Streatham High Road- Seeing the light

Johnny Bouchier — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:38:51 +0000

As part of the Streatham Festival there will be 24 portraits and 30 shop fronts shown at the Festival Shop at 132 Streatham Hill (an empty shop converted into a gallery).

It would be wonderful to see you at the Private View on Saturday July 10th! There will be drinks and snacks from 5pm – 9pm. Come on by for a relaxed evening and please feel free to bring family and friends along.

If you can’t make it to the Private View please come on by earlier on Saturday or on Sunday.

You find more information on my project and the exhibition below. To see more of my photography please have a look at: http://www.susannehakuba.com

I hope to see you there!

With best wishes,
Susanne Hakuba
Photographer
w: www.susannehakuba.com

Exhibition times:
Saturday, July 10th Noon – 9pm
Private View with drinks after 5pm

Sunday, July 11th Noon – 6pm

You can find more info at: http://www.streathamfestival.com/travel/

Streatham High Road- Seeing the light

Streatham High Road (SHR) in the South London Borough of Lambeth is not only what is locally believed to be the longest High Road in the UK but was also voted Britain’s Worst Street in a 2002 poll by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). Seeing this part of London in a negative light appears to be true for locals who think of it as ordinary, even dull and who frequently asked me why I was photographing an area where there is nothing worth seeing. The same can be said for the many people who see and use SHR solely as a traffic choked through-road to get in or out of town rather than a place to spend time at, which is in stark contrast to Streatham of the 1930’s when it was a popular entertainment centre for South London.

In my project, which consists of portraits and pictures of shop fronts taken along SHR during 2009, I am aiming to portray the area as much in an objective way as photography allows. By quietly observing without intervening when photographing, hence, putting as little of myself as possible into the project I give my subjects space for representing themselves. As SHR runs north-south, I used the quality of illumination by the rising and setting sun to illustrate the vibrancy of colours that adorn the shops, and which reflects the road’s ethnic diversity. By including passing people, the shop fronts become a stage with people performing everyday life- at times surreal, beautiful or humorous.
With my images I am hoping to provide people with a different perspective of this area, and I believe that this project presents an important visual document that shows that far from being Britain’s worst road SHR in fact is a perfect microcosm of multi-cultural Britain.

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