Dreamland

Dan Burn-Forti

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A previously unseen story unearthed during lockdown archiving.

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Dan Burn-Forti

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More work from Dan Burn-Forti

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Selected Projects
Klarna - Clothes Love All
Klarna's Clothes Love All campaign photographed by Dan Burn-Forti champions inclusivity, no judgment and to love all.
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Selected Projects
Landsec
The Christmas campaign for Landsec's shopping centres, encouraging post lockdown shopping.
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Selected Projects
Bank of Scotland
Bank of Scotland's latest campaign featuring Susan Calman in various moments where her bank account has saved the day.
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Selected Projects
Financial Times - Year of the Dog
Dan photographed the How To Spend It magazine's issue dedicated to the other unsung heroes of 2020, our pets.
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Selected Projects
Channel 4 - Taskmaster
The latest campaign for Channel 4's comedy panel game show Taskmaster.
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Welcome aboard the MSC Fantasia. Before the dystopian weirdness of the last year, this floating mammoth carried upwards of 4,000 fun loving guests at a time, as they chomped their way through four square meals a day whilst cruising around the Mediterranean. Our story was concerned with the puzzle of how to feed this mass of humanity whilst floating in the middle of the ocean. The kitchens were run like military operations, with diagrams, flow charts and spreadsheets depicting exact quantities and the manner of presentation for every morsel that left the kitchens. And there were a lot of morsels. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight feast (?) were vast buffets, with each guest given a platter sized plate to accommodate their every gastronomic whim. Apparently, the average cruise passenger puts on 10lbs a week. Bit of an odd holiday if you ask me. #mscfantasia
#alifeontheopenwaves #cruiseship #cruiselife #cruiselife🚢

Very sad to hear that Paul Ritter has died. What a most excellent actor and fellow he was. If you haven’t seen Friday Night Dinner, you really should. It’s super funny and Paul as the frequently shirtless, bin eating Dad is an absolute comedy marvel. RIP Paul, what a lovely bit of squirrel. #paulritter #lovelybitofsquirrel #fridaynightdinner

As it’s Easter weekend, here’s some pictures of rabbits, cos you know Easter means rabbits. But hold on just a darned minute, what’s the deal with this Easter/rabbit thing? Did Jesus really like rabbits or something? Did he have a pet rabbit? Did rabbits hold a vigil outside the cave whilst awaiting his resurrection? What’s it all about? Also, the brown rabbit here that looks like a hare is a breed of rabbit called The Belgian Hare that is a type of rabbit that has been bred to look like a hare. Also also, whilst taking these at the Burgess Small Animal Show in Harrogate, I asked the owner of the white rabbit what its name was and he said that they only name them if they win. I guess they’re not a very sentimental bunch then these competitive rabbit breeding folks. #rabbits
#belgianhare
#easterbunny
#whathaverabbitsgottodowitheaster

As a fledgling photographer trying to figure out how to keep the wolf from the door at the tail end of the last century, one publication that really helped to keep me going was a niche magazine called Moneywise. It was pretty much as boring as the title would suggest, but the excellent art director at the time embraced my taste for the theatrical and let me try it out on their real life features. So, channeling my love of Blue Velvet and O. Winston Link, I was sent forth to take loads of portraits of Mr and Mrs Middle England. It was an enlightening journey into a slice of normal that I hadn’t really thought much about in my cosseted West London life. I still really like a lot of these pictures now, but I’m just not sure if they’re maybe a bit mean. Although saying that, they do all look like rockstars. However, all that excessive lighting, in the days before lightweight battery flashes- pretty sure my assistant hated me a lot.

This mid summer jaunt many summers ago to Solovetsky Island in the Arctic Circle was definitely one of the stranger trips I’ve been on. Originally built in 1435, the epic medieval monastery that looms over the main island had quietly been going about its business of praising the Lord for almost 500 years until 1923 when it was turned into Soviet Russia’s first, and most brutal, Gulag. The pretty much impossible aim of our trip was to see if such acts of evil can leave a trace or echo on a place. It being June and a 100 miles south of the Arctic circle, the sun never bothered to properly set. So a mixture of sleep deprivation, steamy banyas and large quantities of vodka made an already strange trip into a fairly trippy one. But as for a pervasive sense of evil, I wasn’t sure. The grim historical details were shocking to learn, but I’m not convinced that the bricks and stones that bore witness to it all are capable of absorbing such human nastiness. Believing that would open the door to all sorts of supernatural thinking and, for me, things just ain’t so. As we prepared to leave for the mainland, the writer and I enquired as to what was a suitable tip for our two gloomy guides. $10 each was advised, but my maths being awful, as the journalist handed over the suggested amount in roubles to one of them, I’d managed to add a zero in my conversion and gave the other ten times the amount. As we boarded the tiny prop plane we looked back to see a furious exchange between the guides and their wives as they, presumably, try to fix my financial faux pas. I’ve always worried that this small mistake of mine created some ghastly blood feud that still goes on to this day. Oops. #solovetskyislands

What a grey and yucky day it is today. Here’s a few splurges of colour, taken last year for the fine folks of Klarna and their marvellous agency, Motel at a mental gothic time capsule in deepest Surrey for their Clothes love all campaign. Hello @lee_tannnn and @natkozlowska , what a jolly jape it was.
#klarna