Look carefully at the English and you may catch a glimpse of a unique expression. It’s a bittersweet half grin, a quintessential moment when we recognize and admirably accept our most hideous traits. This smile crossed my face when I first saw Peter Dench’s photographs.

Mr. Dench and I have a few crucial things in common. We are both English and have had the privilege of viewing our country through the dual lenses of distance and proximity. We both also spent some time in an area of England that is supported by the polarities of the class system.

“It’s the only place where I have seen two women simultaneously urinating in a doorway whilst smoking a fag and having a conversation,” Mr. Dench said of my hometown, Derby. Then again, he added, the next day you can go for a stroll around the neatly kept gardens of a stately home.

Enlivened by this contrast, Mr. Dench began his 10-year project to document the English. “England Uncensored,” shown at Perpignan, France, this summer during the Visa Pour l’Image Festival, is a selection from that project. Unabashedly English — with a French edit and a German influence.

Peter Dench

“We take some English things for granted,” Mr. Dench said. “The photo of the five mini-roundabouts in Swindon people abroad find hilarious, so that was edited in.”

The German influence came from a reporter at Stern magazine who accompanied him to the northern seaside town of Blackpool and highlighted the absurdity of sticky barroom carpets and men carrying posters of spitfires.

A seasoned photojournalist traveling to more than 50 different countries on assignment is one thing, but picturing what’s closest to you is a different and difficult task.

“I denied my own existence and how it’s shaped me,” he said of his project’s beginnings. “But then I admitted that it’s not something to be ashamed of. England is the country I return to, it is my passion, it’s my home, it’s the country and the people I most want to understand.”

His aptly timed work includes images from the pageantry of the royal wedding in April and reflects upon the 25th anniversary of Martin Parr’s photo book “The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton.”

Mr. Parr and Mr. Dench share an ability to find the duality of celebration and disappointment and capture it in their images. Some of the most fascinating photos from Mr. Dench’s exhibition show the other side to the royal wedding, which the media and glossy magazine specials couldn’t bring themselves to admit: the grit underneath the sheen of the day.

Seeing that alone is worth a smile.

Peter Dench

Follow @nytimesphoto on Twitter.