About Charles Binns

Charles Binns is an artist and photographer based in Hertfordshire. After leaving a 27-year career as a reinsurance broker, Binns enrolled at Central Saint Martins where he studied an MA in Contemporary Photography, Practices and Philosophies. Binns’ work is primarily concerned with environmental destruction and the loss of biodiversity.

In his book The Decline of the West, the German philosopher Oswald Spengler stated that civilisations rise and fall according to a natural lifespan; he believed that the European “Faustian” civilisation was approaching the winter of its life, and that the western man was ultimately a tragic figure who could never reach his goal. The idea that our civilisation will ultimately fail – and that in fact our activities only hasten our own destruction – lies at the heart of Binns’ practice. The artist examines how future civilisations will judge us, just as we judge those that preceded us, and asks what this tells us about our own actions and the ethical considerations that underpin them.