Shot between 1998 and 2010 this book is a collection of photographs from a train line that ran across London’s northern inner-suburbs. Initially intrigued by the social polarisation of neighbourhoods along its routes and its starkly differing end points - affluent Richmond and deprived Woolwich - Simon Wheatley's story became a meandering one with seemingly no end, until the Kodachrome film on which it was shot was discontinued. The work emerged from his archives as a reflection of the emptiness of the Blair years, and a tacit indictment of rail privatisation - The Railways Act of 1993 was the last significant act of the Tory administrations which preceded Tony Blair, and Labour failed to fulfil their promise to repeal this legislation. The book is also a celebration of those who knew Silverlink - particularly graffiti writers - and ends with a perceptive and poignant essay written by Panik, a unique frontline voice both as an artist and an insider. He was a graffiti artist whose ATG crew were well known on the Silverlink line and also the son of a senior member of the train workers union opposed to Blair's policies. Set against this shifting political backdrop of the Blair years and offering a lens on Labour's broken promises and uneasy legacy, Silverlink is more than a documentation of train journeys — it’s a meditation on class, privatisation, and the quietly vanishing landscape of public life in post-Thatcherite Britain.
