About

^{Marc Vallée self-portrait, Newark, New Jersey, 1998.}

Marc Vallée (b. 1968) is a documentary photographer based in London. His work focuses primarily on subcultures – queer youth, sex workers, political dissidents and graffiti writers, as well as skaters, punks and surfers. As a gay teenager in the 1980s, he read Marx and discovered Soho, experiences that made a formative impact. After working as a layout artist and typesetter for the Marxist newspaper Militant, he studied Fine Art at the Sir John Cass School of Art, graduating with a BA (1997) and MA (1999).

The principal destination for his work is self-published zines and photobooks, notably Number Thirteen (2020), Vandals and the City (2016) and Anti-Skateboarding Devices (2012) – along with the recent series of photobooks: 90s Archive: Volume One, Two and Three (2022-24). Between 2005 and 2012, he chronicled political dissent in Britain and co-authored a sequence of groundbreaking front-page investigations into police surveillance for the Guardian and Financial Times. His reportage reflects the mood of his broader practice, in which real lives – above all, those lived on the edges of the mainstream – emerge in sharp focus.

Recent group exhibitions include those at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2024), Stills Centre for Photography, Edinburgh (2024), Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol (2022), Somerset House, London (2021), and the London Museum (2018), as well as a trilogy of solo exhibitions in Berlin at the Retramp Gallery (2024, 2023 and 2022). Marc’s prints are held in private and public collections including those of the London Museum and the Martin Parr Foundation. His zines and photobooks are held in the collections of Tate Britain, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the London Museum; Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol; and Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris. An exhibition of Marc’s indie queer work from the 1990s will be held at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, in 2025.

SELECTED PRESS
HERO, 2024.
HERO, 2023.
THE FACE, 2023.
British Journal of Photography, 2022.
British Journal of Photography, 2022. (PDF).
DAZED, November, 2022.
DAZED, July, 2022.
DAZED, June, 2022.
British Journal of Photography, 2021.
Huck, 2021.
THE FACE, 2020.
Huck, 2020.
ELEPHANT, 2020.
HERO, 2020.
TANK, 2019.
HERO, 2019.
HERO, 2018.
British Journal of Photography, 2018.
HEAPS, 2017.
Huck, June, 2017.
HERO, June, 2017.
HERO, March, 2017.
Huck, March, 2017.
The Guardian, 2016.
Huck, October, 2016.
Huck, May, 2016.
British Journal of Photography, 2015.
The Guardian, 2014.
Source, 2014.
Huck, 2013.
The Left Bank Show (Resonance FM), 2011.  
Huck, 2009 (PDF).