“The stories that evolve from these small remote islands are a microcosm of society - whilst there’s a feeling of the exotic in visiting these places, there’s an undeniable familiarity. “ - Jon Tonks
Jon Tonks (b.1981, UK) is a British photographer based in the UK. His work focuses on telling stories about people’s lives shaped by history and geography. With an MA in Documentary Photography & Photojournalism from London College of Communication, his work has been featured in The New York Times, Le Monde, GEO (FR), Capital (DE), National Geographic (CN), The Guardian, Sunday Times, Telegraph and FT Weekend Magazines, the British Journal of Photography, Source and more.
He has been shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing National Portrait Prize three times, twice for the Terry O’Neill award, and in 2014, Tonks was presented with the Vic Odden Award by the Royal Photographic Society for his first book Empire – a journey across the South Atlantic exploring life on four remote British Overseas Territories. The book was hailed by Martin Parr as one of his best books of the year.
His work is now in a number of private collections, both in the UK and abroad, including Stanford University, California, The Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, The Hyman Collection of British photography, London, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Texas.