Patrick Waterhouse

In 2008, Waterhouse began work on his renowned series Ponte City, made in collaboration with Mikhael Subotzky, in which the pair investigated the fifty-four storey cylindrical apartment building that towers over Johannesburg. Over six years they probed the varying perspectives of this icon – from its architecture to its urban legends – revealing new and alternative accounts of the building’s history.

Collaboration is integral to Waterhouse’s practice, informing and shaping the trajectory of his projects as the work forms through conversation and engagement with those represented and the communities in which they live. In the making of Restricted Images, Waterhouse lived and worked with the Warlpiri communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi over a five-year period, taking photographs and then inviting community members to restrict their images using traditional dot painting. By drawing people into the process of their representation, the project renegotiates notions of agency in photography and art.

Waterhouse’s work has been exhibited internationally in institutions including FotoMuseum, Antwerpen (2019); Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque (2018); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2017); The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2016); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C (2015); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2015); The National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2014); Le Bal, Paris (2014); Biennale de Lubumbashi, DR Congo (2013); The International Center of Photography Triennial, New York (2013); Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2012); The Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich (2011) and South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2010). His work is held in major public and private collections including Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C and The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany. Awards include the Discovery Award at Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles in 2011 and the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize in 2015 for Ponte City (with Mikhael Subotzky).

In 2011 Waterhouse became Editor-in-chief of Colors magazine, creating a new editorial direction (The Survival Guides) and building a global team of photographers, designers, editors, writers, artists, researchers and bloggers. The Survival guide series consists of 10 printed issues, with touring exhibitions and workshops.