Screen Time

Dafydd Jones (b. 1956) is one of the world's leading social photographers. He decided to become a photographer while studying fine art at university. In 1981 he entered a set of pictures of 'Bright Young Things' in a photography competition run by the Sunday Times Magazine, and was awarded a prize. As a result, he was hired by Tina Brown to photograph balls, debutante dances and weddings for the Tatler. He moved to New York in 1989 - a move helped by generous editors. While there, he worked for the New York Observer, producing feature and news-related pictures, and covered celebrity and society events for Vanity Fair. For his own enjoyment, he also took all the pictures for one issue about New York for Paper magazine. He came back to England in 1996, having watched London becoming 'the centre of the cultural world and the place I wanted to be'. Since returning to London he has had slots in most of the broadsheet newspapers, including the Independent, the Times, and the Sunday Telegraph. His work is held in the collections of: the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Hyman Collection of British Photography, London; the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol; the Opsis Foundation, New York; and the Yale Museum of British Art. An exhibition of his work from the 1980s, 'Dafydd Jones: The Last Hurrah', was held at The Photographers' Gallery, London, from August to September 2018.

"Dafydd Jones has focused on one of the most dominant elements of the social life of our times - how the smartphone has taken us all over. It is a timely and rather sobering look at this phenomenon, done with his usual eloquence as a photographer." - Martin Parr