Richard Allenby-Pratt is a British photographer. He has worked in commercial photography since 1988 when he moved to London from rural West England. As well as working in the design and advertising sectors, he has also shot editorial features for The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and Time Magazine. He relocated to the UAE in 2000.
Latterly, he has concentrated more on his personal conceptual and documentary projects, which feature subjects relating to economics, sustainability and environment. His first solo exhibition was ‘Community 366’ in 2009, which was a public space installation, supported by Dubai Culture and Art Authority, on the beach adjacent to the Burj Al Arab, within, and depicting, the older neighbourhood where he lived for 9 years.
In 2013 he held his second solo show, ‘Abandoned’ at Shelter in Al Serkal Avenue. This project received a number of international awards and considerable media attention in 2012, being featured on countless websites and many countries’ most-read news media.
His project, ‘Consumption’ looks at the way that landscapes in the UAE have been impacted upon by exponential economic growth since the formation of the federation.
His final projects in the UAE before moving back to his home country were ’Sabkah’ which featured the desolate salt-plain landscapes of the UAE’s Western Region, and ‘Vertigo’, an unfinished series interpreting the highs and lows of economic trends.
In 2016, GPP hosted a retrospective solo exhibition of Richard’s various Emirati projects, entitled ’The Anthropocene’, which included the earlier series ‘Dubai Villas’ and ‘Jumeirah Zoo’, as well as pieces from ‘Abandoned’, ‘Consumption’, ’Sabkha’ and ‘Vertigo’. Richard’s works were also included in the 2018 GPP-curated exhibition ‘Architecture of Loneliness’ at Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi. In 2019 Richard returned to work on a British Council sponsored project ’The Place I call Home’, when he travelled off-road through the Emirati landscape and photographed the ancient fluvial features in the desert and mountains, in a series called ‘Rivers’, that contrasted these features in the Emirati landscape with the rivers of his childhood home in the West of England.
Richard’s projects have been featured in various exhibitions, museums and festivals, magazines and books. He now lives a quieter life in the English countryside where his main work is a long-term document of the rural life and landscapes of Suffolk, which you can find on instagram @thesuffolkproject or www.thesuffolkproject.co.uk
