Ideas of Nation photography competition spotlights hidden colonial legacies in London

Tulsi Raja (winner)

'Originally designed for royalty, Kew Gardens evolved into a nationalist botanical garden in 1840, becoming a space to classify and control nature through a Victorian lens. This transition embodies environmental orientalism, where nature is dominated by humans and cultural stereotypes are reinforced. One of the most telling examples of Kew’s role in colonialism is its involvement in bioprospecting, particularly in the rubber trade. Kew facilitated the illegal smuggling of rubber seeds from Brazil. These seeds were then planted in Kew’s greenhouses and then transported to British colonies for large-scale rubber production. This act undermined local industries in Brazil and enabled Britain to establish an extremely profitable rubber production. This exploitation highlights the economic botany approach of that time, whereby nature was primarily seen as a resource for profit.

The Palm House, built to contain exotic plants, symbolises human dominance over nature. This division between the Palm House that showcased the exotic and the traditional rose gardens right next to the greenhouse emphasises the ‘us’ versus ‘other’ dynamic. In keeping these plants it served as an important asset in turning botanical knowledge into another assertion of power for the empire. Kew’s emphasis on British scientific accuracy and British aesthetic reflects the colonial outlook, the combination of science and arts suggests a desire to curate a natural world aligning with British sensibilities.

This photo is taken from the outside of Palm House, showing both the inside full of exotic plants and the reflection of the Botanical restaurant directly opposite. The restaurant building was originally a museum that housed Kew’s economic botany collections (now moved to another building). A collection of artifacts that derive from plants, taken from around the world, demonstrated the success of Imperial expansion, and exploration. This collection should be translated and examined with its exploitation of resources in the colonies.'

Georgia Ho (runner-up)

'In keeping with Edward Said’s method of contrapuntal reading, we are asked to question who has been written out of the nation, wherein the landscape of London can be treated as a text. In the foreground of this photograph stands a builder, working on new housing, a glance of London as modern, ever-growing, supposedly housing increasing populations as it soars into the future. But the counterpoint is always present, once we choose to observe it – in the background stands what remains of Grenfell Tower, covered in plastic sheeting, marked by ‘Forever In Our Hearts’. The majority of the 72 lives lost in Grenfell in 2017 were of immigrant families, many of them children and the disabled. Despite frequent complaints to Kensington and Chelsea Council, one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, about the fire risk of their building, residents were ignored for years. The later inquiry deemed their deaths preventable, and the result of years of failings; of deliberate dishonesty from the cladding manufacturers, negligence from outsourced fire safety inspectors, total ignorance from the council’s housing management team, and failings of successive governments to properly legislate on building safety. Emails uncovered as part of the inquiry revealed that the cladding producers described their own product as ‘burning like paper’, and were warned that it had ‘the same fuel power as a 19,000 litre truck of oil’, with the potential to kill ’60 to 70 people’, and yet this was kept confidential. And part of the purpose of this cladding was purely aesthetic - in the wealthy Kensington and Chelsea borough, with a new leisure centre next-door, the council wished to renovate the tower block in order to fit its surroundings, inconsiderate of the safety of its generally lower-income residents. Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, when asked if the tragedy had any relation to race or class, not only denied this, but went further to suggest that the victims lacked ‘common sense’ in not ignoring the advice of the London Fire Brigade, and staying within their homes.

The point and counterpoint here are remarkably visible. The primary telling of the city stands in the foreground, of a developing, modern, accessible place, open for new residents, here situated in famously wealthy Kensington, an iconic image of London, expressed in all its landmarks and the film Notting Hill, as just one example. But the counterpoint can never be removed, not fully – Grenfell Tower looms behind, reminding us of the 72 lives lost who, unless memorialised in this way, would not have made up part of the quintessential Kensington/London/Britain image, due solely to race and social class, and their residence in council housing. Their total neglect, and the failings of the many institutions that were supposed to protect them, cannot be forgotten; an effort must be made to keep their stories, all the more at risk after the recent government decision to demolish the building entirely.'

