T
he British photographer Craig
Easton won photographer of
the year at the 2021 Sony World
Photography awards for his
project capturing life in Bank
Top, a working-class area of Blackburn
less than half a mile square. Easton spent
18 months there, initially as part of a local
arts project called Kick Down the Barriers,
launched in response to reports in the media
in 2018 that Blackburn was one of the most
ethnically segregated towns in Britain.
“Who does this narrative benefit? This
setting one community off against the
other, this stoking of division?” Easton says.
“I went to learn, to talk to people and see
how they felt about this portrayal of their
community.” His book Bank Top, co-writtenwith the social researcher Abdul Aziz Hafiz,
reveals how waves of immigration shaped
the neighbourhood: Poles came after the
Second World War; south Asians in the
1960s and 1970s; eastern Europeans after
the expansion of the EU. “Today families
from Cape Verde and Ukraine along with
new arrivals from war-torn corners have
congregated in Bank Top and did not in fact
segregate themselves,” Hafiz writes. “It is the
congregation of those with little wealth that
makes Bank Top work as a neighbourhood.”
Easton used a large-format camera on a
tripod. “I wanted to be visible,” he says. “It’s
a slow process and it allows me time to speak
to people — which is why I’m there.” nBank Top is available at gostbooks.com at £45RIGHT
Masood Akram in
front of his house,
with iron gates
reading “MashaAllah
SubhanAllah”
(“Allah’s will, glory
be to Allah”) that
he forged himselfLEFT
Three generations of
the Williamson family
on their doorstep and
inside their home on
Johnston StreetALL IMAGES © CRAIG EASTON30 • The Sunday Times Magazine