Curating narratives from page to page with Izabela Radwanska Zhang

Izabela is the Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Photography, a job that requires her to select and coordinate the photography projects and journalists for the magazine's features. She also curates the narrative for the issues theme, from project to project and page to page. 

Izabela’s path to this role has not always been linear, originally studying language and politics, then journalism, before completing a postgraduate degree in graphic design.  

In this episode, Izabela explores how her varied education has helped her to get to where she is now and offers up words of wisdom for budding photographers. 

 Instagram handle: @izaradz 

 BJP website: https://www.1854.photography/ 

Discover more about UAL Awarding Body qualifications.

Transcript

TIC Izabela Radwanska-Zhang edit

Matt M: Hello and welcome to the Teach, Inspire, Create Podcast. 

Matt M: I'm your host, Matt Moseley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Each episode I speak to artists and creative industry leaders about teaching, inspiring and creating. 

Matt M: in each episode we learn about their experience of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them, and we explore how they foster creativity in their work, with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts.

Matt M: Today's guest is Izabela Radwanska Zhang.

Matt M: Izabela is the Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Photography, a job that requires her to select and coordinate the photography projects and journalists for the magazine's features. She also has to curate the narrative for the issue’s theme, from project to project and page to page.

Matt M: In this episode, Izabela talks about what it is to be an editor and how she arrived in the role at the magazine. She talks in depth about how a photograph can come to be selected and included in a publication. and she shares with us inspirational characters and figures who have helped her on her journey to where she is today.

Matt M: There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so that you can read as you listen.

Matt M: I hope you enjoy.

MUSIC 

Matt M: Well welcome Izabela. Thank you ever so much for joining us today on the Teach Inspire Create podcast. It's wonderful to have you.

Izabela RZ: Thank you very much for having me.

Matt M: We'd like to start off just hearing a little bit about where you started on this journey to photography.

Izabela RZ: In one way, it's interesting that I've ended up here. And in another way it makes complete sense, because I was one of those students that came out of high school, loving a lot of different things and not really knowing how to specify my studies too soon. And I also came from a background where doing art at university was a bit risky. 

Izabela RZ: Go down the academic route, get your degree, and then you can do what you want afterwards. 

Izabela RZ: So I did languages for my undergraduate degree. I did European studies, Spanish, Italian. Following my undergrad, I had this year of not really knowing where to channel everything that I'd learnt during my undergraduate degree and spent many months working for free music magazines around London. Whenever I talk about these things, I always really skip over that year because I always feel like, oh, it was a bit of a waste of time, me working for these magazines, not really doing much, but actually I learned that as opposed to saying yes to everything, that sometimes you have to say no to things.

Matt M:  Yes. 

Izabela RZ: And how not to be taken for granted, even though, because you are there and you're so enthusiastic and you wanna learn and you wanna work and you wanna meet people.

Izabela RZ: But there does come a point where you have to weigh up your options a little bit and, and say no, and move on. So I think that's what that year taught me. But it also taught me that I really love magazines. Which led me to my masters at City University in Magazine Journalism, which I loved. Well, it was a love/hate actually, but it definitely ended up with love.

Matt M: Yeah. 

Izabela RZ: I had two really fantastic tutors on that course, Jason Bennetto and Barbara Rowlands, who, despite me finding the course pretty hard, really helped me to keep it together. 

Matt M: Those tutors on your MA, what did they do to support you?

Izabela RZ: So I think as a student I respond quite well to being challenged and pushed. They did that, but only so much so that they really supported you and sort of,  it felt like you felt safe, with the tutorials that they did and the personal attention that they gave you whe, things weren't not going as well as perhaps you'd hoped for.

Izabela RZ: We had this one module called ‘Patch’, which I really struggled with, where you'd have to go and visit a borough in London and every week you'd have to bring back a story from that borough. And it was on Tuesday mornings, the class, I remember really well. And every time we'd submit a piece of work, that piece of work would then get projected onto the screen and all of your mistakes would be highlighted in front of the entire class.

Matt M: Right. 

Izabela RZ: And even though it was humiliating and terrifying going into that lesson, it was such a good way of just getting everything out there. Learning from everyone else's mistakes and making it very normal, it was so intense and I learned so much from there about journalism. We had production fortnite, which I loved, at the end of the course. 

