Hoxton Mini Press are the personal publisher of the people of East London.
The story of Hoxton Mini Press isn't a story about them or even their burgeoning publishing house. It is a story, above all of the people who live, work and play around East London. The story is about the thing that has made East London special throughout the years. The people that have probably always called it home and the people who have made it their home. The books they publish are in no chronological order but they are a magnificent history of an area of London that keeps getting knocked down but somehow keeps rising to a new-found glory.
It all starts with Martin Usbourne, photographer and co-founder. A North Londoner by birth. Who happened one day to encounter an 86 ½ year old man sitting in Hoxton Square Park. Surrounded by the hippest of hip youngsters. His name was Jacob Markovitch. Martin approached him for a simple request to photograph him and the rest as they say is history. That history is a life-long friendship with Jacob and an independent publishing house; Hoxton Mini Press. The first book to roll off the printing press was ‘I’ve Lived In East London For 86 1/2 Years'. The fairly eccentric story of Jacob, who was born just off the Old Street Roundabout and adores Nicholas Cage.
Since 2103 Martin and Ann Waldvogl have published a plethora photo books about the people and wildlife that call East London home. That ranges from the swimmers at Hackney’s London Fields, who brave the British winter to swim, to Shoreditch wildlife taken by Scottish photographer Dougie Wallace through to Haircuts of Hackney, an illustrated book of the back of people’s heads. From the Hoxten fin to the Kingsland Basin. And Vintage Glamour, 1930’s East London whose pictures could have come from Hollywood of the same period.
There is a paired down style to Hoxton Mini Press, the photographs and illustration let you into the real East London in all its guises. Hoxton Mini Press want their books to be enjoyed and hopefully passed down to the next generation, to see how life in the ever changing, quick moving East London used to be.