Dennis Memmott is a photographer, researcher, and art educator currently working with the Surrey School District in British Columbia, Canada. From 2016 to 2019, he served as President of the British Columbia Art Teachers’ Association. He holds a Bachelor of Education (2007) with a specialization in Secondary Art Education and a Master of Education (2023), both from the University of British Columbia. Additionally, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in General Studies with a concentration in Visual Arts from Trinity Western University.

His artistic practice spans clay relief sculpture, screen printing, painting, and photography.

Artist Statement
My practice engages with personal historical photographs as sites of lingering—spaces where time resists linear progression and unfolds as fragmented, overlapping moments. Rooted in the framework of hauntology, this work embraces the spectral presence of memory and history, acknowledging how the past continues to inhabit and shape the present.

Through this lens, photographs transcend their role as static records. They become active conduits, revealing narratives that surface gradually through repetition, absence, and silence. Each image occupies an in-between state, inviting dialogue across temporal boundaries—between what has been, what remains, and what might yet emerge.

This process resists the notion of fixed history. Instead, it opens an evolving conversation between image and viewer, past and present, challenging the stability of memory and inviting reflection on how stories are remembered, reimagined, and reconstructed.

Dwelling within these hauntological spaces, my artwork becomes a living archive—one that reveals lingering traces and unseen connections shaping our understanding of time, identity, and collective experience.

Statement of Pedagogy
In my classroom and studio practice, I strive to challenge and inspire students to master image-making processes by deepening their understanding of historical, experimental, and contextual approaches. Students are encouraged to take creative risks and to recognize the power of images to document, expose, critique, and provoke.

Through studio experiences, experimental processes, collaboration, and critique, students come to view image-making as a form of thinking—a generative process through which their artistic voices emerge and evolve.

I view the studio as a community—a collective of artists where diversity, partnership, and collaboration contribute to shared outcomes. Within this community, reflective and reflexive practices are essential. Thoughtful critique and careful reflection connect students’ creative work to course concepts through complex conversations, critical inquiry, and studio dialogue. These practices push boundaries, test ideas, and generate new forms of understanding.

Publications

The Best of 2011: A Photography Anthology
Image: Ghost: The Demise of an Urban Forest

Photography, A/r/tography, andVisual thinking.
Release Date: Late 2023