Izabela RZ: You had two weeks to put together an entire magazine, which was, you know, over a hundred pages long or something like that. Our class had to find the stories, interview everyone, commission everything, photograph everything, produce everything, design everything.

Izabela RZ: And I was the creative director, which I think allowed me to really flex my creative side, my design side. 

Matt M: Did that sort of give you the realisation that maybe this is where you wanna go?

Izabela RZ: I think so. When you're doing something you love, time is no element. 

Matt M: Yeah. 

Izabela RZ: Even though it was tiring and stressful and things were going wrong, cause we'd never done this before. And it was my first time really using things like InDesign and Photoshop and things like that. I was just loving it. I was loving it so much. 

Matt M: Some of our listeners won't really necessarily know what an editor does, so I was just wondering if you could give us a bit of a definition about what the role is.

Izabela RZ: Okay. I can give you a definition of what my role is.

Matt M: Yes, that would be ideal.

Izabela RZ: I should say that with every magazine and every news publication, the team will look completely different, but in my team, my responsibility is really the everything editorial that you will see on the BJP website, producing the print publication, which comes out every two months now. There's an element of curation to it where I decide what goes in, what's worth highlighting, who are the people that we want to be championing right now, what are the issues that we want to be reacting to at the moment?

Izabela RZ: Everything has to happen through a photography lens. For example, with the print issue, the print issue is themed. That already gives us a little bit of a framework to work with. So, day to day, I work with writers and I work with photographers. As an editor of a magazine, you're really working with sort of the journalism side, but I think because we have a small team, I'm also working with the images. And then of course, managing the team, setting out a bit of a vision, setting out a bit of a direction for the publication. 

Matt M: It's a big workload, isn't it?

Izabela RZ: Yes. It's a big workload, but you break it down. The magazine comes out every two months, so we have a little bit of time to prepare each issue. We work three months in advance, there's always a bit of an ongoing cycle of what's going in, what's going out. Of course, changes happen along the way. 

Izabela RZ: I have a really fantastic team…

Matt M: Right 

Izabela RZ: …who really support me and really keep things going when I'm off maybe doing something.

Matt M: Is there a particular way that you create that culture or things that you do to support?

Izabela RZ: Yeah, a real close knit communication system. We have meetings every morning, we have pitch meetings every week. We then have fortnightly meetings with the marketing team, so there's conversations going on between departments too. And, I don't know if I have a strategy per se, I think it's just a good communication and trust between us.

MUSIC

Matt M: How do you choose the stories that you want to tell in the magazine?

Izabela RZ: It is a very varied process. There's no one answer to that question. We redesigned the magazine about two years ago, which is when I became the editor. 

Izabela RZ: The way that we designed the magazine in terms of the different types of features that are in the magazine allows us to fill in big spaces, i.e., long form, lovely interviews with lots of lovely images and portfolios. But, also smaller spaces which might be looking at an exhibition or a smaller project or a book and that really helps in terms of organizing how the stories then fill that publication. It begins with the theme. The themes are set out one year ahead, with a little bit of wiggle room because you never know what might happen in this world.

Izabela RZ: We publish 6 issues a year, which means that we have a little bit of time to change and switch things up if we need to. We are not news. We're not reactive news. But, we do still want to be timely in some ways.

Matt M: Yeah, of course. 

Izabela RZ: I think in terms of who, British Journal of Photography is 168 years old, and so with such a heritage behind it, we have a lot of readers that have been loyal to the magazine for a very long time. So there is a certain expectation, I suppose, for featuring, perhaps, photographers and projects that are, perhaps more exclusive, perhaps more recognizable and more established, and creating sort of big, big projects and working with big agencies and things like that. But for me, perhaps because of my lack of formal photography education, I don't have that preconditioned sense of hierarchy, within the photography world. 

Izabela RZ: So I'm very happy to then place an emerging photographer as a big feature next to someone who's much more established, because I feel like they can talk to each other and they sort of lift each other. 

Matt M: Is there one thing that comes before the other? Is it about the theme and the story and the photographs are selected to support that? Or, do you ever see a photograph that you think is so compelling you want to build a story about that?

Izabela RZ: It's a mixture of the two. For example, for our tradition and identity issue, which came out in autumn of 2022, it sort of started with the theme. But then, there were so many stories that we were able to tell that supported that theme. Be that Wendy Red Star, who's a Native American photographer who does fantastic work delving into the archive of her ancestors and brings that into sort of a, through a contemporary lens, through collage and photography. Or Alys Tomlinson's beautiful portraits of traditional Sicilian, Sardinian and Venetian costumes.

