Chloe Dewe Mathews (born 1982)[1] is a British
documentary photographer,[2] based in
St Leonards-on-Sea, UK. She is "best known for ambitious documentary projects that can take years of preparation."[2] Dewe Mathews has said "I am exploring ways in which to project the past on to the present".[3]
Her series Shot at Dawn records sites where British, French and Belgian soldiers were executed for cowardice or desertion during the first world war. It was published as a book in 2014 and exhibited at
Tate Modern and at the
Irish Museum of Modern Art. In Search of Frankenstein was exhibited at the
British Library in 2018.
For her series Caspian, she walked around the
Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.[1][2]
Her series Shot at Dawn records many of the sites across France and Belgium where around 1000 British, French and Belgian soldiers were executed for cowardice or desertion during the first world war.[2][4] She photographed each site at dawn, the time that most of the men were executed; close to the date on which they occurred; and from around the same vantage that they were shot.[4] It was commissioned by the
Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford as part of a commemorative art series,[4][5] published as a book in 2014 and exhibited in various places.
Dewe Mathews completed an artist's residency at the Verbier 3-D Foundation, Bagnes, Switzerland in 2016 on the topic of the so-called
Year Without a Summer, a period of severe climate deterioration.[3][6] This provided the backdrop for
Mary Shelley when writing Frankenstein (1818) whilst staying in the same area. Dewe Mathews' series made there, In Search of Frankenstein, is concerned with contemporary environmental and social issues via the themes of Shelley's novel.[7]
She spent five years making Thames Log, a series about the variety of peoples' relationship with the
River Thames.[2][8][9]
Sunday Service. Tate Modern and You. London:
Tate, 2014. With texts by Synthia Griffin and Phil Stokes.
In Search of Frankenstein – Mary Shelley's Nightmare. Baden, Switzerland: Kodoji, 2018.
ISBN9783037470916. Dewe Mathews' photographs with reproductions of The Geneva Notebook, the first half of
Mary Shelley's original manuscript for Frankenstein.