Shooting in N16 – photographer Andrew Dumbleton’s lens-eye view of Stoke Newington

New River Cafe, Stoke Newington. Photograph: Andrew Dumbleton

Living in a rapidly-changing place, many of us are seized occasionally with the desire to document things before they disappear.

I’m not talking here about major landmarks, just the little things that populate our urban landscape. But though many of us will occasionally fish out the camera and snap a few pics, this passing urge often fades.

Andrew Dumbleton has determination as well as talent. Starting in September 2011 he began systematically to photograph Stoke Newington, taking one picture every Saturday for a year.

Initially he posted his images in Twitter, before collecting them in a self-published volume entitled Shooting in N16.

“My parents were both professional photographers and ran a small business,” Dumbleton explains.

“Much of my childhood was spent in my father’s darkroom amidst the acrid smell of printing chemicals spools of film and thousands of negatives. It was a very different world from today.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly this put me off photography for my whole life, until a year or so ago, when I noticed that my immediate surroundings were changing at an alarming pace.

“I do not consider myself a photographer, indeed my technical knowledge is almost nonexistent. It was just that my environment was demanding to be photographed.

“I have spent so much time rushing around ignoring the mundane – the buildings that surround me, the graffiti that appears and then disappears and the shop fronts so full of colour”.

In each copy of the book, Dumbleton included a letter in which he invited readers to tell him which of the images they most preferred. The best response received by the end of March 2013, said the letter, would win a framed copy of the photograph.

The message Dumbleton selected was from Giovanni Turra, who had regularly visited Clissold Park with his wife. His wife died of cancer in 2001 and some of her ashes were sprinkled in the park under a tree pictured on page 33 of the book.

Mr Turra was one of only 125 people who managed to secure a copy of the small initial print run of Shooting in N16, which sold out within weeks. At the end of April Dumbleton published another 50 copies, which are available (for now) at Stoke Newington Bookshop.

Shooting in N16 by Andrew Dumbleton is self-published. For details contact andumbleton@googlemail.com.