The concert photographer Chris Christodoulou has been taking pictures at the BBC Proms for 35 years. Even more than the musicians under their baton, he spends his time watching conductors like a hawk, observing their every gesture and grimace. Every year the wackier images, which convey less dignity but more truth, don’t make it into the public eye.

This exhibition includes one of my images, so I hesitated when I was asked to write about it – but I only hesitated for a moment. I have learned that if you are reluctant to promote your own work other people are even more inclined in that direction, so you should seize any chance you get.

America is a country that has always thrived on dramatic battles between "good" and "evil", God and the Devil. Demonising may have Puritan roots, but it remains a particularly American obsession. The photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe, whose sexually explicit images shocked many of his compatriots, drew much of his strength from exploiting the chasm that divides the self-righteously "pure" and the darker forces of revolution.

American photographer William Eggleston is famous for dedicating himself to colour photography at a time when it was still considered kitsch – acceptable for wedding and Christening photos, but not much else. The best known example of his embrace of colour is a 1973 photo of a red light bulb hanging from a red ceiling, a picture devoid of subject matter beyond redness and the associations it triggers.

Nous avons Brexité but we are still welcome at the 47th Rencontres d'Arles. Each summer this beautiful French town gives itself over to an international photography festival which this year features around 40 exhibitions of varying sizes with countless lectures, parties, book signings and fringe events.

When I was first commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment I never dreamed that it would turn into a marriage of such long duration. The length and breadth of the collaboration has lasted over 20 years now, and long may it continue. It has afforded me the opportunity to get to know many of the players, which as time passes allows for an intimacy and trust that's very rare in photography, a profession which, like the proverbial shark, requires constant forward movement.

Tanya Habjouqa, winner of the World Press Photo Award 2014, is a founding member of the all-female Middle Eastern photography collective Rawiya (meaning “she who tells a story”) which focuses on raising the visibility of female Arab photographers as well as presenting an insider’s view of the region, and defying Western stereotypes of the Middle East.

Asking theartsdesk's theatre photographer to review Photo London is like asking a car mechanic to review the London Motor Show. "Remember the big picture!" I kept telling myself as I tried to deconstruct the lighting of a particular shot or measure the depth of field.

Today we amuse ourselves with Facebook clips of talking cats, but in the 1850s they had stereographs, pairs of identical photographs that, viewed through special lenses, become suddenly and gloriously three-dimensional. Vistas open up as if by magic, the illusion of space all the more beguiling for its transience. The act of looking through a special pair of glasses is a little bit like peeping behind a curtain, the intimacy of the encounter adding a slightly voyeuristic frisson to all manner of subject matter from landscapes to mock-ups of popular paintings.

“Look at the pictures”, yells apoplectic Senator Jesse Helms as he brandishes a clutch of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, “a known homosexual who died of AIDS”. It's 1989 and Senator Helms is doing his level best to close down an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s photographs at the Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati and have its director, Dennis Barrie, indicted for obscenity.