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In 1989 I traded Australia's scorched red earth for the humid, secret-guarding jungles of South East Asia.

My first fieldwork took me via Vietnam to Cambodia; a nation at war with itself and drowning in the collective trauma of the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields; to the refugee camps along the Thai/Cambodian border and to Burma, a country plagued with its own long-running civil war.

Those early experiences, witnessing man’s inhumanity to man, were transformative and embedded in me an intolerance of injustice in all its forms. This ever-present injustice was to provide both the fuel and the direction for the odyssey that was to follow.

My life became intertwined with the tumultuous events that marked the era; a journey that took me through the highlands and the plains of a vast swathe of territories wracked by wars, revolutions and acts of God, from Nepal, Bangladesh and Burma, through Indochina and down through the Indonesian Archipeligo to Papua New Guinea.

I sought out scenarios that would best convey the spirit of peoples during pivotal moments; their highs and lows; striving to encapsulate the extremes of their existance; extremes which transcended the ordinary but which nonetheless, spoke truthfully of their plight.

This demanded an approach that was totally submersive; visual testimonies hallmarked by an emotional proximity to my subjects and the rationale of always being at the heart of events

Working independently freed me of fielty to any news organisation and their political and cultural bias, allowing me to work without censorship to create a body of work from an insider's perspective which faithfully encapsulates the zeitgeist of those decades.

In addition to my documentary work in the predominantly South East Asian region, my professional practice extends to the creation of photo-based and mixed-media artworks in which the recreation of memory is key, exhibitions, installations and publications and the teaching of photography.

​Awards, yes there have been those too, but what are they compared to the privilege of being accepted and allowed to bear witness?
  • Plaudits

  • “Blenkinsop’s work articulates a new and forensically real Asia. He delivers this new vision with a truth that is reminiscent of Robert Frank’s epic and ground breaking re-definition of the USA in the mid-1950’s” (Max Pam, Contemporary Australian photographer)​

  • “one of the most essential photographers of his generation" (Christian Caujolle, founder of l'Agence VU, Gallerie VU, Artistic Director Photo Phnom Penh )
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  • “Death enters without knocking in Blenkinsop’s work, where severed heads and abandoned bodies are reminiscent of the vision of Joel Peter Witkin, with the difference that Blenkinsop's horror dispenses with staging and artifice, leaving room for the glory of warriors in the manner of Curtis. Blenkinsop's aesthetic bias is in line with his personal commitment to minorities confronted by government forces in Thailand, Burma, Nepal and Laos. More than a reporter, Blenkinsop is a man of guerrillas and resistances.” (Herve Le Goff, journalist, art critic, essayist specializing in the field of photography)

  • “Blenkinsop’s photographs are raw, harsh and complex at the same time. Uncomfortable even. But even better, they are empathetic. They make us think, but they make us love, too. Therein lies probably the essence of Philip Blenkinsop’s work: the tension between violence and tenderness, between animality and compassion.” (Frederic Lecloux, photographer and writer)

  • “Philip Blenkinsop is a fearless photojournalist with a truly original sensibility. He makes stark, powerful images that are unforgettable.” (Kathy Ryan, Picture Editor, New York Times Magazine)​

  • “He achieved his goals through iron physical and mental discipline, imagination and guts. (he) Marched for almost a month with the (East Timorese Falintil) guerrillas and became a legend among them. He was a consumate professional to work with; no fuss, no pretensions.” (Jill Joliffe, Journalist,The Age.)

  • “Philip Blenkinsop has such an immediate compassion in his work that sometimes it makes the viewer see not just himself and his need for that compassion, but also his own limits of courage and strength when confronted with his images.” (Thomas Nordanstad, exhibition curator and anti-genocide activist.)

  • “He’s a class apart, like Philip Jones Griffith, Don McCullen or Larry Burrows; he never compromises.” (Stanley Greene, Photojournalist)