Zenith Jarrett

'Walking through London, one can't help but take notice of the smell of cigarettes and tobacco. In every corner store lies a colourful array of products designed to catch the eye. While, at this point in time, a sizeable portion of England's tobacco products are grown within its borders, I cannot help but think of the unspoken colonial legacies underwriting their presence. Tobacco was first introduced to Europe, by way of the colonisation of the Caribbean, around 1500 CE. After the genocide of the Indigenous populations of the region, tobacco was cultivated by enslaved labourers who had been stolen from Africa. While the institution of slavery was, eventually, abolished in 1834, the legacies of the practice persist. To this day, the global south is seen as a limitless reservoir of labor and resources. Slave labor might not be used in the cultivation of tobacco, but it is utilised in the extraction of cobalt from the Congo. Vapes and e-cigarettes, which can be found in countless stores, reinforce age-old dynamics of imperialism. However, you would never know this by looking at this image – this wall of colour and plastic. Tobacco, much like sugar, has become a central feature of English daily life; it has faded into the background. One might argue, therefore, that along with tobacco, racism and slavery have also faded into the background. Existence in the Western world is predicated upon the assumption of colonial exploitation; so much so that this wall of products feels like nothing special.'

Xingyu Ma

'The skyscrapers of London's financial city are like a cold futuristic temple, with Klein blue site fences cutting through the space with cool geometric lines, as if proclaiming the rationality and order of capital. However, in this illusory light reflected by the glass curtain wall, a black worker in orange uniform stands in front of the fence, his body is like a crack, tearing open the shiny surface of this “temple”. His presence is the invisible cornerstone of the city – a forgotten other, a repressed narrative. If we consider the skyscraper as the “text of empire”, the worker is the “commentary” on the edge of the text. The strong colours of the construction site in the financial city form a sharp contrast, symbolising the eternal tension between labor and capital. The sweat and struggle of many descendants of former colonial immigrants are the invisible pillars of the city, but they are excluded from the “national image of Great Britain”. Through colour, gesture and spatial arrangement, the photograph visualises the “invisible structure” of the financial city: without the labor of the workers, the building is only a ghost of capital. This is a poetic and political challenge of absence - letting the silent body become the new annotation of space, and letting the forgotten other rewrite the story of London. If we look at the financial city through the eyes of the workers, London is no longer “imperial glory”, but a monument built by sweat and resistance.'

Ada Dervisevic

'Britain, as a former colonial empire, usually positions itself as a “global arbiter of human rights and democracy“. However, the protest disrupts this comfortable narrative. The sign: FREE SUDAN, TIGRAY, WEST PAPUA, CONGO, HAITI, PALESTINE- FREE THEM ALL!”, explicitly calls attention to ongoing struggles, many of which are directly linked to Britain's colonial legacy. From the Berlin Conference’s carving of Africa to British interventions in the Middle East and the Caribbean. Above the crowd, a fusion of green, white, orange, black, and red flag is seen. It is neither fully Irish nor fully Palestinian, but something in between, a collision of histories bound by resistance. Ireland, a nation that knows the cost of occupation, of forced famine, of colonial rule. Palestine, people still resisting, still displaced, still enduring genocide, still fighting for the right to exist on their own land. Two struggles, decades apart, yet entwined in the long shadow of the British Empire. The flag does not just wave; it insists. It ties past to present, refusing to let one struggle be forgotten as another rages on. And yet, beneath this eruption of defiance, another figure lingers- the police officer. Fluorescent vest, stiff posture, an emblem of the state embedded in the crowd. He is not a protagonist, not the focal point, but his presence is a quiet reminder: protests in the empire’s capital are never just symbolic. He stands there as an agent of order, of control, of the very structures being challenged. He serves as a reminder that the power protestors oppose is not just historical, it is here, it is now. His job is not to see, to understand, to engage but to contain. The Southbank Centre is an artistic symbol of cultural openness and overlooks the protest from above, its glass walls revealing spectators watching from a safe distance. This photo portrays two Londons. One is visible: the global city, champion of free speech, a melting pot of cultures that prides itself on tolerance. The other, barely concealed beneath the surface, is the imperial metropolis, its wealth drawn from the very lands named on the cardboard sign, its institutions built on extraction, its comforts maintained by continued complicity. These two Londons do not exist separately; they intertwine. The protesters march on streets paved with colonial plunder. The very buildings that overlook the demonstration were funded by histories of occupation, of control, of stolen labor. What does it mean to demand liberation in the heart of the former empire? To insist on memory in a city that profits from forgetting?'

