DEPTFORD HIGH STREET Exchange is a photographic survey, participatory artwork and exhibition by photographer Adam Wiseman, developed in dialogue with curator Katharina Uhe. The project explores Deptford High Street through its architecture, businesses and everyday systems of exchange.
During winter 2025–26, Wiseman photographed around 186 commercial frontages along the High Street, creating a systematic record of a place shaped by continual adaptation. Independent shops, specialist businesses, restaurants, barbers, places of worship and emerging cultural spaces occupy an irregular streetscape marked by successive economies, migrations and changing ideas of place.
The project extends beyond the survey through exchanges with the people whose premises are photographed. It asks whether a photograph can participate in the social and economic life of the place it depicts, rather than simply represent it.
During the exhibition, more than 20 participating businesses will display framed photographs of their own premises. Each is offered the photograph in exchange for goods or services of their choosing, with the shopkeeper determining its value. Previous exchanges have included fruit, household goods, a haircut and a beer.
Through these transactions, DEPTFORD HIGH STREET Exchange considers the financial and social value of art, labour, local business and photographic representation. The exhibition unfolds across two connected sites: Deptford High Street and SHAPESLewisham.
10th – 20th September 2026
Private view: September 10, 6-9 pm
SHAPES Lewisham, Unit 1 Carriage Way, Deptford Market Yard, London SE8 4BX, United Kingdom and across the Deptford High Street
Curated by Katharina Uhe Supported by University of East London Engagement Fund
Public Programme
Tuesday, 15 September, 6:30–8 pm – Who is the High Street for? An Open Conversation Through Photography, Deptford Lounge, 9 Giffin Street, London SE8 4RJ
Photographer Adam Wiseman and curator Katharina Uhe will lead an open conversation using photographs from DEPTFORD HIGH STREET Exchange as a starting point to consider the High Street as a social, economic and changing urban space.
The conversation extends questions central to the project into a public forum: What changes when a photograph is returned to the place where it was made? What can a shopfront tell us about a street and the people who use it? Can the High Street itself become part of an exhibition?
Through the photographs, the discussion will open onto wider questions of place, memory, business, belonging and change: what is visible, what might be missing, who the High Street is for, and how it might change in the future.
The event is conceived as an open and informal conversation for those who live, work, shop or spend time in Deptford, with no specialist knowledge of photography, art or architecture required.
Saturday, 19th September, 11 am – 12.30 pm – Guided walk led by Adam Wiseman through the High Street.
