Moving between the night, shame and the queer image, Wilde’s practice draws upon English histories as a way to materialise the effects of shame and rural queerness through photography, installation and writing. Looking closely at the photographic and its visual potential to enact a feeling of both melancholy and harmony, his work seeks to harness an agency, where a deeper analysis of shame is uncovered through visual correspondence, scale and the play between private and public interactions. Photography here stands in as a visceral medium and suggests an exchange between the image and the observer. Within his practice, he often works with the limitations of the medium, being pulled in by failure or chance, to then subsequently fall into these spaces of uncertainty. Rendering a poetic analogy to marginal spaces, being on the edge and the space of the night too.

James Wilde is a visual artist working with photography, installation and writing. He holds a First Class BA (Hons) in Photography from London College of Communication and graduated from MA Photography at the Royal College of Art. He was selected for the British Journal of Photography, International Photography Award (Single Image Category) and in the same year was awarded the SW Darkroom Residency, which led to coordinating the RCA Photography programme show ‘with fists, it kicks, it bites’ at T.J Boulting, Edel Assanti and Webber Gallery. In 2021 he was involved with the publication Future Archive and has exhibited works at Photo London in New Discoveries (Somerset House) Cusp Gallery (Hangzhou, China) and The December Exhibition at Atelier NŌUA (Bodø, Norway).

James Wilde is based in Kennington, London and holds QTS in Art & Design from UCL. He has worked with the following schools, galleries, museums and organisations:

Frieze Art Fair, Photo London, Serpentine Galleries, Somerset House, Studio Voltaire, V.O. Curations and Tate Modern. Royal College of Art, University of Arts London, School of Visual Arts, New York and University of New Mexico, USA.

A detailed CV and full statements for individual series of works is available upon request.

© All images and text copyright of James Wilde 2026.