Appendix

Kerry J Dean is a British Photographer and Director. Originally from the Midlands, she studied at the London College of Printing. She has recently moved to the Sussex countryside, where she lives with her husband and young son, restoring and rejuvenating a derelict flower nursery and woodland near the sea.

Kerry’s work blurs the line between the made and the unmade, the real and fabricated. Her curiosity begins with a documentarians inquisitive eye, she is drawn to the ritual and drama in daily domestic acts seeking out stories, places, people, cultivating them further into a space of adaptation, questioning conventional perspectives while playing with notions of truth telling and intervention. Kerry’s work is a curiously crafted and often colourful world, part discovered, part imagined, exaggerating the beauty and at times the brutality of what already exists.

Her unique approach is most evident in the extensive body of work she has created over fifteen years and many trips to Mongolia. She has been captivated by a country in the throes of rapid development but bound by traditions and rituals that are deeply rooted in the land, the climate, the culture. Mongolia has been an enduring source of inspiration, friendship, exploration and experimentation, a place to test her boundaries and evolve her practice.

That practice is evident throughout her work creating a strong and identifiable style that permeates both editorial and commercial projects. Kerry’s fashion work has moved into a more intimate space since the arrival of her son, exploring themes of motherhood, love and loss. These themes are particularly evident in her collaboration with Simone Rocha, Self, Son & Simone which brings together sublime natural scenes, vulnerable nude self-portraiture and Rocha’s designs. The project is an immersion into Kerry’s own private world, and a tender ode to both mothers and Mother Nature. Her most recent series The Blow Up a collaboration with Korean Designer San Kim was also shot in local landscapes. The images touch on the insidious sense of eco anxiety and isolation that is ever present in our current culture and like so much of her work they are at once unsettling and celebratory.

Kerry has worked with a broad list of clients and publications, including AnOther, Roksanda, More or Less, Hussein Chalayan, i-D, Zeit magazine, GreenPeace, Simone Rocha, Nike and Vogue (UK, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine).

Kerry has also developed a successful fine art practise alongside her commercial and editorial work. She was nominated for the prestigious Hyères festival in 2019, and showed work at Unseen Amsterdam, Meiter Award Tel Aviv, Emergentes Braga, and more recently Athens Photo Award. She has also held solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions worldwide.

All images © Kerry Dean / Kerry J Dean 2023