Documenting Deptford High Street

Adam Wiseman is a photographer and lecturer at the University of East London. He spoke to Elia Kabanov about photographing Deptford High Street, the changes he saw, and why he traded prints for mangoes and haircuts.

— When I moved to south-east London eight years ago, Deptford immediately felt familiar to me. I’m from Mexico, and the High Street had that same sense of vibrancy, improvisation and community. It felt organic rather than over-managed. The buildings are all different. Some are old, some are newer, and many have been adapted in inventive ways to suit the businesses inside them. The mix of migration, street life, and an artist community felt familiar to me. I was drawn to it before I had fully thought through why.

I was aware that I was arriving as an outsider and people like me could become part of the process of change in a neighbourhood like this. As a photographer, I wanted to make work that engaged with Deptford rather than simply record it. I kept photographing the High Street, and I became increasingly interested in the façades, the businesses, and the signage. I kept asking myself how I could make something that went beyond taking pictures, something that also gave some agency to the people I was photographing.

So I began making framed prints using flea-market frames and offering them in exchange for goods or services from the businesses I photographed. The shopkeepers decided what the work was worth. I made exchanges at places including Strong Arm Steady, Terry’s Discount, Roots Fruit & Veg, and El Cheap’ou. I liked the idea of the photograph becoming another High Street product, with its value set locally rather than by the art market.

I wanted to make my work accessible to the community it comes from. The exchanges made it tangible. I liked the fact that a framed print I had made could be exchanged for something as ordinary and specific as three mangoes and two bananas. They let me test what the work meant on the High Street itself, outside the usual systems of pricing and prestige.

Then I realised I also needed a clear method for photographing the street itself. I wanted consistency, so that the buildings and shopfronts could speak for themselves. Winter turned out to be the right time, because there’s a brief moment when the shops are still open, the interior lights are on, and there is just enough daylight left to see the façades clearly. That balance between natural and artificial light became the structure of the work.

Once I committed to photographing the entire High Street, the scale of it became obvious. There were 186 commercial frontages. I had to wait for shops to be open, for cars not to be parked in front, and for the light to be right. It became obsessive. I was going to the High Street several times a day, photographing, editing, trying to hold it all together alongside a full-time job.

It never felt forced. I was completely absorbed by it. I wanted to get back to the computer and see the images. I started printing them too, and the prints gave me another sense of what the work could be. That kept me going.

At the same time, my father died, and I think the project became a way of dealing with that grief. I threw myself into it completely. What had started as a long attraction to the street became much more focused and intense. Most of the work for the book was done in the past few months. It all came together quite quickly in the end, even if the seeds of it had been there for a long time.

Some of the encounters with shopkeepers have stayed with me. At the beginning, it was often hard to explain what I was trying to do. People are busy, they have other concerns, and not everyone has the patience for an artist turning up with an idea that may not seem relevant to their lives. One conversation was a wake-up call for me. The owner was frustrated about other things, especially the council, and he let it all out. It made me realise my own arrogance and reminded me that I could not just enter these situations expecting people to be interested.

On the other end of the scale were the guys at Strong Arm Steady. They immediately understood the project and were excited by it. They still have my print in the barber shop, along with the letter I first dropped off. They gave me a haircut and a beer in exchange. When they saw the print, they kindly suggested many more haircuts were due. Terry’s was another memorable exchange. His granddaughter got in touch after I had left a letter, and that helped open the conversation. Terry was also lovely. I interviewed him, gave him the print, and in exchange got a bag of earth, some limescale remover, a thermos, and a few other objects.

I have only done four or five of these exchanges so far. Other places, including Upside Down Records, have shown interest, but I paused that side of the project while I focused on photographing the whole street.

The High Street has already changed while I’ve been working on it. In the book, you can still see signs of businesses that have already gone. Jam Circus has closed. Other shops have changed hands. The signage on some frontages is becoming more uniform, which makes me think there are multiple businesses under the same ownership. There also seems to be more repetition on the street now, more shops selling similar cheap goods, more betting shops, and less of the older pattern of distinct businesses serving different needs.

I’m not sure what comes next, but I want to stay alert to what is happening and remain open to new ways of engaging with the community. More broadly, I think about Deptford in terms of change and how that change might unfold. It is a neighbourhood we love, but I am also conscious of the contradiction of loving a place while being part of the forces that may alter it.

Major developments are coming, thousands of new residents, and the question is what that will mean for the High Street. I do not think it is realistic to want to preserve it unchanged, as if it were a museum. Places do change. But it also does not seem fair that people whose lives and businesses are rooted there should simply bear the cost of that change. That is where responsibility matters. Maybe the change can be slowed or managed more fairly. I do not know. I hope the existing businesses can share in whatever comes next, rather than simply being displaced by it.

Adam is now working on an exhibition with support from UEL. You can order his book on Instagram to help the project.