Julian Simmons was born in London in 1971. In 2007 he moved to Suffolk, where he now lives and works. He studied at Central St Martin’s College of Art and at the RCA, where he developed his programmable electronic drawing machines that lead to an entirely new pencil-drawn photographic process. In 2004 he received a doctorate of Fine Art in the Philosophy of Tone and Inflorescence from the RCA. He was a visiting lecturer at the RCA and has designed applications for an artificial intelligence company.

He has been involved in photography for 30 years, using 5x4 studio cameras and designing and making his own cameras and systems for radio-controlled aerial photography. He is also an expert printmaker. He employs an object-oriented programming language known as ‘puredata’ to develop an experimental sound synthesis system manipulated by mathematical operations. His most recent shows have been with Sarah Lucas in London, Brussels and Auckland (2011), and his most recent publication was Penetralia (2008).