“Between 2003 and 2007, I documented the final years of St. Agnes Place, a South London back street, notable for its status as the longest running squat in London. For over 30 years, until its eventual demolition in 2007, the street was occupied by a fluid and diverse range of groups and individuals, who established an autonomous community which functioned outside the bounds of governmental control. As such, the street stood like few others, as a living monument to the lives and histories which formed it; reflecting the hopes, dreams and failures of its inhabitants and their fraught relationship to society at large. The 22 terraced houses were originally built in Victorian times for the servants of Buckingham Palace…” - Janine Wiedel

The exhibition and accompanying book place the residents of St Agnes at the forefront, drawing on photographs and interviews to examine the community’s final years and the forces that shaped its dissolution. Rather than revisiting the street’s mythology, the project focuses on the lived realities of those who made St Agnes Place their home, tracing how an improvised, self-sustaining community functioned, endured, and ultimately came to an end.

St Agnes Place is due to the published by RRB Photobooks in March 2026