Will Boase

research // photo // etc

Reformed photojournalist turned photography researcher and doctoral student living in Rotterdam, NL. Fascinated by the (after)lives of photographs and wider digital visual media, how photography makes the world, and how photographers can do a better job of communicating. I wrote a thesis about it that you can read here. Since September 2025 I study this as part of the Doctoral Programme in Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University, Helsinki.

Graduate of the MA Photography and Society, co-initiator (with Andrea Stultiens) of the Dutch Royal Academy of Art’s Networked Audience research group, current member of Aalto University’s Image Matters doctoral research group, initiator of The Shuffle (an exhibition on your mobile phone), guest editor of Trigger’s special edition Networking The Audience, about digital circulation and small screens, which was also published on Telegram.

I continue to freelance as a photographer, writer, and teacher around visual culture, and was part of the World Press Photo Award’s digital forensics team for the 2025 edition. I’m an occasional lecturer on photography theory and practice, including for Fotea, and more recently on AI imagery from a curious skeptic’s perspective, teaching positive and negative use cases for a variety of audiences including the Royal Academy of Art (NL).

At the moment I am interested in developing projects around AI literacy and the roles photography could play in establishing or strengthening consensus reality, so if that’s the kind of thing you’re into, I would love to hear from you!

Want to contact me? my gmail is willboase.
My phone number is somewhere on the internet too.
Seeking parasocial proximity? Here’s my IG.

A Chinese doctor, Dr. Dai, prepares to give acupucture to a patient in the China-Uganda Friendship Hospital in Naguru, Kampala (for The Volkskrant)

Wedding preparations

A Ugandan sailor lifts his boat’s motor out of the water after delivering Sinterklaas and his Piets to an annual Dutch Christmas party on the shore of Lake Victoria, Uganda. The Piets, which in this case were white Dutch in facepaint, divide contemporary Dutch society. Many people say the characters, who wear black makeup, gold earrings, minstrel suits, and painted red lips, are racist cariactures. Others, including prominent populist Geert Wilders, defend them as part of the country’s history and culture, saying that the black faces come from the soot of the chimneys they must climb down.

A man sells a painting of Mount Kilimanjaro on the streets of Dar Es Salaam at night.

Snacks for sale in Garissa, Eastern Kenya.

Bodybuilders keep an eye on the competition, Kampala.

A member of M23 on patrol in the town of Rutshuru during the Rwanda-backed armed group’s lightning advance across North Kivu in 2013. A great documentary about this period is Virunga.

Fishermen at dusk, Lake Victoria.

Ugandan fans watch their team play Kenya at the AFCON qualifiers.

Young South Sudanese celebrate their nation’s independence from Sudan on the streets of Juba. Two years later the country would devour itself in a bloody civil war.

A child plays with burning grass in a ruined house in Amuru, Northern Uganda (for USAID)

A birthday party in Kampala, Uganda (for The Guardian)

A Ugandan domestic worker who escaped abusive employment in the Emirates shows one of the documents which granted her the right to work abroad. A vast workforce of East Africans and South Asians power the Gulf states, but they are far from home with few protections, and it’s common to hear stories of violence or worse.

Early morning over Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda.

His Highness the Aga Khan and Uganda’s President Museveni place symbolic bricks to mark the beginning of works on a huge new hospital in Lugogo, Kampala (for the Aga Khan Foundation)

His Highness the Aga Khan is escorted along the red carpet by Uganda’s then Minister of Health.

A tour guide checks his phone while waiting for his clients to finish exploring Idi Amin’s torture chambers, Kampala.

Amitabh Bachchan photographs his daughter in front of an Igor Mitorij sculpture in Rinek Głowny, Krakow, Poland.