Matt M: Yes, I saw those photographs, they're fantastic aren't they? Extraordinary. 

Izabela RZ: But then, for example, at the beginning of the year, it was quite interesting. 2021, which was full of challenges, full of activism and emotion and passion, but in a very intense way. And we wanted to kick off 2022 with a love issue.

Matt M: Okay. Yeah.

Izabela RZ: Now, in February, Russia invaded Ukraine.

Matt M: Yes.

Izabela RZ: And, I'm half Polish and there was a lot of echoes with what had happened, what is happening right now, in Ukraine with my family history. And it felt so wrong to be working on a love issue when these awful things were happening so close to home. Essentially, what we did is we pivoted and we created an issue of two halves where we retained a lot of the love content, shall we call it, at the beginning of the magazine, because we'd already commissioned some really fantastic projects.

And then we flipped the magazine, if you can sort of imagine that. We flipped the magazine and created a special section dedicated to Ukraine, Ukrainian photographers who were working in Ukraine at the time, working closely with Kateryna Radchenko, who is the director of Odessa Photo Festival. And, created a series of features that were talking about Ukrainian photography. Yes. In the context of the war, but also highlighting important facets of Ukrainian identity.

Matt M: So was there a specific moment in the journey of that edition where you sort of thought, we need to make that change? And how did that come about?

Izabela RZ: Yep. There was definitely a moment. It happened pretty quickly, I have to say, because we were already in production and we had to make the decision pretty quickly.

Izabela RZ: A lot of the magazine was already commissioned and a lot of the magazine was already laid out, which meant that it would be very difficult for us to start again. We wouldn't have time to start again. And also, you know, the magazine is 198 pages long, so to create, perhaps to create an entire issue about Ukraine in, in three weeks, not sure if we would've managed that.

Izabela RZ: So that was the design decision that we had to make. And we did, I think it worked. I think it was rushed, of course you always want more time, but I think it was a good thing for us to do. Unfortunately, you know, as much as I would, I think it's important, we can't do that with every single thing that happens.

Matt M: No, of course. But it feels incredibly important that you would respond to something like that. 

MUSIC

Matt M: You've got a devoted readership, some of which may have been reading the magazine for a very, very long time. And so they have a certain set of expectations when they receive their copy. And you are obviously taking these people on this interesting, iterative journey from one place, to your own vision or the, your collective team's vision. What have been the challenges within that for you, since you've become editor, how have you overcome them?

Izabela RZ: Working on it.

Matt M: Right. 

Izabela RZ: There are a number of challenges. There's working for a magazine which has this sort of heritage. There's this immense sense of responsibility that you feel for it. Your readership develops a sense of ownership over it too.

Matt M: Yeah, absolutely.

Izabela RZ: So you have a responsibility to them, also. The challenges are, which you can't always fulfil, is to keep everyone happy in some way, whilst balancing pushing it forward.

Izabela RZ: In the 168 years, I'm the first female editor of the magazine.

Matt M: Right. Yes. 

Izabela RZ: And I, I'm taking over a magazine that has also been redesigned completely. It's changed a lot. And people don't always like change. And I think what will probably happen is that we may very well lose readers along the way as it changes into the direction that I'm taking it in, which is having it a lot more international, a lot more inclusive, a lot more diverse.

Izabela RZ: I've changed a lot of the features that we had in it. I've changed the people who are writing for it. It's really changed.

Matt M: How are you facilitating that change? How do you as an individual open yourself up to these, you know, to these new discoveries?

Izabela RZ: It's a huge part of what I do in terms of when I think about putting the magazine together is how do we make this as, well, for me, it's as interesting as possible. For me, being representative and inclusive is a huge part of who I am. I'm half Polish, half Chinese. I've lived in this country, but also a few others too. It feels natural to me to have this sort of diversity and variety within the magazine. A magazine is an opportunity to inspire and educate, but also it's an opportunity to tell stories and sort of open up the world to people.

