Donovan Wylie (b.1971, Northern Ireland) utilises a combination of conceptual and typological approaches to explore alternative strategies for the representation of conflict and acts, simultaneously as a complex mix of the historical, metaphorical, aesthetic, and philosophical.
Over the last twenty years, Wylie has created significant bodies of work that have focused on contemporary military architectures. His Architectures of Conflict explores how military and surveillance structures materialise the ideologies of control, and how they both shape and are shaped by the landscapes and histories they inhabit. Wylie first came to critical acclaim with Maze (Granta, 2004), a series of 80 photographs depicting the Maze prison, a site synonymous with the conflict that gripped Northern Ireland from the 1970s through the late 1990s. Maze was shortlisted for the 2010 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for the most significant contribution to the medium in Europe and has been widely exhibited in both photographic and architectural settings, including at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In addition to photography, Wylie often works in film. He received a BAFTA in 2002 for his film, The Train.
Wylie lives in his native Belfast and is a Professor of Photography at Ulster University. His work is featured in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; the National Gallery of Canada; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.