Mekha Benny

'In the early nineties, there was an influx of immigrants who settled from India and Bangladesh in Brick Lane. These settlers helped shape the Bangladeshi migration to Britain, choosing the location due to its proximity to the docks, cheap housing and job opportunities which led to the community often referred to as “Banglatown.” Today Brick Lane is famous for its street art, international food and unique vintage fashion, making it a melting pot of culture and identity. The street art often changes, but I managed to capture this eye catching image that depicts the Last Supper and the crucifixion of Jesus, with the writing above it saying “Homeboy was from Palestine.” This art serves as a protest to the genocide and conflict that Palestinians have been facing for years, placed in a prime location so that passersby are forced to pause and contemplate the art. This street art highlights the interconnected nature of colonial and postcolonial experiences, the art becomes a testimony to the ongoing suffering and pain of the Palestinians which Britain is complicit in and also grounds conflict in our everyday lives.'

Anonymous student

'The Albert Memorial was built between 1863-1876, commissioned after Prince Albert’s death as a public monument by Queen Victoria. Again, the design positions Albert as a vital symbol of Britain’s status as an intellectually advanced, technologically innovative, cultural bastion - particularly drawing attention to the Great Exhibition, as his statue holds the exhibition catalogue. Similarly, the ‘Parnassus Frieze’ around the base represents major cultural figures including Shakespeare and Mozart.

Similarly, allegorical statues representing Asia, Africa, Europe and America again flank the four corners of the memorial, represented in each case by indigenous people and animals from among its colonised populations. The same fetishisation and cultural stereotyping are also present, most significantly in the bare-breasted Indian woman sitting astride an elephant, as well as racialised depictions of a Chinese man, and a Native American in tribal headdress.

The colonial violence silenced by this self-aggrandising monument’s narrative breaks out in the Asia statue, which appears to have been sustained consistent damage (I have been unable to trace any reports or evidence that this was done deliberately). Notably, the Chinese man’s nose has been removed, and it seems that one of the woman’s breasts has previously been replaced. Whether deliberate (which would amount to a disturbing simulation of continued colonial, racialised and sexualised violence) or not, this damage allows the sculptures celebrating Britain for its global supremacy to instead bear the scars of the violence which Britain inflicted on colonial populations - the true story of Britain’s imperialist self-aggrandisement.

Moreover, the view from the ground shows that these statues, looking down imperiously (pun intended) on passerby, often appear aggressive and intimidating - the American bison notably looks ready to attack its London onlookers. These are not the images of happily subordinate colonised populations which Britain attempted to claim as part of its imperialist moral imperative. Moreover, from ground-level, the statues eclipse the memorial itself - an accidental testament to Britain’s vulnerability, as a tiny island whose power over the rest of the world could never last forever - and which feared the day when its colonised subjects, who eclipsed them in manpower alone, would rise up and overthrow them.

This symbolic eclipsing of the Albert Memorial with these colonial allegories finds an unwitting echo in the monument’s planning process: one of the original, rejected ideas involved a monument telling Prince Albert’s story in four different languages: English, French, German, and what was then called ‘Hindustani’ - because, in statistical terms, this, not English or any other European language, was the language spoken by the vast majority of Queen Victoria’s subjects.

