A project that ran from 2017 to 2023, The Community Cook Up was a food bank and community meeting point to gather and share a warm meal weekly on Northumberland Park Estate in Tottenham, North London. It was in 2021, when the documentary photographer Hannah Norton was coming up to her fourth year of volunteering for the project that The Cook Up’s founder, Alison Davy, proposed the idea of her doing a community photo project.
“Our community was made up of wonderful people, and she knew the value and impact a portrait could have on someone’s feelings of pride and belonging,” shares Hannah. “I had no idea of the shape the project would take or the impact it would have but it began (and continued) with me taping up some white fabric to a wall in the community centre.”
For the better part of a year, the photographer proceeded to document different members of the community that had formed around the Cook Up, shooting on film to capture stripped back black-and-white portraits that became a frame to capture all kinds of characters. In the process of composing each portrait, the photographer spoke to participants about their lives and experiences, getting to know the all too familiar locals again, in a new way. This growing sense of connection and closeness led her to eventually break out of a studio set up in the last few months of the project and pursue a few environmental portraits with people that she had made ties with throughout the project.