Dillon Marsh
DILLON MARSH - 1981, SOUTH AFRICA
Dillon Marsh was born in Cape Town and he still lives there today. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art from the University of Stellenbosch and during the course of his studies, he was drawn to photography and remained passionate about it ever since. Marsh has had several solo shows and participated in group exhibitions in Africa and Europe. Apart from his own work Marsh has also worked as a professional retouch artist and is experienced in the post-production of photographs which has been an inspiration for introducing computer-generated imagery into his photographs in an attempt to reveal underlying features or dynamics that he wouldn’t be able to show with photography alone.
FROM THE SERIES FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, DILLON MARSH
The mining industry in South Africa has shaped the history and economy of the country Marsh lives in radically. The series FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH was born out of his curiosity about what a mine's output in precious metals or stones would look like when visually juxtaposed with the mine itself. Marsh started by exploring the copper mines of Namaqualand, an arid region of land between Namibia and South Africa, and the series soon grew to include diamond mines in the Northern Cape as well. After this, he looked at the gold fields of the Witwatersrand Basin. The Witwatersrand Basin is a largely underground geological formation that surfaces in the Witwatersrand, South Africa. It holds the world's largest known gold reserves and has produced over 1.5 billion ounces (over 40,000 metric tons), which represents about 50% of all the gold ever mined on Earth. The images of the series combine on-site photography and computer-generated elements, using extraction rates to calculate a single solid orb to visualize the output of a mine. More recently, Marsh has looked at the production of platinum group metals in South Africa.
