Columbia Road, a Sunday flower market in London’s East End, has been around for almost 150 years. Rather than depicting the obvious prettiness of people and their flowers, photographer Johanna Neurath turns her attention to the colour and pattern left behind as the market clears out, focusing on strangely beautiful displays in gutters, hazy reflections in windows and the abstract forms created by fag butts, shiny packaging and polystyrene cups strewn across the road. By fusing still life and street photography, her work celebrates the beauty and chaos of one of East London’s most famous markets.
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I started the project because firstly the market is close to where I live, and I wanted to explore the fine line that exists between beauty and ugliness, chaos and order… Also I love colour and it was a chance to play with that.
The pictures started as purely abstract but then widened to include people.
There weren’t really any difficulties while making this project, except enough self-control to not move anything or get in people’s way.
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(Photographs from the Columbia Road book published by Hoxton Mini Press.)
