Lee Elkins | Cian Oba-Smith, Andover & Six Acres

Cian Oba-Smith’s Andover & Six Acres was the first book published by Lee Elkins when he launched his independent photography book publishing imprint Lost Light Recordings in 2018.

Andover & Six Acres established Elkins key concerns as an editor and publisher: the identification of under-recognised talent and the creation of exquisite, hand-bound photobooks that presented distinctive projects exploring the socio-political landscape and its effect on people and place.

In Andover & Six Acres, Oba-Smith explores the residents and landscape of the Seven Sisters area of North London, focusing specifically on the Andover and Six Acres estates, to present a more humane view of the people who live in estates that gained notoriety for crime and drug problems throughout the 1980’s & 90’s – a stigma that has clung to communities who still live there.

The project disrupts the easy representation of inner-city housing estates as an oppressive, dangerous and difficult environment to live within, portraying a real sense of optimism and intimacy from a community that is complex and nuanced.  The relationship between the portraiture and the landscapes creates a startling symbiosis; the shafts of light that fall across the austere concrete corridors echo the hopes of the residents who populate the estates.

Elkins worked in collaboration with Oba-Smith on every stage of conceiving and producing the book, from the early stages as editor sequencing the photographs, through designing the book, to close oversight of its production, to the final stages of binding the book by hand himself. It is an approach that has underpinned each of Lost Light Recordings subsequent books, and one that demonstrates the distinctive creative potential of the editorially-led publisher.