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"When I was in... your position... I was quite disillusioned with the idea of photography or of me being able to make it as a photographer. The notion of anyone being interested in my work or my vision of the world and the narratives I was trying to tell, it just didn't seem like it was feasible."

We had a really interesting talk by Jack Latham the other day and so I'm going to talk to you about two of his projects.

The first project is called 'A Pink Flamingo' which he started during his final year at University and is now a book. For this project he went to America. It was a revisiting of the famous historical route called The Oregon Trail, where back in 18th and 17th century, fur traders carved roots out of Central North America to reach California. He wanted to attempt this in the height of the recession. It was this idea that the route was kind of like a vein that flows through America and is associated with Road trips and the gold rush but the road itself and the route itself is quite ignored. In his mind as he finished uni was that this work was finished however as he left he was told by someone:

"Don't leave University with a finished project."

He said to us that it is an effect of our education system in the West, that you have to study hard to pass the test to graduate. Like we're programmed to move on the second wefinished with the test. Jack believes this sort of mentality doesn't go well with creativity. He decided to continue this project after uni and after saving up he went back to America to finish it.

The second project I'm going to talk to you about is called 'Sugar Paper Theories' which he created around 2014/2015.He was awarded some funding by a charity called 'Ideas Tap', a charity that unfortunately no longer exists. The charity was set up by a multi-million pound hedge fund manager to facilitate fresh artist talent in the UK. There were tonnes of grants that you could apply for and they worked in conjunction with Magnum. They had a big prize every year called the Magnum Ideas Tap Awards where you got to pitch your dream project and they would give you £1500 to do it. You would then go away make it and you'd have a big group show and whoever was the best one won £5000, which Jack won. For Jack's dream project he wrote a proposal investigating a double homicide that happened in Iceland where six young people had wrongly admitted to committing the crime even though they didn't. When it was released that he was shortlisted, Vice the website got in touch and offered him £5000 to film a documentary of him making this work. As he created this work he became interested in limitations of photography .

"... I think it's all well and good to look at a photograph but I actually think that it's its inability to do certain things that make a photograph or makes the genre photography kind of really interesting and beautiful. The idea that it's something based in reality that you can project so much meaning onto it. You can be misled by something that you recognise to be real."

When it comes to this case where six young people were forced to admit and believe that they murdered these two men, it incorporates the idea of being led down a narrative that sort of mimics this idea of photography that it can control narratives.

The title of this project comes from this particular image which was the desk of a conspiracy theorist in Iceland. On his desk were several case files from the unresolved murder and on the wall was a timeline of events that he had curated and researched throughout his time which is drawn on sugar paper. This photo is an understanding of what happened in the case and why these six people were wrongly convicted as they suffered from something called Memory Distrust Syndrome.

I think my main takeaway from Jack and his talk was to pursue projects that interest and fascinate us. I think he shows that the more interested we are the more creative we become.