Sarah Dobai

Sarah Dobai is a Reader in Photography Text and Film Based Practice at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts, where her practice critically engages with photography, film, publication, and performance in relation to realism, illusionism, and authorship within contemporary visual culture.

Dobai completed her MFA at the University of British Columbia, Canada in the mid-1990s, establishing her practice with awareness of international debates around photography and the moving image.

Her research explores the intersection of photographic and cinematic practices with commercial and architectural contexts, particularly examining how vitrines and glass structures mediate perception, reality, and power dynamics. She investigates authorship through collaborative frameworks and interrogates the confusion between surface appearance and underlying truths in urban environments.

Dobai's recent creative outputs demonstrate consistent engagement with themes of visibility, institutional critique, and narrative construction across media. Projects like 'The Overcoat' (2015) reinterpret literary sources through commercial photography, while 'Bees in a Hive of Glass' (2018) uses corporate architecture to critique workplace display cultures. Her work spans film installations, publications, and performances addressing perception, memory, and socio-political commentary.

Dobai has received significant recognition including:

• Residency at Delfina Studio Trust, London (2004-2006)
• Visual Arts Laureate by Centre International des Recollets, Paris (2008)

She actively supervises research degrees including Tina Rowe's 'Little Races: Using an Analogue Photographic Practice to Explore and Reveal the Identities of Transracial Adoptees' (2022) and Alice Evans' 'The Dissociated Image in Contemporary Photography'. Her projects receive commissions from major institutions including Film London, Whitstable Biennale, and Whitechapel Gallery.

Dobai frequently collaborates with writers and artists, most notably novelist Tom McCarthy on 'Bees in a Hive of Glass' and 'The Copyists', while maintaining international exhibition partnerships with galleries including Or Gallery Vancouver, FotoMuseum Antwerp, and Rencontres International Paris.