Peter Dench


Peter Dench is a photojournalist working primarily in advertising, editorial and portraiture photography. His work has been published in a number of his own books, exhibited and won awards.

Biography

Dench was born and grew up in Weymouth, Dorset. He graduated from the University of Derby with a degree in Photographic Studies in 1995 and has been working as a photojournalist since 1998. He currently lives in Crouch End, London.
Dench is best known for his decade of work documenting England. He breaks the subject down into manageable chunks with a specific theme ; which have included drinkUK, ethnicUK, rainUK, loveUK, royalUK, summerUK, fashionUK, and Carry on England.
Dench was a member of the photo agency Independent Photographer's Group from 2000 until the company's closure in 2005. In January 2012 he joined Reportage by Getty Images as one of their Represented Photographers.
Around 2007 Dench spent 15 months photographing Football's Hidden Story in 20 countries on commission for FIFA, documenting "the way in which the sport thrives in the most improbable circumstances and in which enthusiasm for the game is being harnessed for the good of the community".
A Day Off in the Lives of Europe is another of Dench's projects, in which he photographed people around Europe commemorating events of national significance.
Dench says of his work:
I’m always looking for humour in my pictures. Charlie Chaplin is a big influence and I often try to address serious subjects in a humorous way when appropriate. My aim is to make people laugh, make people think. Looking through the books of Elliott Erwitt and Martin Parr is the reason I got into photography. If you can travel the world making people laugh and making them think, then to me that's a fine way to live.

The Visa pour l'image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, has screened Dench's work five times and given it one full exhibition.
Dench was described in 2011 as a contributing editor of Hungry Eye magazine and creative director of the White Cloth Gallery in Leeds, which he founded with co-creative director Sharon Price. He was a contributor to Professional Photographer magazine podcasts 1 to 13 in 2010/2011. His monthly 'Dench Diary' appeared in Professional Photographer in 2010/2011 and in Hungry Eye from 2011 to the present.
Dench's advertising commissions have appeared on billboards and bus stop posters, in corporate brochures and in newspapers, including campaigns for Weetabix, Barclaycard, Barclays Wealth, Suzuki, the British Heart Foundation, Danish Bacon and Maxim Magazine.
Dench has made formal portraits of Tom Jones, Vinnie Jones, Heston Blumenthal, Freddie Flintoff, Alain Ducasse, Jamie Oliver, Vijay Mallya, Zöe Lucker, Tamsin Greig, Ahmet Ertegun, Alicia Silverstone and Dermot Desmond.
The photographer Simon Roberts has said of Dench that he has an "inimitable style and dry humour... His work is well worth a look, particularly his drinkUK project".
In February 2012 Dench successfully used the Emphas.is visual journalism crowd funding website to raise funds for his first book England Uncensored,
published in May 2012.
For 6 months in 2013 Dench collaborated with Reportage by Getty Images on the Future of Britain project, commissioned by OMD UK. Dench photographed Britain to accompany OMD's research and statistics on the long-term economic downturn and changes to Britain's population and demographics, published on a blog throughout the period.
In 2015 he founded The Curators with his co-founder Director Sharon Price, curating art exhibitions and events, touring photography exhibitions worldwide.

Publications

Publications by Dench

Solo exhibitions