The monument, which tries so hard to cultivate and celebrate an image of Britain as the global leader in moral, technological, artistic, cultural, and especially geopolitical terms, instead exposes Britain as a temporary superpower who would soon fall prey to the rebellion of those nations it had oppressed.'

Safya Douifi

'This derelict Subway shop which has been overtaken by graffiti symbolise the failure of a corporate, consumer-driven vision of the city. It had been once a place of what could be referred to as a standardised global consumption, and now it bears the markings of those pushed to the margins; urban artists, disenfranchised youth, and communities resisting homogenization. Here we can truly feel the poetics of absence: absence of commerce, of sanitised corporate order, of an idealised and uniform London as a thriving economic hub.This mural is a joyful celebration of Cuban culture, depicted through vibrant colours and a dancing woman. The art plays a role in transforming the space into an inviting spectacle, but at what cost?

The sunburst image of a dancing Afro-Caribbean woman plays into an exoticized aesthetic, yet the reference to Cuba and the presence of political iconography (e.g. La Habana and an Uncle Sam figure) point to an underlying narrative of resistance against imperialism. This mural both challenges Britain’s colonial past by celebrating a nation that Has long resisted Western Dominance, and it plays into the spectacle of the “exotic other” – a space designed for consumption by London’s leisure class rather than an actual assertion of Cuban voices. While Cuba is historically significant in anti-colonial struggles due to its long history of resistance against colonial and imperial domination, first against Spain and later against U.SA intervention and neo-colonialism, this mural flattens that complexity into an aesthetic experience for Western consumption. Here the absence might be twofold: first, the real, lived struggles of Afro-Caribbean and Latin American migrants in London; second, a critical engagement with Britain’s colonial past, which shaped migration in the first place. This particularly in Britian’s historical control over the Caribbean and its economic and political interventions in Latin America. This history created the conditions that led to large-scale migration, yet Britian’s official narratives often erase or minimise these connections. The Afro-Caribbean presence in London is a direct consequence of Britian’s centuries-long colonial rule over the West Indies, where it established sugar plantations that depended on enslaved African labour. However, despite these historical ties, Britian does not fully acknowledge its role in shaping these migration patterns. Afro-Caribbean migrants are sometimes recognised within Britian’s multicultural narrative, yet their struggles – such as the 1981 Brixton Uprising and racist policing especially related to the ‘stop and search’ law – remain underrepresented in mainstream discourse. This mural can be located in the South Bank area of London near Elephant and Castle, which have historically been home to large Afro-Caribbean and Latin American populations. In the face of gentrification, which has displaced many working-class Black and Latin American communities from central London, murals like this act as cultural markers, ensuring that the history and influence of these communities are not erased as wealthier residents take over.'

Riley Miszkurka-Morrison

'London’s Fabian Society is the premier socialist organisation of the UK, located in the St James Park area of central London. The main concern of the Fabian Society is the alleviation of pensioner poverty, however they also tackle wider issues of British nationalism, like in their February report “Crown Jewels” in which they discuss both cultural and economic problems with the Monarchy. In contrast, the Buckinghamshire pub is a quintessentially British tavern, which, upon discussing with the bar staff, caters to mostly the senior crowd. The photo serves to emphasise the issues arising from the tension between nationalism and tradition and progressive social views. While a more literal example of “said and unsaid”, the exposure and highlight settings of the shot serve to emphasise the importance the nation puts onto the social conventions associated with traditional “Britishness”. The name of the pub shares that of the palace that holds the royal family and presenting the pub in a lighter colour pallet than the Fabian society, illustrates the views of said society as a counterpoint.'

