Anthony Luvera: Socially Engaged Photography
In the final episode of this mini-season of The Photo Ethics Podcast, we talk with Anthony Luvera about socially engaged photographic practice. He discusses the kinds of questions that collaboration helps to raise - including questions about who benefits from the work, and who gets to make decisions about where and how it is seen - which keeps him interrogating the power that he holds as an artist. Finally, Anthony reflects on his experience of the 2026 Photography Ethics Symposium.
What you'll find inside:
‘Collaboration doesn’t solve the problems of representation. What it does is it brings about a new set of questions and responsibilities in the creation of the work and in the dissemination of the work, as well'.’ (5:28)
‘Agreeing to be represented is very different from having a meaningful role in that representation.’ (7:43)
‘Whilst published principles can help us identify what needs attention, we also need to consider what happens when we put them into practice - particularly when circumstances change or people have different priorities.’ (8:11)
‘Visibility isn’t necessarily a benefit in and of itself. … I think what we really need to ask is: Who wants to be seen, under what circumstances, and what the consequences might be in making someone visible. Having a voice also means being able to set limits on what is shared.‘ (10:07)
What does photography ethics mean to Anthony?
‘For me its about listening. It’s always about listening. Photography is about listening.’ (21:45)
Links:
Anthony Luvera is an Australian socially engaged artist, writer, and educator based in London. His long-term collaborative work with individuals and communities has been exhibited widely in galleries, public spaces, and festivals, including the UK House of Commons, Tate Liverpool, the British Museum, Art on the Underground, the National Portrait Gallery, Belfast Exposed, PhotoIreland, Les Rencontres d'Arles, and Landskrona Foto Festival. His writing has been published in Trigger, Photography and Culture, Visual Studies, Photoworks, Source, and photographies, and he is the editor of Photography For Whom?, a periodical on socially engaged photography. Anthony is Director of Education at the Royal Photographic Society, a trustee of Four Corners, and 2026 Researcher-in-Residence at the Photography Ethics Centre. He previously served as Associate Professor and Course Director at Coventry University.
You can see his work at https://www.luvera.com/