In 1996, Anna Fox, her family and a number of lodgers moved into 41 Hewitt Road, a large, rambling Victorian house in Haringey, North London. The house was like any other house in the ladder streets above Finsbury Park, cracked paint crumbling walls and riddled with cockroaches. Anna photographed constantly and Cockroach Diary was made during the time that she lived here. This series of photographs, simply titled 41 Hewitt Road shows the house as if abandoned, no people, just evidence of their presence. Photographs of corners, cupboards, mantel pieces, bathrooms, piles of possessions, souvenirs, cryptic notes and phone numbers scratched on the walls, the strange hieroglyphics of children allowed to write where they please. A gold plastic cherub crowns a child's blue crayon drawing of hospital doors a memory from birth claims its author Felix Fox. The only signs of life are the worms brought in by the cat and the tulip left on the mantelpiece. It is as if some wandering archaeologist has come across the markings of an old sect or tribe, artefacts, objects with an idiosyncratic past, messages making up an inconsequential narrative.



Anna Fox / British Photography / The Hyman Collection