John McDermott has been photographing Southeast Asia since the early 1990s. From 1993 to 1997, McDermott was the Chief Photographer for Manager, a Bangkok-based English-language monthly magazine that covered business, culture and lifestyle throughout the region. During his travels, McDermott developed a strong personal interest in the many cultural heritage sites and ancient historical ruins spread across the continent.

Thus began his long-term fine art photography project documenting UNESCO World Heritage Sites and other historical places in various parts of the world, beginning with the countries of Southeast Asia. He has since photographed the ancient capitals of Ayutthaya and Sukhothai in Thailand and Luang Prabang in Laos; the temple-strewn plains of Bagan in Myanmar (Burma); the monuments of Hue and the historical colonial fishing port of Hoi An in Vietnam; the Great Wall of China; and the stone temple ruins of Angkor in Cambodia. Most recently McDermott has focused on Angkor to create an in-depth study of the complex in its period of rapid transition. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he is currently represented by Flatfile Photography Gallery in Chicago.

McDermott’s work has been published in magazines and newspapers internationally, including The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, Stern, and the South China Morning Post. His photographs of Angkor were published in The New York Times in August 2001 to illustrate a story on the preservation of the trees in Angkor, and was selected to run as a permanent slide show on their website. This year, Archaeology Magazine published a six-page article and photo essay from his Angkor series in the March/April issue, and Professional Photographer Magazine published a profile of McDermott and his work on Angkor in its May 2002 issue.

McDermott has contributed images to several photographic books including Southeast Asia-Passage Through Time, published by Ringier in 2001, and A Day In The Life of Thailand, published by Collins in 1995. In the spring of 2000, McDermott spent four months photographing museums across mainland Southeast Asia to illustrate the book The Extraordinary Museums of Southeast Asia, published in 2001 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. For this project he photographed 28 museums in five countries, and over 200 of his photographs appear in this book.

Before going to Asia, McDermott worked as a photographer and in related fields in the US, including four years in the feature film industry in Hollywood as a camera and lighting technician on more than fifteen feature films. He now divides his time between Asia and the US.