Episode: 15 — "Storytelling Using Podcast" · Full Episode #15
Date: 2020
Language: English
Alex Atack is a British photographer and podcast producer. At the time of recording he was the Managing Producer at Kerning Cultures, one of the Middle East's leading narrative podcast networks. He grew up in Dubai inside the expat bubble — an experience he reflected on critically. His entry into visual storytelling came through photojournalism before he transitioned into audio.
At thirteen years old, Alex visited the Getty Museum and encountered wall-to-wall photographs by James Nachtwey from Afghanistan. The images stopped him. He understood, in that moment, that photography could be more than aesthetics — it could tell stories, document reality, change how people see the world. "You can use photography to tell stories."
It was the kind of encounter that reorients a life. Everything that followed — the photojournalism, the storytelling, the eventual move to audio — traces back to a thirteen-year-old standing in front of war photographs in a museum.
See: The Getty Museum Epiphany
Alex was offered an assignment in Syria. He said yes. Then the anxiety began — the worst he had ever experienced. He could not sleep. He could not function. Eventually he called the editor and backed out.
He did not frame this as cowardice. He framed it as self-knowledge. The line between courage and recklessness is knowing what you can handle. He was not the person who could go into a war zone and come back intact. Admitting that — especially in a profession that valorises risk — was its own kind of courage.
See: Turning Down Syria
Alex described the expat experience in Dubai with unusual honesty: a bubble of privilege, disconnected from the region it sat in. He grew up surrounded by the Middle East without ever truly engaging with it. The awareness of that disconnect came later and informed his work — the desire to tell stories from the region rather than about it.
Alex studied under Guy Martin, a conflict photographer. Martin's influence was practical and philosophical: how to look, what to include, what to leave out. The mentorship grounded Alex's visual instincts before he moved into audio.
Alex told the story of Faraj — a narrative that moved between Yemen and Vietnam, illustrating the kind of cross-border, human-scale storytelling that Kerning Cultures specialised in. The story demonstrated his core belief: that the best stories about the Middle East are not geopolitical summaries but intimate, particular, human.
Alex made a case for audio as the most intimate storytelling medium. No images to mediate. No screen to flatten. Just a voice in someone's ear. He argued that this intimacy — the listener alone with the speaker — creates a connection that visual media cannot replicate. It was both an artistic position and an explanation of why he moved from photography to podcasting.
"You can use photography to tell stories." (EP 15)