About Richard Mark Dobson

I make pictures to feel something — and to help you feel something too. Not just to provoke thought, but to stir a vibration. A vibe. That emotional resonance we carry in our bones, when a moment, a place, or a person transmits something real. Unspoken but undeniable.

My work is grounded in reality. The physical, tangible world. But what I aim to capture runs deeper — mood, atmosphere, tension, the fragile line between beauty and despair. I call it Existentializm, a personal framework shaped not by academic dogma, but by lived experience. I awaken each day in a world that feels dislocated and strange — disconnected from place, people, and even self. Through photography, I attempt to navigate this dislocation, to trace meaning through image-making, and to map a fragmented sense of belonging across three continents that have shaped me: Europe, Africa, and Asia.

For over 25 years, photography has been my lifeblood — the one constant. It nourishes, depletes, compels, frustrates, and ultimately restores me. It is not just practice, but process. A means to reckon with questions I can’t otherwise answer. What does it mean to exist in a world that often feels absurd? What lies beneath the surfaces we take for granted? In peeling back those layers — through colour, composition, and concept — I hope to invoke a forced awakening in the viewer. To see things raw, real, and unfiltered.

I work from two core disciplines: the observational and the conceptual. Sometimes I chase the decisive moment — reacting instinctively, camera in hand, led by light and instinct. Other times I construct, reconfigure, and build visual essays that speak to larger, more abstract ideas. Both approaches are equal parts of my language. I don’t chase a singular style or visual signature. I don’t want my work to be “obviously mine.” Anonymity gives me freedom — to explore what I want, when I want, and how I want.
Each project opens a dialogue — sometimes with the subject, sometimes with myself, and ideally, always with you, the viewer. That dialogue might be one of beauty, melancholy, satire, idealism, or its failure. The images might be decorative — or deliberately not.

They might whisper, or they might demand your attention. But at their core, they all ask the same question: What does it mean to be here, now, in this skin, in this place, in this time?

My work offers no answers. Just a way in.