HARRODSBURG
HARRODSBURG
CREDITS
British photographer Dougie Wallace reflects on the most pressing social issue of our time in a visual journey through the growing wealth divide. His series Harrodsburg, a reference to Harrods, the most renowned luxury department store of London, can be seen as an up-close wealth safari exploring the wildlife that inhabits the super-rich residential and retail districts of Knightsbridge and Chelsea. The project exposes the ultra-affluent elite who have changed the face of the city and priced out the upper-middle class natives of Central London.
While the area used to house London’s posh, Wallace explains, “since the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, gulf millionaires began coming to Britain in larger numbers, settling first in Mayfair and later spreading to Knightsbridge. Joined by the Oligarchs and the Hedgies, this phenomenon has evolved into the various tribes of the global super-rich buying up London homes like they are gold bars, as assets to appreciate rather than as homes in which to live.” Eid Festival, or what has become known in luxury retail circles as the ‘Ramadan Rush’, is marked by the sudden and conspicuous influx of dozens of wealthy Arab royals and businessmen escaping the extreme summer heat of home. Flocking to their London residences with their air freighted million-pound-plus gold-plated Bugattis, some encrusted with Swarovski crystals. Wallace has produced a series of pictures which satire the super rich and their spending habits in uncomfortably intimate, gaudy detail.
Dougie Wallace is represented by INSTITUTE artist management company.
