Seven Hills: It’s Bristol but not as you know it

There’s beauty on the Avon, just not where everyone looks. Photographer Chris Hoare shows a different side of one of England’s most curious cities, writes Liam James

Saturday 25 November 2023 06:30 GMT

‘Seven Hills’ gives readers a glimpse of life in Bristol’s lesser-seen areas (Chris Hoare)

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Away from Bristol’s harbourside, its historic old town and Clifton Suspension Bridge, lies a city rarely depicted and yet home to a majority of its residents.

Seven Hills, a new photobook by Chris Hoare, tours the lesser-seen side of Bristol – where a booming population is being driven into deeper inequality – finding beauty in areas usually obscured by the city’s veneer of prosperity.

The photographer says: “Go beyond the hills and it is a different story, where housing estates have their public amenities cut and Bristolians watch on as the developers line their pockets. Having grown up on the edge of the city, I have watched the friction between these two worlds, between a prosperous centre and the disregarded fringes.”

The book’s title is drawn from the claim that Bristol – along with many other cities including Athens, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Moscow, Mumbai and New York – was built on seven hills. The conjecture is that behind this claim is a desire to show the similarity with Rome, once regarded the greatest of all cities.

Hoare says: “Myth-making lies at the heart of the city’s history, whether it’s this dubiously consequential story, or in later generations when the city’s high and mighty began exploiting the trade in African slaves ... The making of myths continues today, and it continues to drive people towards Bristol.”

‘Seven Hills’ is available from RRP Photobooks here