CamelAfter working as a Director of Photography in film and television for twenty five years, I felt a strong desire to return to my early passion of photography. The challenge of capturing a story or character in a fraction of a second, instead of the weeks and months involved in shooting and editing a film. Suddenly I was working on my own, without a director, crew or production team. It felt incredibly liberating and gave me back that time where I could work at my own pace and stop to talk to the people I was meeting, instead of rushing off with a busy documentary schedule to meet.

Camel-2The "Camel" project is a photographic essay I started in 2011. The camel is such an extraordinary creature and lives on the edge of many different life sustaining landscapes around the world. This "survivor" became my prism, the staring point for looking at nomadic peoples, fragile ecosystems, desertification and man's existence within desert lands, plus that most valuable resource - water.

The photographs have been taken on a Hasselblad medium format camera, shooting on Ilford black and white stock and the countries I have visited include The Sudan, Mongolia, India and The United Arab Emirates.


In 2015 I was approached by Philip Grover, Curator & Acting Head of Photograph and Manuscript Collections, to put on a display of my camel photographs at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The first task was to select the pictures. This was a difficult process as there were hundreds of images to choose from. In the end I arrived at 65 photographs which were printed by the legendary Robin Bell and framed by the very talented Geraint Davies. It was a lot of work but the finished framed prints looked fantastic and I was absolutely delighted when the six month exhibition finally opened in 2017.

LINK | Camel: A Journey through Fragile Landscapes – Photographs by Roger Chapman | Pitt Rivers Museum

Pacific Standard is an American magazine that reports on issues of social and environmental justice. Working with long time collaborator, Justin Woolford, an article based on my camel project was published in June 2018

LINK | Tracks in the Sand - Pacific Standard Magazine


Links from the above article:
LINK | Tracks in the Sand - Pacific Standard Magazine

LINK | Camel: A Journey through Fragile Landscapes – Photographs by Roger Chapman | Pitt Rivers Museum