Photographer Timothy Spurr has been a lifelong resident of Finsbury Park, north London. His work Blackstock Road focuses on food and the environments in which it is served, and examines the stories of independent family businesses of the multi-ethnic community in the area, celebrating the fruits of London’s diversity

Many years later, while sitting at my parents’ home during the first national lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, I would remember the late afternoons in school uniform, returning to Blackstock Road to find refuge in my mother’s cafe?. Back then, Finsbury Park, an energetic municipality of north London, was not a destination where people sought “good” food, at least not to the level of the early TripAdvisor critic. Rather, its high street was lined with more utilitarian fare: bustling electronics shops, barbershops, and newsagents. Merely a handful of restaurants decorated the street with vivid shop fronts and a variety of cuisines, bringing a visual relief to a north London grey. These establishments were founded and frequented by a multicultural and multi-ethnic immigrant population, enriching the community with its diversity.