With work found on album covers by American alternative rock band, the Pixies, a photographer has rounded up nine years of study with a doctoral award from the University of Chester.

Dr Simon Larbalestier enrolled at the university in 2015, to study part-time for a practice-based PhD (Doctor of Philosophy).

The 62-year-old, originally from Pembrokeshire, Wales, has now graduated earning high praise from examiners who described his research - a photographic investigation into dwelling and habitation, as "a compelling and convincing contribution to new knowledge".

Simon embarked on his PhD project, with an exceptional existing track record in the world of photography and design, with his work being exhibited and published internationally.

He took photographs for the Pixies, whose influence on the alternative rock boom of the 1990s is widely acknowledged.

The photographer was also profiled on The Late Show, BBC Two's influential arts magazine programme.

'Twenty Black Crows', from the series, A Return to The Things Themselves (Image via: Simon Larbalestier)

Simon decided to undertake a PhD project following an invite by Dr Cian Quayle, to give a guest lecture to photography students.

He then set himself a global task, conducting his research between Wetherby, West Yorkshire, where he lived as a teenager, and his field work base in Bangkok, focusing on encounters with these locations in both the United Kingdom and Thailand.

The project explored how photographs can express human presence embodied in space and place, framed through phenomenological concepts, which he explains "seek to describe everyday existence as it reveals itself".

Simon faced considerable challenges as a distance learner, and particularly during the COVID 19 pandemic, when he was unable to work on location in the way that his research and practice required.

This included a period of three years in Thailand unable to fly.

Simon said: "A central question of the thesis is: 'What is the relationship between being-in-the-world and dwelling?'

"I examine how the photographic trace can preserve a chronology of dwelling within sites in both a northeast province of Thailand and in the United Kingdom.

'My Mother's Winter Hat', from the series, 'A Return to The Things Themselves' (Image via: Simon Larbalestier)

"The research also considers my personal response to the pandemic, asking: 'What is the effect of dwelling when a global pandemic suspends movement and isolates individuals?'"

Simon's return to the United Kingdom in 2024 came with a large body of work.

On his next steps, he said: "Having completed my PhD, I have returned to the United Kingdom to explore new ways of disseminating my research and creative work.

"I am currently restructuring my extensive photographic archive, which spans from 1985 to the present.

"These ongoing projects reflect my sustained interest in the material and philosophical dimensions of photography, as I continue to examine how memory, presence, and temporality are embodied through the photographic image."

Dr Cian Quayle added: "I first met Simon when I had just completed my PhD project at Camberwell College of Arts (UAL) in 2000.

"In 2015 at Chester, the opportunity to supervise Simon's project arose and has been a rewarding one for myself and Dr Jeremy Turner.

"Simon's rigour, precision and vision as a photographer is second-to-none in his poetic use of the medium, and is authentically embodied in the experience and encounter, which inhabits the photographs themselves."

For more on Simon's work, please visit here.