Jar of Teeth, Tom Sussex

Made in Tower Hamlets, East London, over several years, Jar of Teeth began not as an attempt to define a place, but to spend time within it - to observe how people move through its streets, homes, markets and places of worship, and how lives unfold within a borough shaped by generations of migration.

Tower Hamlets is a place where histories continue to gather. Britain’s imperial past and multicultural present exist alongside one another, not as distant ideas but as everyday experience. Within this landscape, questions of identity, belonging and citizenship are rarely fixed; they are negotiated through routine, proximity and the small exchanges that make up daily life.

Jar of Teeth is both a personal reflection and an ongoing record of a place. It invites viewers to spend time with Tower Hamlets as it reveals itself: complex, layered and continually shaped by the people who call it home.

The book:
120 pages | Hardback bound | Lithographically printed | 170gsm matte paper | 8 × 10 inches