Growing Spaces | Chris Hoare

Growing Spaces by photographer Chris Hoare is a chronicle of urban land cultivation in Bristol. Since April 2020, Hoare has been slowly and methodically documenting the allotment-goers, landscape and seasonal changes across the official and unofficial growing spaces of the city. The resulting photographs, originally commissioned by Bristol Photo Festival, were published in 'Growing Spaces' to coincide with an exhibition of the work at the inaugural festival in summer 2021.

Hoare's project documents eleven sites across the city from established allotment sites to community gardens and improvised plots on disused lands. The project was conceived pre- Covid-19 pandemic but its timing, coinciding with increased demand for green spaces for cultivating produce, allowed him to capture the formation and energy of a growing renaissance.