HACKNEY WICK MARKET
PHOTOGRAPHS…
As I originally wrote the intro to my photo essay on Hackney Wick Market in 2001:
Until fifteen years ago it was a greyhound stadium, then it became Hackney Wick Market. Every Sunday this muddy ground surrounded by the decadent structure of the former stadium, transforms itself into a busy fair where, instead of a bet, people make very good bargains. Hackney Wick is located in East London, where most of the new immigrants have established themselves in the last decade or so. Still not part of the urban network these people live on the margin of British society, sometimes without a work permit. So the market becomes the only chance for them to earn a living, or to buy cheap goods. Kosovoans, Russians, Turkish, Indians, are selling alongside traditional East-London traders which just adds another hint of culture in the panorama of the Hackney Wick Fair. Clothes beside food, household goods together with sofas and tables, screws and CDs, plants and computers, old stuff and new inventions, everyone is open for a deal from six o’clock in the morning until the sun goes down.
The unusual and rather abstract location of Hackney Wick deprives the market of the distinguishing marks of London, so it becomes a world on its own with its diversities of language, cultures, and values. It is not clear how official the market is, and there is a risk that the market will be closed very soon. Future plans for the area may kill the spontaneity of the place. It is evident that Hackney Wick is changing very quickly right now.