We are delighted to have purchased from Jon Tonks a selection of large format prints from his celebrated series, Empire, that depicts ouposts of the British Empire.
Jon Tonks' Empire is a fascinating journey across the South Atlantic exploring life on four remote islands - the British Overseas Territories of Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands and St Helena - relics of the once formidable British Empire, all intertwined through their shared history.
Tonks spent up to a month at a time in each territory, travelling 60,000 miles around the Atlantic via military outposts, low-lit airstrips and long voyages aboard the last working Royal Mail Ship. Some 400 rolls of film, 24 flights and 32 days at sea later, the resulting work creates an insight into these distant places that resonate with a sense of Britishness which is remarkably recognisable yet inescapably strange. Tonks photographed the people, the landscapes and the traces of the past embedded within each territory, telling the story of these remote and remarkable islands with a curiosity about the lives of these distant lands that remain very firmly British.
Jon Tonks' Empire is a fascinating journey across the South Atlantic exploring life on four remote islands - the British Overseas Territories of Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands and St Helena - relics of the once formidable British Empire, all intertwined through their shared history.
Tonks spent up to a month at a time in each territory, travelling 60,000 miles around the Atlantic via military outposts, low-lit airstrips and long voyages aboard the last working Royal Mail Ship. Some 400 rolls of film, 24 flights and 32 days at sea later, the resulting work creates an insight into these distant places that resonate with a sense of Britishness which is remarkably recognisable yet inescapably strange. Tonks photographed the people, the landscapes and the traces of the past embedded within each territory, telling the story of these remote and remarkable islands with a curiosity about the lives of these distant lands that remain very firmly British.
September 15, 2014
