Book cover

Documentary photographer Juliana Edwards has returned to her roots to capture a powerful pictorial record of the east London site of this summer’s Olympics.

Taken from when London won the bid to host the Games in 2005 until many of the roads were closed in 2007 to make way for construction of the new site, 2012: The Place That Was shows an urban wilderness frozen in time before being transformed into a showcase setting for the sporting spectacular.

Juliana, who once lived in Temple Mills Lane and Clays Lane, said she had wanted to capture the area as it was. “I have an intimate connection with the Olympic site, having lived in housing which has now been demolished to make way for the Olympic Village, and was drawn to prosaic locations and detritus as they are immensely evocative of the people who have left them behind.”

The book can be bought at www.amazon.co.uk, priced £30, or from the Photographer’s Gallery Bookshop in central London.