“Don’t Call Me Urban” By Simon Wheatley

Photographer Simon Wheatley documents London’s Grime scene over a period of about ten years in a recently-published book titled “Don’t Call Me Urban. He recently gave an interview with Vice magazine and had this to say “I’m disappointed with what I saw of grime as fashion, it wasn’t very imaginative. That’s what I’ve always referred to when people compare grime to punk—punk was really something daring, whereas grime was very conformist, really. Not just in the sense of the sports corporations who’d give out their stuff to the main crews, but also most of the ‘designers’ who churn out t-shirts and hoodies with varying slogans or patterns. What about mixing it up a bit, you know? I’d like to see some proper African dress and stuff like that, rather than slavishly following the fashion code that came out of the United States.” Check out the book here