The book launch on the estate [Chiara Luxardo]

NOT many estates can claim to have their very own photojournalist documenting the ins and outs of their neighbours’ lives for two decades.

The Packington estate’s residents in Angel, which was pulled down and rebuilt between 2007 and 2017 after its concrete structural design was condemned as unsafe, can say they have seen monumental changes.

That remarkable transformation – and the impact it had on its life-long tenants – has now been documented in a unique book by Claudia Janke. In her newly published book, Packington Works, the award-winning artist, who has worked for newspapers and magazines across the world, has documented her love affair with the place she has called home for more than 20 years.

Describing how rare it is for communities to be an artist’s subject for such a sustained period of time, she said it was even rarer for the artist to know their subject so well.

“Sometimes it’s more difficult to understand what the community is about, if you don’t spend enough time with them, and obviously my situation is unique because I’m part of the community but also I’ve been here for quite a long time – that’s also very unique,” said Ms Janke.

Packington Works centres around a series of public arts projects Ms Janke undertook, first documenting the old estate before it was pulled down, and the people living in it, for which she won numerous awards.

The final project she writes about is one close to her heart: during the pandemic, when she and her neighbours were locked away from each other by government isolation rules, she began writing messages and sticking them up in her windows.

“Hey You, Yes, You” and “Having pasta today” were just some of the messages she wrote. And before long, she began to get a response.

Claudia Janke with her book

“It turned into a 50-day conversation,” she said, after her neighbours began replying. “We ended up playing games, guessing our names. I made an egg hunt for them.”

One day she said to herself: “Wouldn’t it be great if I could speak to them?” and from that came the idea to make a string phone – yes, if you’re thinking the kind you make in primary school, you’d be right; where you attach cups to string and speak into them.

“I asked them, ‘Do you want to make a string phone?’ And then they said ‘Yes’. And that’s how it all started,” she said of the project that ended up involving most of her block one sunny day during lockdown.

There was a final project where she used a drone to take pictures of many of her neighbours posing on their balcony, before she did finally end up meeting them IRL [in real life] when rules were relaxed.

She is very clear about what drives her to photograph her surroundings. Where others may see monotony and the familiarity of day-to-day living, she sees “beauty”.

Photo: Chiara Luxardo

“Maybe it comes from my time as a photojournalist,” she said. “I document but I am also curious how people will respond. It’s not necessarily documentation –  I love when people come forward and want to participate.”

It was a tough time for The Pack’s residents when it was pulled down. Where others saw a crime-ridden estate that was demolished for the better, the people living there felt marginalised and ignored. They missed their old identity and ways of life, said Ms Janke, and having 20 years of their history documented for them, means something. As well as publishing the book, she put up photos of all the old exhibitions she had done with her neighbours over the years and installed it in the three squares The Pack is set on.

“Maybe it’s a bit too thick to say [my work] was a part of the healing process [but] because I think the move was a forced move and a lot of people did feel disenfranchised. You know, not being part of making the decisions,” said Ms Janke about the exhibition, which she said has given people space to reminisce but also move forward with the new tenants who moved in after the some of the blocks were privatised.

She added: “What I really thought was beautiful is that I placed the exhibition on the square where the block used to be, so people would see that and recognise it but at the same time, there’s this portrait of the new community with the private people, and they’re part of that as well.”

• The book is available at The Arc Centre, 98b St Paul Street, N1 7DF.