“Welcome to Harrodsburg, home of the one per cent and the super-rich,” says London street photographer Dougie Wallace in the BBC series, What Artists Do All Day. The 30-minute TV program follows Wallace for a day as he shoots pictures of the super-rich pecking about at the doors of department store Harrods in Knightsbridge, London, or perched in open-top convertibles. With a wry smile, Wallace prowls the street with his camera and flash in search of that elusive shot; ‘brash’, ‘loud’, ‘confrontational’, and ‘edgy’ are words used to describe his work.
“Knightsbridge is like another world… the people, the money, it’s unreal… there’s a lot of drama on the streets, so I just come back shooting and shooting,” says Wallace. Competition for status is cut-throat: florescent Bugattis compete with even brighter convertible Bentleys; women adorned in diamonds lug Harrods shopping bags across busy streets. It’s a spectacle of excess.
Wallace sidles up to a flaming red Ferrari and places his lens against the dashboard. At an intersection, a middle-aged woman catches his eye – an explosion of floral and silver glitter. Desperate to be seen, but more desperate for their anonymity, Wallace finds that most people in the one per cent don’t wish to be documented. “The new money people in the Ferraris and the Bugattis, they hate getting their picture taken,” he says. “They certainly don’t stop and chat.”
Born in Glasgow, Wallace left school, joined the army, and later went on to sell cars and campervans. He purchased his first camera when backpacking in Nepal. His initial project – taking photographs of people in buses in both Kensington and his hometown of Glasgow – was inspired by the grim discovery that men who live in Kensington, the adjacent neighbourhood to Knightsbridge, live for, on average, 30 years longer than men in Glasgow. “The difference in fortunes is not only apparent in mortality,” Wallace says, “but in the cut of their suits and coats… even their expressions tell a tale.”
While economic statistics provide insights into the wealth divide, photographs are a faster medium to the truth. Wallace describes the “cross-hatched lines, broken veins and missing teeth” of those he photographed from parts of Glasgow, where unemployment is high, alcoholism is rife, and children are often obese.
But for the monied set in Kensington and Chelsea, the photographs display a different sort of angst; interestingly, even amongst all the bling, few look, for want of a better word, happy.
“The area is changing”, admits Wallace, “the old money, they’re all dying out, and the new breeds are coming in.” Today, the average homeowner in Kensington needs £2,843,750 on average to buy a place to stay. And competition for space is fierce, with foreign buyers taking up 13 per cent of all homes in the neighbourhood.
While higher interest rates may stymie the property buying decisions of British citizens, most foreign residents buy into upmarket Kensington or Chelsea markets with cash, or they borrow in their home country. Last year, international buyers snapped up 45 per cent of homes sold in central London’s most affluent postcodes – many of these properties being second, third, or even 10th homes. And a sizeable chunk of these property purchases are bought by unknown offshore entities, concealing the identities of the real owners.
In the BBC program, Wallace meets with British broadcaster Peter York, and the pair stare up at the world’s most expensive flat, 1 Hyde Park, on London’s Brompton Road, a short stroll from Harrods. Built in 2011 by British property tycoon Nick Candy and his brother Christian, apartments range in price from £3.6 million for a one-bedroom flat to £136 million for a penthouse; and most are owned by hidden international buyers. “At night,” comments York, “there aren’t a lot of lights on.”
But for Wallace, who has photographed everything from drunken revelries in Blackpool and Shoreditch to taxi drivers in Mumbai, nothing seems to surprise him any longer. “I’ve seen everything,” he says. And at close range too, since Wallace’s signature style is to get as close to his subjects as he can. “There’s a point when you’re in the picture, when you get that close, you’re in it.”
It took Wallace over two-and-a-half years to finalise the Harrodsburg project. And during that time he made 70 trips to Knightsbridge and took thousands of pictures. He collated his best shots into a book, titled Harrodsburg, introduced with York’s commentary on how the ultra-affluent elite are changing the face of the city.
What compels Wallace to be on the street day after day? Is it activism, or some need for social reform? While Wallace admits that he does like to provoke a little, he is mostly just keyed into capturing that next elusive shot. “There’s always one more trip, one more picture to be had,” he says.
From the Wealth edition, which can be purchased from our online store