Groups Collective

Jon Tonks (*1981) is a British photographer best known for his compelling visual  storytelling of remote, overlooked communities. Jon’s career took a defining turn  during a trip to Ascension Island, which led to his acclaimed book Empire, an  exploration of life on four British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic, a project  that cemented his reputation as a photographer capturing the impact of history and  geography on human lives. The book, praised by Martin Parr as one of the best of the  year, earned him the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society in 2014.

Originally from the West Midlands, Jon studied design before transitioning to  photography, first as a newspaper photographer and later pursuing a Master’s in  Photojournalism at the London College of Communication. His work has been  featured in leading publications like The New York Times, Le Monde, National  Geographic (CN), The Guardian and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Jon has been shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing National Portrait Prize and the  Terry O’Neill Award multiple times. His photography is held in prestigious collections, including those of Stanford University, California, the Martin Parr  Foundation (UK) and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Texas.

Roman Franc (*1983) embarked on his career as a photographer at a time when the  world, rocked by social-political and technological change, was looking for some  level of certainty. The context of this reality, where the urgent need for change  straddled the gap between what was coming to an end and the new forms of the  future, enable us to read the recent history of most fields of human activity.  Roman Franc came out of the tradition of Brno photography, which has never been  too eager to follow trends, and shows the world that working with tradition can be as  interesting and rewarding as trying to deny it. Although Franc’s work has long since  gone beyond the habits of his early years, he still believes that photography takes on a  deeper meaning only through practice, when the photographer keeps improving his  skills.

For much of its history, photography has been regarded as a mirror of the outside  world. This idea, however, has a weak point – it seeks reality while neglecting the  obvious fact that photography not only reflects the world, but is also part of it, giving  it the potential to shape it. Group photographs taken by Roman Franc are  remarkable in that they reflect this elementary dialectic. One could even say that the  dialectic directly influences them. In this respect, the artist’s photography reminds  us of the times when photographers used to travel to their customers and when the  pressing of the shutter was the culmination of an event preceded by a series of small  private rituals that enabled everyone involved to realize who they were and where  they belonged. In the era of digital technology and social media, we miss this  desirable and deeply human moment. In a way, this can be seen in the growing  interest in Franc’s photographs, which are primarily an opportunity to affirm the  common identity of those gathered in front of the lens, and in his prints in galleries  intended for people from the outside.