Artist Statement
Nigel Dickinson's photography concerns the environment,human condition, culture & identity. His work is primarily documentary, mixed with environmental portraiture, and where possible long term projects, working from the inside, creating images which reflect a collective identity of his subjects.

He documents real lives, living conditions, eccentrics, communities in flux, sometimes marginalized, indigenous or nomadic; in struggle, poverty, facing human rights violations, racism and oppression.

 

 

Nigel Dickinson, is a British born documentary photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker working for 30 years in the field. His work focuses on the environment, human condition, marginalized communities, sustainable development, identity and culture.
He graduated from Sheffield University in 1982 with a BA in Communications Arts, in photography and film. In 1983 his photographic work on public protest ‘Demonstrate’ was exhibited at the Camerawork Gallery, London, after which he spent several months photographing apartheid in South Africa. Parts of this work were exhibited and published in the UK national press

In the mid eighties his documentary work about striking coal miners and their families and the Great Strike, "Hanging On By Your Fingernails", was published by Spokesman Press and toured by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Then based from Birmingham UK, Dickinson was working both in documentary photography, teaching and shooting as a freelance photographer for UK national press and magazines.

In the late eighties and early nineties, Dickinson produced photo-documentarycampaigns in collaboration with Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Survival International, he made several trips across South East Asia, photographing and living with indigenous peoples, documenting deforestation, native blockades which earned him a bronze award from UNEP at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. This work was published worldwide and premiered at Fotofeis in Scotland.

In the early nineties Dickinson joined the environmental photo-agency Still Pictures, London, represented by BIOS in France. His work ‘Road’ documenting the Environmental Road Protest movement was published and toured by the Arts Council in 1994, and it was about this time he began his longterm work documenting Roma Gypsies across Europe. His ten year work on the Gypsy pilgrimage at Saintes Maries de la Mer in France, “Sara. Le pelerinage des gitans” was published by Actes Sud in 2003, and premiered the same year at Les Rencontres in Arles.

During the nineties, working with NGO’s and magazines, his work took him across the Balkans, covering refugees of war, diaspora and ethnic cleansing, from Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro. He also made several trips to Central and South America, working with Amnesty International, photographing street children, the aftermath of the Guatemalan civil war, the Yanomami and the effects of El Niño and La Niña, climate change in the Amazon, Brazil and the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Central America. This work was published widely.

Returning from Guatemala in 1996, he documented BSE for Time Magazine and Still Pictures. As the first photographer to get an inside view of the extermination of Mad Cows, he was awarded a World Press in the News Category for this in 1997. For many years since he has photographed the Meat industry across thew world, and man's relationship to the beasts he kills and eats; this project is entitled MEAT and was shortlisted for the European Publishers Award.

In 1999/2000 Dickinson covered the aftermath of the hurricanes sweeping across France; and aerial photographic documentary of the devastation across France's forests.

In 2000 Dickinson was awarded runner up in the Eugene Smith Award, for his longterm document on Roma across Europe. Parts of this work have been exhibited by the European Union, shown at Visa Pour l'image, in the OSI documentary series 'Moving Walls' 2005, published in National Geographic Magazine, D Republicca, Mare, La Vanguardia, Figaro, Stern, L'Express and Geo. He is represented for editorial and news photography by Polaris Images, New York.

Dickinson has worked photographing Sharia Islamic law in northern Nigeria in 2003; recycling waste industry and Smokey Mountain rubbish dump Phnom Penh since 2006; the sex industry Cambodia; the rise of anti-gypsyism across Europe including Italian Roma ID cards in 2008 and the situation for Roma expelled from France, in Romania and Bulgaria in 2010. In 2011 he worked across Mexico, central and South America for the Red Cross, and personal documentary work continuing the 'Roma Beyond Borders' project. Recently in 2012, he witnessed 'Gross National Happiness' in Bhutan, re-visited the Borneo indigenous peoples of Sarawak he lived with decades ago, finished the 'Roma Beyond Borders' documenting Banjara gypsies in India.

In 2011 Nigel Dickinson filmed and directed films for the IFRC Red Cross in Managua, Nicaragua and Kingston Jamaica. In 2007, in collaboration with Nanouk TV, he directed two films about environment and energy issues, "The IEA Today" with International Energy Agency, 'The Solar Power Village' with Tamera in Portugal.

Dickinson lives between Paris and London. Working worldwide as a documentary, editorial and portrait photographer, photo-journalist and documentary filmmaker.

 

Cross-Reference