I recently re-read Robert Roberts' classic, The Classic Slum. There's a passage in the text that I've included below that I think stands as one of the most quietly devastating pieces of moral realism in twentieth-century British writing – an example of working-class self-critique that reveals how deprivation, fear and ignorance can deform empathy, yet also how individual acts of kindness can quiet…

My great-aunt Barbara (Bärbel) was 16 when she wrote this piece and would have recently begun her studies at Stamford High School, following her escape from Nazi Germany via Kindertransport in May 1939. Her and my 14-year-old grandfather arrived at Harwich on 18 May 1939, having travelled from Breslau, presumably via Berlin and the Hook of Holland. They stayed a few days at the Butlin's holiday ca…

Just off Ślężna in Wrocław, between the University of Economics and Aquapark, is a strange topographical feature that rises 140 metres above sea level in a city that's otherwise very flat. Wzgórze Andersa is laid out in four tiers, has a kind of parkour gym near the bottom, a pump track at the top, and when you get up close you can tell that the entire hill is formed of millions of broken bricks. I…

The development of a body of photographic work is an aside to my main priority: the installation of Stolpersteine in Wrocław in memory of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else Kornicker, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. In order to install Stolpersteine, it's necessary to precisely identify – on a contemporary street plan – the entrance to the building where Georg and Else lived prior to En…