Simon Wheatley

Simon Wheatley, born in 1970 in Singapore, is a photographer and film maker who first began taking photographs seriously on the streets of post-communist Budapest in the early 1990s. Wheatley’s work has become particularly synonymous with London’s Grime scene of the 2000’s. His 2010 publication ‘Don’t Call Me Urban! The Time of Grime’ has become widely regarded as the most comprehensive and culturally accurate visual record of the Grime music genre and scene.  

Further collections of Wheatley’s work include ‘Lost Dreams’ (2022), a smaller book that focuses on the original Grime underground based around the youth clubs of East London and laments their passing after a decade of Tory ‘austerity'; ‘Always and Forever There / Toujours et encore lá’ (2023), a series of photographs taken in the estates on the outskirts of the small town of Blois in the Loire Valley, France in the aftermath of the riots of 2005, and ‘Silverlink’ (2022) which comprises photographs taken between 1998 and 2010 of a train line that ran across London’s northern inner-suburbs and provides a reflection of the Blair years and the controversial issue of rail privatisation.

Wheatley has said of his work that “that photography doesn’t exist in the physical sphere but is always a reflection or projection of something else.” After a decade living in Asia he has developed an approach to the medium based on Taoist principles and says, "photography for me is a search for perfection.” He has been described as one of the UK’s most influential photographers of the twenty-first century.

Simon Wheatley lives and works in Bethnal Green, London.