The Metropolis

Photographer Zed Nelson takes on gentrification in Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 26 September, 2012 11:37

[Skip to 1.50 in the video above or view all the photos on one page at Zed’s website here]

Zed Nelson’s collection is called Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities. He introduces it by saying:

“The social landscape for an under-privileged teenager growing up in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs, is a million light-years away from the new urban hipsters who frequent the cool bars and expensive cappuccino café’s springing up in the same streets. These worlds co-exist side-by-side but entirely separate, creating bizarre juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, aspiration and hopelessness.”

So while his title harks to Dickens, the thought behind it is pure Disraeli, who said that of England that it was:

“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.”

Do these thoughts accurately describe two Hackneys which exist today? Or two Londons?

I think there are many more Hackneys and Londons than that.

See also:

Chatsworth Road: the front line of Guardian gentrification essays

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