Mimi Mollica
East London Up Close

Mimi Mollica, East London Up Close

Hoxton Mini Press, 2021

139mm (w) x 199mm (h) | 128pp | Hardback | English

Collector’s edition also available.

 

Spontaneous, close-up images capture the joyful cacophony of an ever-changing community.

At once familiar and beguilingly abstract, this playful series by local photographer Mimi Mollica thrusts you straight into the heart of London’s frenetic East End. Intense, colourful snapshots of people, fabrics, architecture, wildlife and everyday objects create a kaleidoscope of the inspiring, frustrating, wild and living streets. Though confronting in its (sometimes extreme) closeness, Mollica’s photography is full of warmth and a love for his community – making us yearn for a time when being near to others was a normal part of day-to-day life.

‘These images have a giddy quality. They don’t just record what the photographer saw, they replicate the process of seeing; the way that the east London street pulls you in and tosses you about in its visual currents.’ – Rachel Segal Hamilton, from the introduction.

 

BOOK CLUB LIVE: MIMI MOLLICA

Tuesday 20 April 2021

6.30 pm BST | 7.30 pm CET | 1.30 pm ET

Free, registration required. 

For the second live event of our Book Club, join Sicilian photographer Mimi Mollica as he talks about his work and latest book ‘East London up Close’, published this month by Hoxton Mini Press, with Francis Hodgson, Professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton.

Register now

 

Arriving in London as a young man in the 90s, Sicilian photographer Domenico ‘Mimi’ Mollica found himself under the spell of its thrilling East End. Today a long-standing Hackney resident, Mimi’s passion for his community continues to drive his work. He is the founder of Offspring Photo Meet, a yearly event held just up the road from his home, that brings together aspiring and seasoned photographers. Exhibited and awarded around the world, Mimi travels across continents working on commissioned and personal projects but still needs only to step into the streets of east London to feel inspired.

Francis Hodgson is Professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton, England. As former Head of Sotheby’s Photographs Department, he is an expert in the history and culture of photography and a specialist writer on photographs, having been for many years the critic for the Financial Times, and before that contributing editor on photography to Art Review, critic for The Spectator and the Economist, and frequent contributor to the broadsheet and specialised press. Hodgson is a co-founder of the largest prize in world photography, the Prix Pictet, and has also been Creative Director in some of the most imaginative visual content distribution companies in the world. At Photonica, he acquired a reputation for radically changing the kinds of imagery acceptable to the stock industry. He was also the founding senior vice president of content at the first successful online art dealership, Eyestorm.