Merlin Daleman (b.1977) is a British photographer who has spent most of his adult life living in the Netherlands. He attended South Devon College, Torquay, the University of Central England (now Birmingham City University) in the UK, and graduated from The Royal College of Art in The Hague, the Netherlands. He works as a freelance documentary photographer for leading Dutch publications, including NRC Handelsblad, Dagblad Trouw, Financieel Dagblad, and De Groene Amsterdammer. He is the recipient of awards including the Silver Camera awards for Documentary Photography in the Netherlands in 2008 and 2010 and had received grants from the EU Journalism Foundation Grant and the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship. His debut photobook, Mutiny, published by GOST Books in August 2025, builds on his long-term projects, such as the new black lung epidemic in Kentucky, USA and exploring the lives of families separated by labour migration in Ukraine.

In episode 265 Merlin discusses, among other things:

• How the Mutiny project came about
• How he funded it and set about shooting it
• Some of the stories behind images in the book
• Black lung story in Appalachia
• How a major motorycle accident helped his photography

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Eli Reed was born in the US in 1946 and studied pictorial illustration at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, graduating in 1969. In 1982, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he studied political science, urban affairs, and the prospects for peace in Central America.

Eli began photographing as a freelancer in 1970. His work from El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries attracted the attention of Magnum, he was the first African American photographer, and indeed the first person of colour, to join the agency, becoming a full member in 1988.

In the same year, Eli photographed the effects of poverty on America’s children for a film documentary called Poorest in the Land of Plenty, narrated by Maya Angelou. He went on to work as a stills photographer for major motion pictures. His video documentary Getting Out was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1993 and honored by the 1996 Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame International Film and Video Competition in the documentary category.

Eli’s special reports include a long-term study which became his first, highly acclaimed book, Beirut, City of Regrets; the ousting of Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti (1986); US military action in Panama (1989); the Walled City in Hong Kong; and, perhaps most notably, his documentation of African American experience over more than 20 years. Spanning the 1970s through the end of the 1990s, his book Black in America includes images from the Crown Heights riots and the Million Man March. In 2015, he published his first career retrospective, A Long Walk Home.

Eli has lectured and taught at the International Center of Photography, Columbia University, New York University, University of Texas and Harvard University and is a member of Kamoinge, the collective of black photographers founded in 1963 and the longest continuously running non-profit group in the history of photography.

On episode 264, Eli discusses, among other things:

• His ongoing mentoring of former students
• How working in a hospital was good prep for the kind of work he does
• Growing up in the Delaney Homes housing project in Perth Amboy, NJ
• How a visiting art critic gave him early encouragement at school
• Losing his mum at 12 years old
• The importance of certain teachers and mentors, especially Donal Greenhouse
• How his project Black In America came about
• Working for the San Francisco Examiner
• Joining Eugene Smith’s workshop after a long wait
• How Philip Jones Griffiths invited him to join Magnum
• Whether he is still an optimist?
• Photographing Trump
• Kamoinge
• A teaser about the book he is writing
• Being the first person of colour to join Magnum Photos

Referenced:

• Jaqueline Kennedy
• Roy De Carava
• W Gene Smith
• Bruce Davidson
• Eugene Richards
• Susan Meiselas
• Son of Sam
• Gordon Parks
• Gilles Peress

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Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides.
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Magnum legend Chris Steele-Perkins was born in Burma in 1947 to a Burmese mother and an English father, who brought him back to England when he was 2 years old. He published his first photobook The Teds in 1979 and shortly after that joined Magnum photos after an invitation to apply from none other than Josef Koudelka. He subsequently travelled all over the world, covering many of the major global conflicts of the 80’s and 90’s in between working extensively in his home country, and producing a number of books of that work, along with those from Afghanistan and later from his wife’s native country of Japan. He has won, to name but a few awards, The Oscar Barnack Prize, The Robert Capa Gold Medal and a number of World Press awards, and all that despite the fact that he doesn’t really consider himself to be a photojournalist.

Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month.
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides.
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Build Yourself a Squarespace Website video course here.