Documentary Dreamworks
- Richard Mark Dobson
- Jan 2
- 6 min read
“This is for those who sense that the world is real — but that it’s never quite what it claims to be.”
Documentary Dreamworks.
My cinematic playground, blurring truth and myth through lens and voice — I call it hybrid photo-cinema from the simulation matrix some of us call reality.
These are not documentaries in the usual sense, nor fictions disguised as fact. They are dream-traces, drawn from real places and imagined landscapes.
It all starts with an idea. I get a picture in my head so to speak.
Hong Kong, a city full of spies. The Red Corporation — an idea that grew from my long relationship with Hong Kong and the unease that has hovered over the city since the 1997 handover.
Influenced by espionage literature, headlines, and the opaque reach of Chinese state power, the project occupies what I call a quasi-fictional space—where historical reality provides the stage, and imagination supplies the atmosphere.
I’m not interested in exposing hidden truths so much as evoking a mood: ambiguity and quiet menace. Working instinctively on the streets, I let light, framing, and intuition shape the images, allowing a “vibe” to emerge rather than forcing a narrative.
The streets are real; the espionage is inferred. Like all my figment-based work, The Red Corporation forges worlds from worlds—using photography not to explain what is happening, but to suggest that something always is.
Yet we can not decipher what exactly. No one is necessarily who or what they appear to be. It’s that gap between what is and what we think might be or could be that I like to linger.
Or in Macau, a gambling mecca, what lies behind the facade?
For example Slot City revealed itself slowly. I let the atmosphere, composite structure (the set or stage), and emotional temperature of the place shape the narrative, allowing the camera to respond instinctively rather than impose a plan.
In Macau and Taipa, the casinos, malls, and hotels become the streets—endless corridors of luxury, excess, and surveillance where glamour is promised but loss is quietly delivered.
Beneath the neon spectacle, armies of low-paid workers observe a ceaseless cycle of desire, addiction, and control, while the city runs without pause. Slot City is layered, performative, and morally ambiguous—far too complex to resolve in a single visit.
What’s shown here is only a beginning: an inferred world where access is limited, imagination fills the gaps, and the real story hums just beyond closed doors.
Street photography, for me, is less about documentation and more about a dance with disorder.
Since Cartier-Bresson first articulated the “decisive moment,” the street has remained the ultimate testing ground—where chaos, coincidence, and intuition collide.
The task is not to control reality but to anticipate it, to frame fragments of disorder in a way that assigns meaning and suggests narrative.
What to include, what to exclude, and when to press the shutter are the only tools we have, yet they define everything.
In recent years I’ve become fascinated by how intent shapes perception—how carrying a loose concept or mood can subtly influence what the street reveals.
Whether exploring noir atmospheres or espionage undertones,
I don’t impose stories; I allow them to surface.
Street photography isn’t just an activity—it’s a philosophy of attention, instinct, and belief in the strange intelligence of the world.
Living Inside the Matrix
Life imitates art; art imitates life. I don’t know who coined the phrase, but it neatly frames the territory I’ve occupied throughout my career.
While I respect the craft of great photojournalists, my own work has always lived somewhere between observation and conception.
Photojournalism, in its purest form, uses still images to reveal a place, event, or truth—often in service of a written narrative. The photographer is sent out to fetch evidence: images that support, clarify, or authenticate a story already in motion.
Over the years I’ve illustrated many such assignments, using photography to visually reinforce a journalist’s words. Even here, the photograph ultimately functions as an illustration—proof that something happened.
Yet even in reportage, imagination plays a role.
Before leaving home, one must consider where to go, why, and what kind of images might give meaning to the story.
A kind of intuition develops over time—knowing which street to turn down, which light to follow, which moment to wait for.
And often, almost inexplicably, reality delivers exactly what is needed.
This is the quiet magic of observational work: a negotiation between intent and chance.
In advertising photography, the process shifts. The image doesn’t emerge from the world—it is constructed.
Starting from a layout, storyboard, or schematic, one conceptualizes the finished picture in advance.
Sets are built, locations scouted, actors cast, props styled. The photographer becomes closer to a filmmaker, engineering reality to match a vision.
And yet, even here, surprise persists.
Despite all the planning, something unforeseen always enters the frame.
In both worlds—documentary and constructed—the same mystery remains. What we look for, we tend to find.
Intention seems to bend perception; imagination appears to coax reality into alignment.
Coincidence, déjà vu, and chance begin to feel less accidental. This is the matrix we inhabit—the strange feedback loop between seeing and believing, between what we imagine and what the world, somehow, agrees to reveal.
Ethics of the Inferred Image
Working in the borderland between documentary and fiction also demands restraint.
Documentary Dreamworks is built on real streets, real people,—but meaning is never asserted, only suggested.
In an era of tightening privacy laws and heightened sensitivity, I operate by a simple, non-negotiable rule: no image may accuse. Not directly, not indirectly, not by implication.
Captions describe place or time, never intent or meaning, allowing the viewer to bring their own assumptions, fears, and curiosity to the work.
If uncertainty lingers—if it’s unclear whether something “real” was witnessed—then the image has done its job.
This isn’t about exposing truths or inventing falsehoods; it’s about building atmosphere through omission, restraint, and what remains unseen.
Documentary Dreamworks is not image-collecting—it’s craft-building, constructed as much from what I refuse to show as from what appears in the frame.
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