Izabela RZ: We have a, feature in the magazine called ‘On Location’, which is all about zooming in onto a city around the world, which is not London and sometimes US based, but you know, basically trying to open up the photo community away from the sort of classic hubs of where you'd expect to find a lot of history of photography. So, for example, at the moment we're working on ‘On Location Rio’ and I'm working with a photographer called Igor Furtado who is really trying to get more visibility for Brazilian photographers, because they don't have the same access, they don't have the same opportunity as someone from London or Paris might have in terms of a photography education, and therefore, exposure and things like that. And I met him because I saw his Instagram, that led me to commission his work for a feature in the power and empowerment issue a couple of years ago. And now it's sort of come full circle that he's working with me to open up a bit of a community of photography in Rio. So it's not just a one time, “oh, let's publish your photography and then we'll move on and never speak to each other again”, because you never know how things might develop and open up.

Matt M: So, in the story of putting together a magazine, do people approach you or do you go and find them? Or is it a mixture of, of both? 

Izabela RZ: It's a mixture of both. We seek things out if we feel like we have a gap. So, for example, I'm working on the portrait issue right now, portraiture being an enormous theme in photography. We probably could do about 10 issues on portrait alone, but we talk about the self representation, we talk about, and within that self-portraiture, then we talk about, the relationship between author and subject, and then of course we have some beautiful projects that look at the portrait, have different portraits of different people from different ages. And if I feel like there's a gap with something like that, then maybe I will then put a pause on commissioning and then say to my team, “okay guys, I want us to look for a project that is really talking about this specific thing”. And then we'll go out..

Matt M: And what spaces do they go out to? I mean, obviously you mentioned Instagram and I suppose social media, 

Izabela RZ: It's honestly such a mix. It's, it's going out and finding them, but it's also going out into your inbox and looking who's emailed you. 

Matt M: Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Izabela RZ: So, when it comes to students and emerging photographers sending us work, it's so important that you've got a good pitch, that you're presenting your work in the best way possible. So that, for example, when we are looking for something specific or looking for something less specific, then the pitch that they've put together for us that represents their work is clear, not too long, and represents the themes that their work is addressing as best as possible. If I look at that email, Or that PDF that they've sent over, within 20 seconds, I know exactly what it's about.

Matt M: Yes.

Izabela RZ: Your pitch/email doesn't need to be longer than 150 words explaining a little bit about you and a little bit about your project. All you need to send are 10 to 15 images, be that in a PDF or just as JPEGs. I don't wanna see any WeTransfers. I don't want to see links to Dropboxes that have 10 folders in them with your entire portfolio. I wanna link to your website, but I don't want you to rely on that link. I want to see evidence of the fact that that person has thought about how that piece of work might fit into the British Journal of Photography. 

Matt M: Yes. If someone's listening to this and they've always admired the publication and they're making photography work, how they might go about becoming part of it?

Izabela RZ: Reach out with a pitch, email is best, I'd say. Probably DMing on Instagram is okay… I mean, I'm not, I'm not gonna say it's awful. It's not awful, but it's better to email.

Matt M: Spend time thinking about how you are talking about your work and how you are communicating that idea, I guess, of integrity about what, what it is you're doing and, and what you are, what you're about.

Izabela RZ: And don't forget about you. It's difficult to always be authentic with photography and the story you want to tell and things like that, but you are the thing that's authentic. And your point of view and your perspective and your angle onto that story will be unique in some way. It's important not to forget about that.

Matt M: Being the custodian of a magazine that's been in publication for so long, with such a rich history, you know, is quite a responsibility. And obviously the magazine industry has changed and it's highly competitive and so you are, you are maintaining, this printed presence. You as an editor, how are you adapting, changing the magazine, its contents, its format to make sure that it will be around potentially for another 168 years?

Izabela RZ: Yeah, it's a big question. It's something we're constantly thinking about and working on. So, for example, we redesigned, two years ago, more or less, we've reduced the cadence. Currently, we're bimonthly. We're thicker, we've changed our product to be more of a journal, I suppose, than a magazine. If that makes sense. The difference being a magazine being something that you might more readily throw away, be done with, read within 15 minutes. Now, the magazine is something that we hope that you might spend time with. I remember in journalism school we learned about this lean forward and the lean back theory. The lean back theory being you lean back with a lovely book or a lovely magazine and you spend time with it. You lean forward with your phone being on Instagram and looking things up really quickly.

Matt M: Cause that's ephemeral and that's quick.

Izabela RZ: Exactly. So there's, it's important to consider.

Matt M: I’ve never heard that before. That's a very interesting thing.

