Woodland Hills High School Prom, 2, 2012, © Mark Neville, courtesy of the artist and Alan Cristea Gallery

 

Mark Neville Investigates the Dickensian Ills Linking London & Post-Industrial Pittsburgh…

by Roy Wilkes | We Heart

London and Pittsburgh – two very different cities in historical terms but places which nonetheless share a common contemporary malady: class divide. In 2012, British photographer Mark Neville was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a New York Times Magazine commission documenting the stark contrasts in London society. Shooting with lighting and film stock redolent of the 1980s boom and bust years, he visited a community centre in Tottenham which suffered a small fire and left the children streaked with soot, resembling Dickensian urchins. In contrast, his visit to Bouji’s nightclub and the financial exchanges showed the professional classes as still living the work-hard-play-hard life of excess that characterised the ’80s yuppie.

Neville then travelled to Pittsburgh for the Andy Warhol Museum to examine the social issues in the neighbourhoods of Sewickley and Braddock. Neville found a racial segregation far beyond that of London, but the economic contrasts were strikingly similar. The city was built on steel manufacture, and while the predominantly white ruling class in Sewickley has survived in the post-industrial era, the black neighbourhood of Braddock is plagued by a crack epidemic that began in the ’80s. By investigating the same “scenes” in Pittsburgh as in his London assignment, Neville draws parallels between the two locations, and works from both series have been selected to be exhibited together for a forthcoming show at Alan Cristea Gallery. London/Pittsburgh begins on 21 November and continues until 24 January 2015.

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Kids at Somerford Grove Adventure Playground, Tottenham, put out the barbeque fire, 2011, © Mark Neville, courtesy of the artist and Alan Cristea Gallery