Belen Mujica Massaro

'Transport for London's (TfL) decision to rename Overground lines reflects an attempt to acknowledge some of London’s more marginalised communities, as evidenced by the Windrush, Suffragette, Lioness, and Weaver lines. However, upon seeing this poster in Piccadilly station that places the Windrush line alongside the Jubilee and Elizabeth lines, I was struck by the unsettling juxtaposition it creates. The same Queen celebrated by the Elizabeth and Jubilee lines was also Queen when the Windrush generation was invited to Britain as citizens of the empire, only for them to later face discrimination, exclusion, and eventual deportation. This poster thus foregrounds two competing narratives within the same urban space: on one hand, the imperial narrative of the British monarchy, and on the other, the troubling history of colonial subjects.

While the renaming of the Overground lines signals a shift towards inclusivity, this juxtaposition serves as a stark reminder of the contradictions embedded in Britain’s relationship with its former colonies. The symbolic recognition of the Windrush generation within the TFL’s network does not erase the realities of racism and exclusion faced by many Caribbean migrants, creating an unresolved tension in a shared urban space that all Londoners interact with daily.'

Kaavya Guhan

'The nation of Britain has been in a state of evolution. Events such as colonisation and the Windrush caused Britain to open its doors to people who brought with them their art, culture, and religious practices—starkly different from those of Britain. What had once been home to a particular group of people now prides itself on being a melting pot of cultures. This photo serves as a testament to this sentiment.

East Ham: an intersection of major religions and home to many cultures. Despite the variation in faith, East Ham is tolerant and accepting of everyone from different walks of life. The London Sri Murugan Temple (a place of worship for Hindus, significantly for Tamil Hindus) is located on Church Road. What initially seems an ironic and perhaps even mildly amusing coincidence, actually highlights the welcoming nature of East Ham's people and the mutual respect they give each other. It also challenges the idea of what it means to be British in this nation—a term that has evolved over time. Rather than an ethnicity or particular religious beliefs, British people are unified by shared values and all make meaningful contributions to uphold the nation.'

Jumana Al-Anizi

'London is a mosaic of the people who leave their messages behind, brushing a fraction of their identities and their cultures on sidewalks and imprinting them on the sides of coffee cups. Every individual choice transfigures into a tidal wave of impact, washing over the city's skyline. There is an ephemerality maintained within these snippets of life that become overshadowed, wiped either by endless footsteps, street sweepers, or simply by the rain. The erasure of these marks becomes an unshakeable attempt at silencing voices of the unheard, whether purposefully or routinely, they embody a larger erasure of a community.'

Nayanna Sira

'All these images were captured in a 20-minute walk starting from Hay’s Galleria across to the New Concordia Wharf.

To begin, the first image captures metal plates used to decorate the walkway alongside HMS Belfast - a list of cities with dates boasting the cities visited by the ship. The ship is celebrated as a symbol of British naval strength, with the display of cities and years aiming to assert the British military presence as a force of stability. However, many of these cities were part of the British colonial sphere; the metal plates can be read as a footprint of Britain’s interventionist role, entangled with colonial interests.

Hay’s Galleria is situated directly in front of London Bridge station and a five-minute walk from Tower Bridge. It presents itself as a symbol of London’s maritime heritage. Hay’s Galleria is a polished commercial space with shops and restaurants offering a luxury experience. However, behind the masking, the wealth which restored the Wharf was deeply connected to colonial exploitation. Given its location on the riverfront of the Thames, Hay’s would have witnessed the movements of ships carrying enslaved people, raw materials and colonial products, a juxtaposition to the gorgeously developed London skyline it now faces, as seen in the second and third images. While there are plaques and markers briefly commemorating its history, the colonial violence is notably omitted.

The New Concordia Wharf, in the fourth photo, similarly erases colonial violence, resting its importance on the architectural preservation of the Victorian industrial building, barely acknowledging its original function to store and process goods which were deeply tied to Britain’s global trading networks, and therefore colonial economies. Interestingly, the third and fourth images capture industrial decline and the rise of gentrification highlighting economic inequalities; and the displacement of the working class, which undoubtedly also has roots in Britain’s imperial past.'