This episode is a conversation with Sarah Ainslie, a photographer based in the East End of London. She talks about her journey into photography, and her work exploring objects of memory, hidden lives and changing landscapes.

Ainslie's approach is collaborative and community-focused, engaging with groups such as theatre performers, working women, and visually impaired people. Her forthcoming book Women at Work: East End Portraits 1992-2025 (Spitalfields Life) will be published in November 2026. Other recent projects include 'Caught Between Two Worlds', which draws from photograph albums belonging to her grandfather when he was logging teak in Thailand between 1896-1914. She reconstructs and re-imagines spaces to encounter unexplained and secret lives that came to light through a chance meeting almost half a century later. In 'Limehouse Tilbury', walking east along the river Thames, she is taking pictures of the disappearing and changing landscape littered with derelict buildings and abandoned objects — shoes, clothing, pieces of furniture — the traces of humans and their lives.

https://sarahainslie.com/

https://hackney-museum.hackney.gov.uk/

Sarah is in conversation with Judith Meddick, Honorary Research Associate in the Centre for Visual Cultures. The episode was recorded at Sarah’s studio in the East End.

Image taken from 'Caught Between Two Worlds', Sarah Ainslie (2017-2019). Image description: Black-and-white composite of two family photographs. On the left, a British family poses outside, with five adults and one child holding a teddy bear. On the right, a Thai family poses, with two adult women and three children. Superimposed down the centre is a seated man in a wide-brimmed hat, holding a newspaper, creating an overlapping image between the two families.