Black images matter: Shade, the powerful podcast unpicking the tumult of 2020

Lou Mensah explains why the new season of her podcast about art, race and identity examines the defining images of 2020 and beyond, from BLM protests to Vogue covers and Trump supporters

Lou Mensah spent the 1990s working in PR but her favourite part of the job was not the to and fro with clients. What she really liked was meeting and briefing photographers. So when she fell ill at one point, a friend gave her a camera and said: If you're well enough to go out today, just take some pictures." And Mensah did.

Six months later, another friend submitted that work to a competition Alexander McQueen and Nick Knight were judging. To Mensah's surprise, she won. Soon she was shooting for GQ magazine and exhibiting with Helmut Newton and Damien Hirst. Artistically and professionally, she had arrived. Yet, as a mixed-race woman, she couldn't shake the feeling she was an outsider.