Mikko Takkunen teaches us that small equipment doesn’t mean small output, as his new photography book Hong Kong was shot entirely on digital compact cameras. 

I recently sat down with Mikko to discuss the book, and after providing some fascinating insights into his process and approach we got on to the topic of gear. Having seen firsthand the stunning images in Hong Kong, when I asked which equipment he used I was expecting him to mention one of the best mirrorless or even a medium-format camera. To my surprise, it was quite the opposite. 

The following is an excerpt from the interview:

To learn that the majority of the book was shot with not only a compact camera, but a compact camera with a sensor smaller than APS-C certainly took me by surprise – but it also made complete sense. 

Much like the great street photographers, Takkunen photographs the world as an observer, which means what he looks for in a camera is a small blueprint enabling him to have it on him easily at all times, and a large versatile zoom to capture details. He found that with the Sony RX100 VII, which is a lesson in the importance of finding what works for you and your practice.

The tradeoff for the size and high zoom function is usually a lower image quality, which may still be the case, but the image quality produced is still outstanding and was printed in great detail in a professionally published book by Kehrer – what more do you need?

The Sony RX100 VII is a tiny compact camera that boasts several high-quality features, and in my opinion perhaps doesn’t get the recognition it deserves because of the smaller Type-1 (1-inch) sensor and higher f-stop. The RX100 VII’s 24-200mm zoom lens has a super fast AF with real-time tracking and eye AF, plus enhanced image stabilization and 4K video.

As photographers, we can often obsess over the latest and greatest gear, and for the majority, the final output is posted to social media where it dies as quickly as it’s uploaded. So it begs the question unless you’re printing on a large scale, why do we need a constantly increasing megapixel count? I am certainly guilty of putting off projects because I do not have the ‘right’ equipment, but I am now inspired to get started on those long put-off shoots and to use my iPhone more!

If you haven’t done so already, I recommend checking out the full interview with Mikko Takkunen where we discuss his beautiful new book Hong Kong. 

See our guides for more information on the best camera for street photography, the best compact camera, and the best camera phone.

At the end of Tish, the documentary about the photographer Tish Murtha, one of the lingering questions posed by her daughter Ella is how did this incredibly talented artist not manage to sustain a career in photography?

Murtha, who created unparalleled portraits of working-class life in Newcastle’s West End in the 1970s and 80s, has been “rediscovered” in recent years, but her inability to make a living in her lifetime not only haunts the film but also current photography – where working-class voices are increasingly rare.

“Primarily with Tish being a working-class woman and a single mother – that was the defining reason why she couldn’t sustain a career,” says Paul Sng, the director of Tish. “It’s much harder for women to progress in the arts to this day.”

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In 2022, a study showed that the proportion of working-class artists had shrunk from 16.4% for those born between 1953 and 1962 to just 7.9% for those born four decades later. The research found that people who grew up in professional families were now four times more likely than those with working-class parents to be in creative work.

Sng believes that more should be done to help artists from working-class backgrounds, who might find it challenging, as Murtha did, to navigate the funding applications and institutions, such as Arts Council England, which enable artists to make a living.

“She should have been supported more; not everyone can write applications,” says Sng. “You can use video to apply these days but there are people who don’t have a mobile phone. It’s still very difficult for people like Tish to make it.”

Tish comes to BBC iPlayer at a time when there’s a boom in interest in working-class photography.

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Along with the Murtha film there’s the Bert Hardy exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery; Leo Regan’s film My Friend Lanre, which charts the rollercoaster life of former Independent photographer Lanre Fehintola, and Johny Pitts’ After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024 is touring.

A working-class photographer who did sustain an incredible career was Bert Hardy.

Hardy – who was the eldest of seven children and grew up in a working-class family in Blackfriars, London – is arguably one of the most versatile British photographers of the 20th century.

