The Idle Hands Society

Alys Tomlinson is a renowned British photographer celebrated for her documentary-style approach. Her work explores the interplay between identity, place, and ritual, often achieved through deep immersion within communities. This method allows her to authentically capture their unique relationships with their environments and traditions. With a background in anthropology, Tomlinson brings a distinct perspective to her projects.

"Feels like I just finished shovelling snow, and now I’m cursing the autumn leaves that keep clogging my gutter. (Seriously, why can’t nature be a little more considerate?) Time flies when you’re having fun… or trying to avoid adulting. Dan and I recently had a deep conversation about Tom Collins' new zine (it's a must-read for anyone who's ever felt like a productivity app was just a cruel joke), and this new feature we're convinced will make us all filthy rich. It's called 'Photobook that'll Make You Rich.' Trust us, it's a game-changer."

On The Idle Hands Society’s latest episode, Paul and Dan speak with Brian Carroll, founder and editor of Offline Journal, a photo-forward publication championing Welsh photographic artists.

On The Idle Hands Society’s latest episode, graphic designer Ryan McDonagh joins us to chat about studying art, having a disability as an artist, using art to express yourself, answering "the big question" using text in art, social media algorithms, the last three things we listened to, designing album covers, making authentic videos, trying new things.

This week, the super-talented and almost Welsh documentary photographer Roo Lewis talks to The Idle Hands Society about folklore, faith, community, and the importance of telling positive stories. Roo spent over two years photographing the landscape and the people of Port Talbot to create a wonderful body of work.

Dan and Paul round up 2023’s highlights in their end-of-year review.

Dan and Paul round up 2023’s highlights in their end-of-year review.

This week, we spoke with photographer and educator Mimi Mollica.

This week, Sìle Walsh talks about becoming an artist again after motherhood. She also talks about how the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year award built her confidence and how resilience is vital as a creative.

We caught up with Roland Ramanan at the tail end of his Kickstarter campaign to print Dominoes, his decade-long exploration of joy, addiction, pain and hope in a community centred around a unique corner of London's east end.

One from the archives. Here’s a conversation we had with Stephen Leslie back in January 2023. We chat about the humour in his work, Stephen’s YouTube channel, writing versus photography, street photography, and approach the question of what street photography is.

Dan, Paul, Ed Thompson catch up in an inpromtude episode of The Idle Hands Society Podcast. Sorry about the audio blowing out in a few spots; we recorded this gem unplanned using some very basic gear. As we’re getting into the slower months for our work, you’ll see us picking up the pace a little with the podcast.

We catch up after a little break to discuss the end of Dan’s first year at university, our collaborative project Adult Youth Club, the last art of maintaining friendships, and the Homeless World Cup.

Dan waxes lyrical about “LU cinnamon biscuits”, his new website, and his upcoming first exhibition at the Copeland Gallery. We discuss if it’s possible to make pictures about how we feel rather than what we see. Paul also discusses the imminent release of his first zine, Not so far.

Welcome to the lost episode of the Idle Hands Society Podcast. This episode was recorded on the 14th June 2022.
Dan & Paul talk to Welsh designer, Tom Collins. We discuss his creative journey, from childhood his parents encouraged him to be artistic, from music to photography to design and recently back to photography and how they all link together. We talk about the muscle memory of art and good and bad habits. How being creative helps our mental health.

Merry Christmas, Idle Handers! I hope you’re all having a good one. We hope you enjoy this episode of the Idle Hands Society Podcast. I’d love anybody reading this to take a moment to jump over to Instagram and leave us a comment on our latest post to let us know you read the show notes. The reason I’m asking is I spend a lot of time pulling all this together, I worry that I’m wasting my time researching and linking if no one is looking at them. Big love, Dan & Paul.

We have a chat about our future guest Alex Prior, we talk about Not So Far going to the printers, Tom Collins input into Paul’s new venture ‘Southerndown Press’, another moan about social media, the importance of personal work in effective marketing, Magnum Photos, Bieke Depoorter’s incredible collaboration with Agata.

Welcome to the lost episode of the Idle Hands Society Podcast. This episode was recorded on the 14th June 2022.
Dan & Paul talk to Welsh designer, Tom Collins. We discuss his creative journey, from childhood his parents encouraged him to be artistic, from music to photography to design and recently back to photography and how they all link together. We talk about the muscle memory of art and good and bad habits. How being creative helps our mental health.

Dan & Paul talk to Al Brydon about his book ‘Even The Birds Were Afraid To Fly’, Al’s creative process, collecting notes, what makes a photograph good enough to show someone, how we’ve changed over time, what photography means to Al, and the formation of Inside The Outside Collective.

Today’s episode is the first one we’ve ever filmed. We’ll release the video on YouTube One week after the audio podcast, on the 17th of June 2022. We have a slightly slower, more awkward start because this is the first for us. Please bear with us; we relax into it after a while.

We don’t often ask for things from you, but we’d appreciate as many subscriptions to our YouTube channel as we can manage. It’ll let us know if this colossal effort is worth it in the future.

In our first ‘in-person-pod’, we discuss learning as a mature student. Dan has accepted a place for a BA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. We talk about Dan’s motives and feelings about the move and whether going to university as a mature student is worth the time and money. And, of course, we wander off-topic more times than we realise.