I'm Mark Weekes — a UK black and white photographer working across landscape, street, travel, and urban observation — mostly in the quiet places.
I'm a Cornishman who ended up in Buckinghamshire. Growing up in a military family meant I rarely stayed anywhere long enough to call it home.
Cornwall, Germany, Herefordshire, Wales, wherever the posting took us. Being outdoors was just part of how life worked.
The Chiltern Hills weren't a romantic choice. They're where I now live, where Elvis needs walking, and where I can get outside without half a day's travel. But the location is irrelevant—UK or overseas. The discipline of looking in black and white stays exactly the same, whether I'm standing in the middle of a field, down a backstreet, or lost in a town.
Photography came early — a Polaroid at nine, a Praktica SLR bought with my first wages — but for most of my life it was just documentation. It took until my mid-forties to realise the camera was something more than that. Not a tool for making art, but a reason to look harder at the world I was already walking through.
Elvis is a large white Goldendoodle who stops strangers in their tracks and gets me outside on the days I'd rather not be. He's as much a part of this as anything else.
More Than a Pretty Picture, my first book published in 2026, asks why we make photographs rather than how. It's the natural place where all of this ended up.
“Walking brings me peace,
Photography gives me purpose and connection.”— Mark Weekes
I've recently set up a Facebook group — Black and White Urban Photography — a community for anyone who shoots urban environments in black and white. Whether you're shooting city streets, towns, villages or overlooked everyday spaces, come and share your work. All welcome.