About

Mark Pearson (b. 1972) is a field-based practitioner working across conflict, humanitarian response, and post-field practice.

Between the early 2000s and mid-2010s, he worked extensively in high-risk environments across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. During this period, his roles combined documentation with logistical and operational responsibility in disaster response, displacement contexts, and conflict-affected regions. This sustained field exposure forms the primary material of the archive presented on this site.

Since 2014, Pearson’s work has also developed through exhibition-based practice. His post-2014 work has been exhibited internationally in institutional and non-commercial contexts. These later works do not function as reportage, but as reflective and materially-driven engagements with memory, boundary-making, and the afterlife of field experience. Historical and contemporary photochemical processes play a significant role in this phase of the work.

This site brings these strands together as a single, evolving system. Rather than a conventional portfolio, it presents field material, visual work, and analytical structures side by side, organised through timelines, density maps, and chapter formats that prioritise duration, risk, and context over spectacle or narrative resolution.

The archive is presented as a working system: incomplete by design, and subject to continued structuring and analysis.

Monograph 

2023 A Grey Area, Bop23 Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol

2008 Aftershock, ShelterBox, Cornwall

Group Exhibitions

2024 Chronorama, G12 Krowji, Redruth, Cornwall

2023 Dealing with Disaster, The Keep, Bodmin, Cornwall

2023 The Unsteady Now, Penwith Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall

2023 Print Exhibition, Portmeor Gallery, St Ives

2023 Print Exhibition, Ocean Studios, Plymouth

2021 Concrete Castles, Arborealists society, The Keep, Bodmin

2019 Alumni Show, Roland Lewinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth

2013 AidEx, Washington DC, US.

2011 ShelterBox, National Geographic Regent St, London

Solo Exhibitions

2021 Lockdown, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro Cornwall

2019 A Touch of Chemistry, Devonport Guildhall, Plymouth

2011 Haiti Exhibition, National Geographic Society, Regent St, London

Awards

2023 Creative Investment Grant, Cultivator, Cornwall

Film

2018  Art Of Failure, RTS (Nominee) South West The University of Plymouth