Photographer Hannah Norton has completed a powerful year-long documentary series capturing the resilience, solidarity, and unwavering kindness of community members who gathered at The Community Cook Up, a food bank and weekly meeting point on Northumberland Park Estate in Tottenham, North London. The project, which ran from 2017 to 2023, served as both a source of nourishment and a vital community gathering space for local residents.
The photography project began in 2021 when Norton was approaching her fourth year as a volunteer with The Cook Up. Alison Davy, the project's founder, proposed that Norton document their community through portraiture. "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," Norton explained. The photographer started simply, taping white fabric to a wall in the community center without knowing what shape the project would ultimately take.
For nearly a year, Norton documented various community members who had formed connections around The Cook Up, shooting on film to create stripped-back black-and-white portraits that captured a diverse range of characters. During each portrait session, she engaged participants in conversations about their lives and experiences, allowing her to reconnect with familiar faces in entirely new ways. This deepening sense of connection eventually led Norton to break away from her studio setup in the project's final months, pursuing environmental portraits with people she had grown close to throughout the endeavor.
These later images were captured in intimate settings like participants' homes or local parks, where extended conversations revealed what The Cook Up truly meant to community members. "It was important these conversations happened outside of The Cook Up," Norton shared. "The portraits that happened there were fun and an escape for a few minutes. I didn't want to weigh it down with heavy conversations but felt it was important to have the voices of members of the community."
Norton's approach to shooting inside the center was deliberately separate from the food bank context. By using a white backdrop and focusing solely on individuals, she created what she describes as "a kind of projection." She explained, "I knew these people, knew what they were going through, and often people were there because they were going through a tough time. I didn't want their portrait to be tied to a period of time in their lives that was painful. I wanted the series to be a celebration of their humanity and spirit, so they can look at these images forever and feel really proud of who they are."
One portrait that particularly stands out to Norton features Stella, a community member in her late seventies who had been living in a local hostel without secure housing for over a decade. "For years Stella relentlessly advocated for herself in the hope that she would be moved," Norton recalled. "I found out that the week before she asked me to have her picture taken she had been moved into her own flat. You can see how wonderful she looked that day, she was so proud and happy and wanted to remember this moment."
The project served as a learning experience for Norton as a photographer, teaching her the art of being a quiet observer. "The process of making these photographs was to watch someone go from nervous and withdrawn to confident and expressive in the space of 10 minutes, and that brought me so much joy," she reflected. "To be able to change someone's relationship with what having their photo taken means to them is special. It really made me believe in the power of a portrait and what that can do for someone's confidence and sense of worth."
Norton showcased the series at a street-side exhibition at Coal Drops Yard in London late last year, combining the images with interviews that shaped The Community Cook Up into a printed publication. The book was distributed by Then There Was Us with assistance from Panopus Printing Studio and sold out after its first print run, with a percentage of profits directed back into the community. Norton now has plans to create a second edition to reach more people through print.
The opening night of the exhibition proved particularly meaningful for the community. "The opening night of the show was beautiful, so many people from the cook up came down to see the work and they were getting recognized and treated like celebrities," Norton noted. "It was just such a thrill to see, and for other people to get to experience the magic of The Cook Up community too." She hopes the message her images convey is clear: "We all have a shared humanity and it is how we treat one another that counts for something, not the circumstances in which we find ourselves."
