Home A framed photograph of a man in Broadway Market

A framed photograph of a man in Broadway Market

Object

Framed photograph

Production date

07/2005

Object number

2013.302

Physical Description

A framed photograph of Rupert Selby. Broadway Market 2005

Associated Event

E8 4PH

Associated Person

Selby, Rupert (Featured)
Motola, Gabrielle (Photographer)

Associated Place

Broadway Market (Place)

Material

Photo

Dimension

Width (Frame): 62cm
Height (Frame): 67cm

Credit line

E8 4 PH
Portraits on Broadway Market, 2006
Photographer Gabrielle Motola

These photographs were part of a much larger exhibition that was originally exhibited at the Seven Seven Gallery on Broadway Market in 2006 (now Stella Blunt’s and a bookstore). It featured over 200 portraits of residents, visitors, market traders, and passers-by. The photographs documented the people who came and went, live and worked just as the neighbourhood was beginning to gentrify. Some of the photographs were taken on the market street using a backdrop and available light. Others were taken over the years in various locations around the market.

I moved to Broadway Market in 2002. The market then was very different to what it was in 2006 and of course it has changed radically now. For one thing there were no estate agents, and we didn’t have a Saturday market either. The street was pretty empty most of the time, though the Dove was always a place to go and indulge in the wry mixture of hostility, comfort and Belgian beer. The benches of Benjamin Close were equally populated with assorted characters partaking in the favoured English pastime of drink.

Broadway Market has always felt like home to me, and what a spectacularly inspiring home at that. I got to know many people in the neighbourhood by way of photographing them, and through an expressed curiosity and a sustained interest in them; I got to know their stories as well. Some of them are happy and some of them very sad. Some are unbelievable.

The market’s rise in popularity has meant that property and commodity prices have increased and many of the original traders are no longer there, unable to keep up with the changes. Reluctantly they have moved on; some have prospered, others have not.

Gabrielle Motola
October 2011

On display?

No

Inscription

Signature of photographer