Artist’s Statement
I was born in rural Cornwall and spent my childhood roaming the moors, climbing tors, wading in rivers and making dens in the woods. The significance of these early experiences was clarified after many years of living in London when I started to question my relationship to landscape and to ask if I could continue to think of myself as belonging in, and to, a place I had long since left.
This uncertainty underpins my practice, it was my motivation to write and photograph the book Uncommon Ground (Faber 2015) and has pulled me back to the landscapes of my childhood for two recent projects. Hyreth (2023), taking its name from a Cornish word for nostalgic longing, presents a fragmented coming of age story narrated through key locations of my own childhood and adolescence. Pretend I’m Not Even Here (2024) is a series of self/place portraits that explore conflicts between the need for affirmation and belonging, and the fear of exposure and rejection. Both projects present images that invite allegorical interpretation, with subtle interventions that suggest ambiguous, unreliable narratives around loss, memory and identity.
These projects, and my work in general, involve the landscape in questioning whether we are ever who we think we are. We mythologize ourselves and the world we live in but we are all exiles from the places and moments that made us. Our sense of self is as powerful, fragile, real and imaginary as the exile’s memory of home - my practice attempts to reconcile this identity at a time when our relationship to landscape, nature and place has existential implications.
Biography
Dominick’s photography career started in student media while he was studying Philosophy at UCL and quickly led to freelance work for national newspapers, in the years that followed he built up a long list of editorial, commercial and NGO clients.
His long-term project The Edge of Two Worlds, documenting the changing lives of a community of Innu in northern Canada, won the Marty Forscher Fellowship Award for Humanistic Photography in 2005, and second place in the Observer Hodge award in 2004. This work was published internationally and exhibited in the Leica galleries in Frankfurt and Solms, and in the Proud Gallery in London.
In 2007 Dominick collaborated with writer Kate Rew on the best-selling book Wild Swim, which was credited with launching an outdoor swimming revival.
Dominick wrote and photographed Uncommon Ground, which was published by Guardian Faber in 2015 to wide acclaim - described by George Monbiot as “…an astonishing book of heart-wrenching beauty, which will re-ignite your enchantment with the natural world.”
In his ongoing personal projects, Dominick continues to explore themes and ideas that have always been present in his work: relationships between people and their environment; the experience of nature; memory, identity and beauty.
He continues to balance commissioned work with long-term projects, collaborations and teaching.
CV
SELECTED CLIENTS/COMMISSIONS
1996-2024 Guardian Weekend Magazine, The Independent Magazine, The Telegraph, Médecins Sans Frontières, Survival International, Serco, Aviva, Opera North, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Libération, Royal Marsden Hospitals, Medical Research Foundation
BOOKS
2007 Wild Swim – with Kate Rew, published by Guardian Books
2015 Uncommon Ground – published by Guardian Faber
2024 M4LUS – self-published by The Outdoor Press
2024 Hyreth: catalogue for an imaginary exhibition – self-published by The Outdoor Press
EXHIBITIONS
2003 The Guardian Newsroom, London – Group show: Hodge Photographic Award
2003 Studio 1.1, London – Solo show: A Way of Life That Does Not Exist
2004 Proud Gallery, London – Group show: Sometimes Words are Too Slow
2005 Leica Gallery Frankfurt – Solo show: The Edge of Two Worlds
2007 The Smithfield Gallery, London – Wild Swim launch exhibition
2023 Gray’s Wharf, Penryn – Group show: Terra
AWARDS AND GRANTS
2003 Observer Hodge Award, 2nd Prize
2005 Marty Forscher Award for Humanistic Photography
2014 Arts Council Grants for the Arts recipient