A love letter in Polaroid: Alexandra Waespi has spent years documenting Hackney’s roses.
For those who take the time to notice, Hackney’s roses bloom in unexpected places: climbing the walls of council estates, spilling over front gardens, defiantly rooted in patches of earth between pavements and doorsteps. Photographer Alexandra Waespi has spent four years mapping these quiet blooms through her project, “Hackney Rose”, documenting them as markers of time, memory, and change.
I meet Alexandra at the opening of “Hackney Rose” at Hackney Gallery, where she walks me through her collection of dreamlike photographs. As we stand among the roses, she speaks with warmth about her work. Later, she tells me more about her journey through the city and how it led her to the project.
Born in Canada to Belizean-Swiss parents, Alexandra moved to London in 2013, settling in Hackney in 2021. “I love Hackney dearly,” she tells me. “I have quite a community here, which I think can be rare for London.”
At first, it was music and fashion photography that brought her here. Before turning her lens to roses, Alexandra built a career photographing major names like Adele and Rex Orange County and working with such publications as The New York Times and The Guardian.
But, over time, she found herself looking elsewhere: “I had always been interested in flowers, and the road leading from where I live, it’s almost barren. You don’t see that many people there, but it’s full of roses. I thought it could be something interesting to explore.”
“These roses were just so vibrant in this muted landscape. I couldn’t help but notice them… This project is about capturing how these roses make me feel. Something dreamy, a little unclear, something you have to search for,” she says.
“I thought: ‘Who is this person behind all these public displays of roses? What does it mean to the people that live there and the people that pass by? And, who planted them? Who looks after them? How many decades of tenants have they seen?’”
This prompted a deeper exploration of the borough’s roses and soon, Alexandra began to seek them out, noting their locations and returning season after season to photograph them.
“I’d go for long walks,” she says. “You never know what’s going to be there. You’d find these roses and the project is about mapping them, thinking about the history of the place. And I hope to take as many photographs as I can, thinking about this map and drawing it out, venturing further.”
“This is a way for me to connect with hackney. it’s a love letter to the place.”
“Working on this project is quiet,” Alexandra says. “It’s meditative work. But really, it’s about home. I’ve been working as a tour photographer for ten years. So, a lot of the time I’m away from home, and I miss it more and more. This is a way for me to connect with Hackney. It’s a love letter to the place.”
And like any love letter, Alexandra’s is deeply personal. Using Polaroid film, she shoots at dusk, layering multiple images onto a single frame, allowing the rose to blur and grow. By using double exposure, it adds a sense of mysticism to the roses.
With Polaroid film discontinued, Alexandra scours eBay for whatever stock she can find. “Right now, I have three boxes in my fridge. That’s 30 frames. It’s not enough,” she says. “But as long as I can find film, I’ll keep going.”
Thinking about the future, Alexandra tells me: “I see Hackney Rose as a book”; an alternative atlas of the borough. “Each rose tells a story, and together, they form a map.”
But the landscape of Hackney is shifting beneath her. Warehouses that once housed creative communities are being replaced by luxury apartments. “I’m lucky to still be in one of the last standing warehouse communities,” she says.
“Every day a new crane is being put up, and if anything, it’s driving me to make more work about the place.”
And as Hackney changes, Alexandra keeps searching for roses, capturing their quiet resilience. “Hackney Rose” is her way of holding onto the borough she loves; one Polaroid at a time.
Manon Coquoz is a student journalist at City, University of London.