Seven Hills is Chris Hoare’s portrait of Bristol, a city seen from the edges as much as from its prosperous centre. Born there in 1989 and raised on its outskirts, Hoare photographs a place he has witnessed changing at close range. His subject is not civic identity in the abstract, but the visible consequences of economic growth: an expanding class divide, racial tension, inequality and homelessness.

The book’s local perspective is inseparable from Bristol’s history. Much of the city’s wealth was built through its significant role in the slave trade, a legacy brought into renewed public focus when the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Hoare works in response to that moment, but does not treat it as an isolated news event. Instead, the photographs examine the social structures and present-day inequalities that the controversy made difficult to ignore.

Hoare’s approach is poetic rather than conventionally reportorial. His imagery moves between beauty and unease, allowing the city’s polished self-image to coexist with spaces and lives that remain overlooked. The sequence considers gentrification in the inner city, where rising property prices and rents push many residents towards the margins. It is an intimate perspective, but not a private one: personal knowledge becomes a means of addressing the wider divisions of contemporary Britain.

Published by RRB PhotoBooks in 2023, Seven Hills is a 120-page hardcover Special Edition. Its importance for a serious collector lies in the clarity of its authorship and the breadth of its civic concerns. Bristol provides the specific ground, while Hoare’s sustained attention to place, identity and exclusion gives the book a relevance beyond local documentation.