The Community Launderette

One of the attractions of pounding city streets with a camera in hand are moments that lead to fresh understanding and pause for thought.

The Community Launderette, Spitalfields - August 2022

In August this year, I was making one of my periodic visits to Brick Lane in East London. Like so many other photographers, I am endlessly attracted by the riot of colour, the mix of people and the layers of history that make up this vibrant neighbourhood.

I had spent much of the day admiring the street artists at work (see my previous blog about my brief encounter with one artist) and just enjoying the bustle and crowds on a warm Saturday afternoon. But later in the day, my meandering took me back towards Spitalfields, mainly in the hope of finding something of interest as the market stall-holders started to close up for the day.

Glancing into the doorway of a small launderette, my eye was immediately caught by the sight of a pair of feet alone amongst the washing machines and driers. Inadvertently, I had stumbled across the Spitalfields Community Laundrette: one of a number of community enterprises run by the residents of the nearby Boundary Estate. Opened in 1992 as part of efforts to encourage and stimulate renewal in what was then a run down corner of London caught on the “wrong side” of Bishopsgate, the Spitalfields Launderette has been at the heart of efforts to rebuild the communities that now thrive in Spitalfields, around Brick Lane and out into Shoreditch.

I only found this out because a pair of feet, presumably belonging to an unseen local resident, had attracted my gaze and prompted me to make this picture. I think it is one of many examples in my photographic life where having a camera in hand has led me to a deeper appreciation of my subject - even when it seems so superficially ordinary as a quiet moment waiting for the wash cycle to finish.

As I learned a little more about the role this community project has played in the renewal of what is now one of London’s most exciting visitor destinations, it led me to thinking that some of our current crop of politicians should follow my example and get out in the streets more, armed with a camera. They too might see things and discover ideas that, in our all too-rushed lives, mostly pass us by.