Marcus Robinson is from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied modern languages at Cambridge University and then lived in Paris for 16 years where he specialized in architectural photography. His work was recognized for its unconventional and painterly qualities.
His photographic work has been exhibited at the Carousel du Louvre in Paris and was presented at the inauguration of the building. He has had many exhibitions in Paris of his architectural photography, celebrating diverse aspects of both the new architecture and the historic buildings of that great city.
In search of new creative challenges, he moved to London in 1998 and at the invitation of architects Marks Barfield, began photographing the creation of London Eye. The short film piece he made while photographing the creation this iconic London landmark, was commissioned by Channel 4, and the film ‘Millennium Wheel’ was broadcast on the eve of the year 2000 and later that year screened at the London Film Festival. His book of photography about the London Eye has been sold world wide and his work is featured at the London Eye in the Harper Collins guides to the project.
He is currently working in New York where he is creating a major work about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. This is a time-lapse film and a large collection of drawings, lithographic prints and oil paintings which are mostly drawn and painted from life directly on site.
The film Rebuilding the World Trade Center was broadcast on Channel 4 September 2013 and received rave reviews from the national press and arts reviews, including The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Observer. It has subsequently been nominated for many awards and won the Bafta Craft Award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary and won three awards at the RealScreen Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, Best Documentary, Best Cinematography and Special Jury Award for Excellence.
His work has been featured in special pieces by FR3 and Antenne 2 in Paris, BBC NI, ‘The Arts Show’ and RTE in the UK and Ireland and in the US by CNN, NBC, ABC7, Bloomberg TV, New York 1 as well as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
His distinctive time-lapse filming has been used by BBC Panorama and Channel 4 documentaries and he has filmed and photographed many projects of urban transformation including ‘The Wellington Arch’ and ‘The Thames Gateway’ for English Heritage and he construction of the new Home Office in Marsham Street for Bouygues Construction. He has filmed many demolition projects for Brown and Mason Demolition, including the former Ministry of the Environment in Marsham Street (the three ugly sisters). And from 2006 he made a unique time-lapse film for Bouygues Construction, using 13 fixed cameras over a 4 year period to film the construction of the new Larnaca international airport on the island of Cyprus.
The latest version of the film, Rebuilding the World Trade Center, premiered in the US on September 11, 2014 on the History Channel.