Donovan Wylie


Donovan Wylie is a Northern Irish photographer, based in Belfast. His work chronicles what he calls "the concept of vision as power in the architecture of contemporary conflict" – prison, army watchtowers and outposts, and listening stations – "merging documentary and art photography".
Wylie's work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum and The Photographers' Gallery in London, National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, and Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto; and is held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, Yale University Art Gallery, Milwaukee Art Museum, National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Science Museum Group in the UK, Ulster Museum in Belfast, and Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2010 he was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. He was a member of Magnum Photos from 1998 to 2017.
Wylie has also made films – in 2002 he won a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) for The Train, a 50 minute documentary written, directed and with cinematography by Wylie.

Career

Wylie was born in 1971 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He started photography in his teens while a pupil at Belfast Royal Academy, and at the age of 16 he left school and went on a three-month journey around Ireland. These travels resulted in his first book, 32 Counties, published when he was 18. In 1992, at age 20, Wylie became a nominee of the Magnum Photos agency, then a full member in 1998, and left the organisation in 2017.
Since 2000, he has completed various photographic and film projects exploring the religious identity, history, and the concept of territory, especially in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, post-ceasefire. His work has expanded over the years, and concentrates on the "architecture of conflict". His notable works include projects on The Maze Prison in Northern Ireland, British watchtowers, and the Green Zone in Baghdad. He has also worked in China, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Israel, and Yugoslavia.
The Guardian's review of Wylie's Vision as Power exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London stated: "Merging documentary and art photography, Wylie's images reveal both the impact of surveillance architecture on the natural landscape and the importance of surveillance in modern conflict."
Wylie's book The Maze is included in Parr and Badger's The Photobook: A History, Volume II, and his Scrapbook is included in Volume III.
In 2013, Wylie was a Doran Artist in Residence at Yale University Art Gallery, a residency that resulted in a body of American work titled A Good and Spacious Land. An exhibition of the work opened there in June 2017 alongside work by Jim Goldberg.
In 2018/2019, as a response to Brexit, he travelled around the British Isles, photographing lighthouses from neighbouring coastlines.

Publications

Publications by Wylie

Publications paired with others

  • A Good and Spacious Land. New Haven, CT: Yale, 2017.. A two-volume set with Jim Goldberg's Candy. With an introduction by Pamela Franks and essays by Christopher Klatell and Laura Wexler.

Films

  • The Train, written, directed and with cinematography by Wylie – Channel 4/October Films, 50 minutes, produced by Liana Pomerantsev, Russian with English subtitles.
  • YoYo – Channel 4/October Films.
  • Jesus Comes To London – Channel 4/October Films.
  • The 12th, directed by Wylie – 10 minutes, produced by Fulcrum Waddell Media.

Solo exhibitions

Awards

Collections