Jan Enkelmann, although originally from Germany, has lived in – and photographed – Brixton for 25 years. His most recent project has resulted in a beautiful book of portraits and street scenes taken around the area. Brixton is “a great place to take pictures if you do kind of documentary photography as I do, because it’s full of interesting characters,” Enkelmann tells me.
He started this particular project eight years ago, when he challenged himself to “go out and approach random strangers in the streets and ask them if I could take their picture. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
The images of those who say ‘yes’ are striking. Enkelmann uses light and shadow to create portraits that are both raw and natural. However, when he showed the pictures to friends and fellow photographers, they were keen to know where the interaction “was taking place, where these people are”, so, he included his Brixton street photography in the book.
He explains that through these pictures “it was always clear I didn’t want to have a clichéd picture of Brixton. I deliberately didn’t include any of the landmarks that everyone immediately recognises”.
The images are taken around the streets and markets of Brixton Road, Atlantic Road and Coldharbour Lane, the heart of Brixton often known as the Brixton Triangle, hence the book’s title.
Over the past decade Brixton has changed a lot but the street imagery in the book captures more of the colourful, rough around the edges Brixton than the more gentrified version. “In a way, it’s capturing a Brixton that is slowly disappearing,” he says.
However, Enkelmann adds that whenever he goes to shoot “there’s still a lot of the Brixton that I’ve always known still there”.
Brixton is certainly not the only part of London undergoing gentrification, and there will be a glimmer of recognition for people from those areas when they look through Enkelmann’s book. “On one hand, it’s obviously it’s very much Brixton, but on the other hand, I’ve tried to do something that has a universality,” he says.
What does he hope people will take away from The Triangle? “It’s a very personal project and you can’t predict what people will get out of it, but hopefully for the people from Brixton it will maybe show them an aspect or aspects that they haven’t noticed before”.
“I try to spot things that I pass every day but see them in a different light,” he says. “And if people see that as well – maybe look at something that they’ve seen a million times, but suddenly see the beauty in it, I think that would be amazing.”
‘The Triangle’ by Jan Enkelmann is published by Work Books
