Biography

The short version:

I research, write and make images to explain disparate forms of contemporary power and the links that connect them.

Awards   –   Exhibitions   –   Press   –   Talks

The long version:

In my work I look for ways to visualise powerful institutions, actors, technologies and practices. To do this I employ a range of research strategies, from depth interviewing to open source investigation, and work across media and platforms, using photography, text, video, data visualisation, exhibitions, books, films, and apps. I see all of these projects as small chapters in a much larger interconnected archive which I am slowly building, and which demonstrates the inter-reliance of different forms of power on each other. You can read more about how I think about my practice here.

For example, in Metropole I investigated the transformation of London at the hands of unaccountable developers and property speculators. In Shadows of the State, I examined the secret communications used by intelligence agencies, creating images from intercepted signals and uncovering a previously unknown geography of covert radio broadcast sites. More recently I published Depravity’s Rainbow which investigates the connections between early space travel, colonialism and the Holocaust, and the impact of that history on present day efforts to explore space. I am currently finishing Trading Zones, an eight year long project which explores the links between offshore financial centres and ‘legitimate’ onshore centres.

My books and prints are held in institutional and private collections including at The Victoria & Albert Museum (UK), The Tate Group (UK), The National Media Museum (UK), The London Museum (UK), The Imperial War Museum (UK), Foundation Memorial de la Shoah (France), Centre National des Arts Plastiques (France), The Deutsches Technikmuseum (Germany) The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (USA), Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA), Yale University (USA), Art Institute of Chicago (USA), The Library of Congress (USA), and Yad Vashem (Israel). My work has been nominated and shortlisted for some awards and even won a couple, but I don’t care much about prizes so I have removed them from my bio, if you really want to see a list it is here.

As an educator I am senior lecturer in documentary photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and was previously course leader of the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (online/part-time) between 2019 and 2023. I have also been a visiting speaker at numerous other institutions including the Universities of South Wales, Westminster, Coventry, and Falmouth (UK), the Royal Academy of Arts (Netherlands), ENS Louis-Lumiere (France), Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerpen (Belgium), and the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (Switzerland). You can read more about my teaching here and for a list of my talks and workshop see here.

I am currently a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics, in the Department of Media and Communications (supervised Dr Dylan Mulvin and Professor Lilie Chouliaraki) where I am researching photojournalistic trust, and the way it is shaped by infrastructures, institutions, technologies and other factors, funded by an Economic and Social Research Council grant. You can read more about this research here.