Dorka Rayner

Dorka Rayner (b. 1975) is a British fine art photographer whose work examines the intersection of memory and place. Raised in Brighton, she studied photography and visual culture at the University of Sussex before earning an MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. Rayner’s images blend archival fragments, found objects, and carefully constructed studio still lifes to explore how personal histories shape our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.

Since her graduate exhibition in 2002, Rayner has shown work at institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Photographers’ Gallery, and numerous international art fairs. Her solo projects—such as Household Archive and Thresholds—have been celebrated for their quiet lyricism and conceptual rigor. In 2018 she was awarded the Arts Council England Fellowship, enabling her to embark on a multi-year series documenting abandoned industrial sites across the English Midlands.

Rayner’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Yale Center for British Art. She teaches part-time in the Photography Department at the University of Westminster and leads annual workshops on alternative photographic processes. Through her teaching and curatorial projects, Rayner continues to foster new dialogues around the role of photography in preserving both communal and personal narratives.