He went on night raids during the Korean war, took images from within the Belsen concentration camp but also captured celebrity engagements and shot sporting heroes such as Sugar Ray Robinson.

But it was his work with Picture Post, where he covered all aspects of working-class life from mining communities and rural poverty to the diversity of Cardiff’s Butetown that is the most celebrated.

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Karen McQuaid, the senior curator of the Hardy show, said: “He obviously had a huge abundance of talent but also knew what to do with it and was entrepreneurial and hungry for commercial success as well as anything else.”

Hardy also operated during a period where there was a proliferation of illustrated weekly magazines, such as Picture Post and Life, which had a circulation of more than 13m at its peak – something unthinkable now or even in Murtha’s era.

Pitts, whose exhibition features more than two dozen working-class photographers, says he wanted to give a platform to artists who sit outside the big institutions and also present a “messy” image of working-class life.

“These artists haven’t been given either a chance, haven’t conformed to upper middle class notions of what good taste is, or simply haven’t had the chance to build a network within that world,” says Pitts.

“[The exhibition] is not a sob story. This is, in some ways, a celebration of the tenacity of working-class photographers, but also just to show how stagnant mainstream photography has been.”

It is one of the most recognisable images of the surrealist movement: a black-and-white photograph by Man Ray of Kiki de Montparnasse with f-shaped sound holes painted on her back representing a violin.

Le Violon d’Ingres, which was produced in 1924 and signed by the US artist, set a record for the most expensive photograph when it sold for $12.4m (£9.8m) at auction in New York in 2022.

One of three prints made in 1970 from the original negative will go under the hammer in Paris on Thursday as part of an auction of 200 Man Ray works covering all aspects of his creative production from a collection of one of his close friends.

Elodie Morel-Bazin, the European head of photography at the auctioneers Christie’s, said the range of the work on sale was “marvellous”, adding: “There isn’t any other complete collections representing the whole range of Man Ray’s work like this and it’s the first to be sold by someone who actually knew him.”

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She said lot 338, the Violon d’Ingres print, which has been given a catalogue estimate of €40,000-€60,000 (£34,200-£51,400), was produced under the supervision of Man Ray.

“He wanted to use a different technique so it’s completely different from the 1924 vintage print but is still one of the most iconic images in the world,” Morel-Bazin said.

Other photographs being sold include several self-portraits and others featuring major literary and artistic figures including Jean Cocteau, Louis Aragon, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust – on his deathbed – James Joyce, Elsa Schiaparelli and Catherine Deneuve.

The collection was amassed by Marion Meyer, the president of the International May Ray Association, who met the artist in Paris in the 1960s and became part of his inner circle. Man Ray had returned from Hollywood in 1951 with his wife, Juliet, and had settled in an old sculptor’s studio in the Latin Quarter.

Meyer was married to Marcel Zerbib, the artist’s editor, close friend and chess partner. “His [Man Ray’s] photographs were highly sought-after, but not his paintings, objects or drawings, and those were the works I really loved and wanted to preserve,” she said.

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Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, Man Ray established his career in US modernism in the 1910s before moving from New York to Paris a decade later and then splitting his time between the two cities. He died in Paris in November 1976 after a long career that spanned photography, painting, sculpture, drawing and other mediums.

The original Le Violon d’Ingres photograph was published in June 1924 on the front cover of the surrealist magazine Littérature, which was edited by André Breton. Man Ray was fascinated by the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and the photograph was a reference to Ingres’s languorous nudes and his hobby of playing the violin when not painting. Le violon d’Ingres is a French idiom meaning “hobby”.

After Man Ray’s death, Juliet was inundated with requests for certification of his work. Meyer, whom the artist had asked to look after his wife, set up the international association to document his art. “It has been an enormous project, but it is done now,” she said. “There is very little out there that we don’t know about.”

“For almost 60 years I’ve devoted my life to Man Ray, and I don’t feel he needs me any more. It’s done, I’ve fulfilled my goal,” Meyer added.