Chris Hoare was raised close to Southmead, on Bristol’s northern edge. This area of the city isn’t shown on tourist maps, isn’t featured in weekend supplements, and isn’t particularly appealing to young professionals moving from London in search of less expensive housing and a little edge. It is nearly entirely working class, physically isolated from the rest of the city by hills and customs, and it has influenced Hoare’s perspective throughout his career. Not what Bristol wants you to see. at the remnants of it.
The fullest manifestation of that instinct to date can be found in his 2024 photobook Seven Hills. It spans about five years of work, the kind of methodical, patient documentary approach that seems more and more uncommon in this day and age of short attention spans and disposable photos. Hoare covers a wide range of topics, from abandoned food that is rotting at market edges to displaced people who are sleeping in doorways close to the city center. At first glance, there isn’t a clear connection between all of this. It has to do with what a city decides not to examine.
On June 8, 2020, the morning after Edward Colston’s statue was removed from its plinth and rolled into Bristol Harbour, the book took on a new significance. The previous day, Hoare had attended the Black Lives Matter protest, participated in a nine-minute kneel in support of George Floyd, and then left for home. He went back outside when his phone began to ring, not to record the actual moment but rather its aftermath. In Seven Hills, the empty plinth is seen tilted on its side. The entire project is about absence as much as presence, about what remains after something has been eliminated, disregarded, or just thrown out, so it fits perfectly.
Hoare seems to be drawn to conflict. Not the dramatic kind, like the burning barricade or the yelling mob, but the more subdued conflict between the city’s perception of itself and its true nature. Bristol actively promotes its independent culture, street art, music, and food scene. And that’s all real. However, Southmead also does. The lines at the food bank also do. Additionally, the city absorbs the stories of the migrants without fully acknowledging them. While no city may be truthful about its own inconsistencies, Bristol appears to have a particularly large discrepancy between its reputation and reality.
The specificity of Hoare’s writing is what makes it resonate with you. He’s not saying big things. He’s taking pictures of a specific face outside a specific building or a specific hill at a specific time of day. The distinction between a concept and an encounter is what makes documentary photography so vital. From the Magnum tradition to the astute community work that has taken place in Bristol for decades, the photographers who have done this successfully have all realized that abstraction kills the form. Hoare appears to comprehend it as well.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that his sensibility, developed in Southmead and honed by witnessing a city change around him, results in something more unsettling and truthful than the majority of what passes for documentary work in British photography at the moment. He takes pictures of what is thrown away. The people, the cuisine, the histories. He also raises the question of why so much of it initially ended up on the periphery.
FAQs
1. What is Chris Hoare’s photobook called?
Seven Hills, published in 2024.
2. Where did Chris Hoare grow up?
Southmead estate, on the northern edge of Bristol.
3. What subjects does Chris Hoare photograph?
Discarded food, displaced people, and Bristol’s overlooked working-class communities.
4. How did the Colston statue event influence his work?
It deepened his focus on absence, erasure, and what cities choose to ignore.
5. What makes Hoare’s documentary style distinctive?
His hyper-specific, slow-burn approach is rooted in personal knowledge of Bristol’s margins.
