Jon Tonks (b.1981)

A British photographer born in the West Midlands who initially studied Product Design before moving into the field of photography. Following a brief career as a photographer on a local newspaper he completed a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography in London.

In 2007 he started a long-term personal project which has resulted in the book ‘Empire: A Personal History of British Dominion’. The project covered over 60,000 miles to capture life on four of the most isolated islands in the world, all of which still remain part of the British Empire. The communities covered were; Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands and St. Helena.

Tonks photographed the inhabitants, landscape and history detailing the continuing links back to the mother land. The final publication includes stories, maps, newspaper articles and history of each of these isolation locations which all remain very British. The images are not political or nostalgic in any way they are purely documentary, the capturing of everyday life as people cope with the conditions and to some extent each other when the population is so small.

Tonks