in Texas, later developing into We the People Confess, bringing photography, sound, testimony and historical material together to examine capital punishment. In the mailbag, Matthies Wesche wonders whether making videos for YouTube is getting in the way of making still photographs. Lauren McClanahan writes about unplugging, younger people and AI, while Phil Ferris has been learning when it's time to shut doors. Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond. Links to all guests and features will be on the show page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week and Arthelper.ai, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily. BUY THE 1st AND 2nd EDITIONS OF OUR ZINE: REFLECTIONS

My mother kept an old biscuit tin in the larder. Inside this tin was the sort of collection that somehow accumulates over a lifetime: old coins, buttons, nuts and bolts, stamps that were no longer worth whatever was printed on them, keys that probably opened something once, and assorted little objects nobody could quite bring themselves to throw away. Years later, the idea of this tin, has found its way into The Photowalk. Mine, though, contains questions. This week, I open it with one of the show's great friends, David duChemin, an award-winning wildlife and humanitarian photographer, author, teacher and, for many photographers, a mentor. He tackles questions from the tin, and there are a couple of bigger questions I want to put to him this time about resilience and relevance. Where does resilience come from, and what keeps a creative person moving when confidence disappears, plans go wrong, or life simply gets in the way? Then there's relevance. As photographers, how much should we care about remaining relevant? Relevant to whom, exactly? And what happens as we get older, as the industry around us changes and our reasons for making photographs change with it? Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond. Links to all guests and features will be on the show page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week and Arthelper.ai, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily. BUY THE NEW SHOW ZINE, REFLECTIONS

I'm joined by photographer, writer and philosophical YouTuber Sean Tucker for a conversation about writing as a creative act; a way of noticing, a way of understanding yourself, and perhaps even a way of staying awake to life. What began as a listener letter about creative block and photography has become a much bigger conversation about expression itself and how sometimes words can unlock parts of our creativity that pictures alone cannot reach. Sean talks beautifully about the role writing now plays in his daily life and creative practice, how it sharpens observation, and why putting thoughts onto a page can become far more than simply "content creation." Along the way, we wander into philosophy, memory, creativity, identity, grief, and the strange human need to make sense of our experiences by shaping them into stories. The conversation also touches gently and honestly on personal loss and suicide, particularly toward the latter part of the episode. And because writing has increasingly become part of my own creative life too, I also share a deeply personal audio essay from the series Halfway to Maybe about gratitude, existence, loss, and the sheer improbability of being alive at all. This is a thoughtful edition, most certainly, a reflective one, and a conversation about creativity. In the mailbag, Tomas Nilsson is thanking Holga for his newfound vigour for photography, appreciating that sounds a little like an interesting cheese and wine party from the 70s, Kelvin Brown has essential viewing homework for a weekend film, and Adam Flack solves the strange barking in the woods that unnerved me in an earlier episode. Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond. Links to all guests and features will be on the show page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week and Arthelper.ai, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily. WHY: A Sketchbook of Life is available here.