Born in Sheffield, England, Patrick spent his childhood moving to the Middle East and Africa before his family finally settled in Perth, Western Australia.
On leaving school, Patrick taught himself photography while working as a set builder for theatre and ballet where he honed his photographic skills capturing the action on stage. However, he found himself increasingly drawn into documentary photography and 1994 Patrick decided to return to Africa. He spent six weeks in Malawi documenting the work of a remarkable Australian surgeon Robert Weedon who had once saved his own life. Returning home, his photos soon became a major exhibition and won him the Australian Kodak Photographer of the Year award.
Inspired by this success Patrick left for Asia in 1999. He has since made Thailand his base, devoting himself to documenting critical issues across the Asia region often ignored by the mainstream media. His major project on the illegal trade in endangered animals won a World Press Photo award in 2004 and a multimedia award from POYi in 2008. Continuing to work on the subject, his book ‘Trading to Extinction’ was nominated in the 10 best photo documentary books of 2014 by AmericanPhoto.
Patrick is the recipient of the 3P Photographer Award, World Press Award - a 3rd place, Days Japan Award, Picture Of The Year Award, and NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism Award for his work. His work has been exhibited at the International Centre of Photography in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, and Visa pour l’Image in France.
His photographs have appeared in The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Mother Jones, Stern Magazine, Der Spiegel Magazine, Marie Claire, New York Times, Aperture, GEO Germany, International Herald Tribune. He has also worked with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The Red Cross, Unicef and World Vision.
Patrick has been represented by Panos Pictures since 2003.