Izabela RZ: Yeah, it's physical. It's a physical, reading and spending time with something that is printed, is a physical experience. Trying to think of that as well as just what content is gonna be the most interesting for people to read.

Matt M: I think you certainly are achieving in that that goal of producing something which feels valuable. There's so much range and diversity there. It's a wonderful publication so long, long may live.

MUSIC

Matt M: You did a series of internships at various different magazines and that's something which lots of students talk to us about. Do we think they're valuable? where should they look for internships? What should they look for in an internship? So do you think that an internship is a valuable experience for a young person?

Izabela RZ: A hundred percent, but pick the right ones. My advice with internships, which is advice that I received from my tutors at City, Barbara and Jason. They said go for the internships and apply for work experience at the publications, but I'm sure this might apply for studios and various other places, that are small.

Izabela RZ: Small teams, B2B, which is business to business, so specialist magazines, tend to have smaller teams. And with a smaller team, you'll have more to do because they're so busy and they really need your help. You will really be able to contribute to the team.

Izabela RZ: The internships that I found that weren't so helpful were ones where the teams were enormous. Yes, they were big, respectful magazines and brands and yes, it looked good on the CV. But I didn't have anything to do because they were covered.

Izabela RZ: Whereas with the smaller teams, I felt that there was so much more personability within them. You get to know individual people much quicker because you are sat on the same table as them, or in the same room as them, and you get to earwig lots of different things that are happening around you, even if you're not super busy yourself all the time. 

Izabela RZ: When I interned at British Journal of Photography, I was immediately set off to start interviewing people, going to visit exhibitions, coming back, writing up my articles, those articles getting edited and then getting uploaded onto the website.

Matt M: You were in the role.

Izabela RZ: Exactly. 

PROVOCATION:

Matt M: We ask every creative, every participant of the podcast to offer up a provocation to our listeners. So that can be, a challenge, it can be a thought you want them to have, it could be an action you'd like them to take. Inspiring some creative response in our listeners. So do you have anything that you think would be useful to them?

Izabela RZ: Sure. Yeah. I've got, I've got a thought and I've got an action.

Matt M: Oh, lovely. Yeah. Double bubble.

Izabela RZ: So, my action is, if you are someone who loves magazines and is interested in either journalism or visual, graphic, editorial design in any way, I think the best place to start is either… go to a magazine shop. If you're in London, there's many, many, many. Or, university libraries also have a really great collection of magazines, go and have a look through the magazines that are there. But rather than picking up the magazines that you might usually go for because of what you are interested in, be that photography or illustration or art, pick up a magazine that's about a topic that's completely the opposite.

Izabela RZ: So, I don’t know, geography, science, technology, history, whatever. And pick up maybe five or six from lots of different genres and look at them critically. Look at the different ways that the journalists are writing. Particularly look at the smaller articles rather than the bigger ones and notice the way that the magazine has been designed to show rhythm and flow.

Izabela RZ: I think the design of a magazine is often really musical. Notice the way that all of these different magazines are put together. Because you'll see how much of a variety there is out there. And then my thought was, I think it's a good exercise to think back to the times where you've been uncomfortable and what you've learned from being in that uncomfortable place. Be that, a project that you felt was a waste of time, be that having your work highlighted in front of the class and being exposed for all your mistakes and the things you've done wrong. Think back to those experiences and try to think about something positive or something that you've learned from that supposedly uncomfortable or waste of time experience, and I guess add that to your portfolio of skills. 

Matt M: Brilliant.

Ending:

Matt M: Izabela, thank you ever so much for your time today. That's been incredibly valuable. 

Izabela RZ: My pleasure, very kind. Thank you very much.

Matt M: Thank you. Thank you.

MUSIC

Matt M: Thank you so much to Izabela for her time today. What a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed learning about what it's like to be an editor in such a prestigious and long-standing publication. Her provocation has made me think about magazines in a totally different way and inspired me to want to go and delve deeper into the world of publication. If you want to know more about Izabela and her work, you can follow her on Instagram @izaradz, and if you'd like to know more about the British Journal of Photography, you can visit their website at www.1854.photography/home. You can find links to these in our episode description. 

Matt M: Thank you very much for listening to today's episode. If you've enjoyed this podcast, why not share it with a friend or someone else who you think might be interested?

Matt M: Please rate and review us and leave us some feedback, cause we'd love to know what you think. It. And so, until the next episode, take care.