Reportage: Grime Culture
Grime emerged out of the suburbs of East London creating one of the greatest music genres to ever hit the UK music scene.
rime emerged out of the suburbs of East London creating one of the greatest music genres to ever hit the UK music scene. such as Wiley, Dizzie Rascal and Kano are some of the lyrical geniuses that are renowned grime artists
Over more than 15 years ago in the streets of Bow, East London, a movement was stirring and this movement is currently taking over the United Kingdom. Interestingly, whilst Grime became visible among its growing audience, the British public and particularly the media were not fond of this new urban genre. The media continuously labelled Grime as aggressive and violent, which led to a growing stigma being attached to the genre. How then, has Grime gone from being seen as a catalyst for knife crime, to the voice of the British youth?
Simon Wheatley
The photographer that captured the birth of grime
Dazed Media
Lost Dreams: Simon Wheatley created a masterpiece called Lost Dreams, it’s a compliation of photos taken in and out of East London community centers between 2005-2007.His images brought to life the lived experiences of a music genre that emerged from the darkening members of the grime culture.
During the 1900s when the music subculture of grime exploded out of East London Simon decided to document the birth and evolution. After 12 years of documenting the birth and evolution we are able to appreciate his work that a time capsule to a lost era of London life.
Through maintaining a subtle presence around the council estate blocks and grotty bedroom studios which incubated grime’s founding figures, Wheatley slowly but surely gained the trust of artists like Dizzee Rascal, Skepta and Wiley.
Grime is raw and edgy and it’s that, that has remained consistent even if the audience of grime today is different to what it was 10 years ago.
The Wot Do You Call It Duo
The photographers documenting the explosion of grime culture. Wot Do You Call It, duo Marco Grey and George Quann-Barnett, have been photographing grime artists since their late teens, both having had a foot in the scene. They told the reporter Noisey during an interview that: “You get a lot of outsiders looking in but we’ve been involved in grime for a long while, so I think our work comes across a bit more honestly. We’re on the inside looking in.”
Grime is one of the few musical genres that has a strong historical British background and this duo aimed at preserving this culture and capturing it but sadly like everything else it is being modernised and losing its true meaning.The birth of grime was the consequence of grime artists being pushed out of the garage scene and creating a genre that they could call their own.
(Daniella Asiimwe)
Abi Kuhl
This is Abu and I had a chance to talk to him about his experience and his opinion on the grime culture.
“Growing up in East London was peak, danger around every estate but the music scene was always booming but the youth never had the facilities to grow.”
(Daniella Asiimwe)
I went to Hackney in East London which is a hotspot for music,art and general pop culture and had one on one shoots with upcoming and already established artists and got an insight to grime in their perspective.
To achieve this pictures I shot on a canon E05D with an 18mm lense and I approached different people with different senses of style and discovered a lot about their preferences when it comes to music .
(Daniella Asiimwe)
My collection of pictures have captured the vibe, aura and overall environment that lies within the music culture.Every image has captured the individual in their own unique way and has a way of beaming their personality through their expression and body movement.
To create these pictures I used the already automated settings on the canon eos and my pictures came out clean and well exposed.I tweaked a few things using Lightroom to just highlight a few features.I decided to go with a warm undertone and I used the AOS59 preset in Lightroom to achieve this
Short Film Production
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