Dominoes

Dominoes is Roland Ramanan’s decade-long documentary of Gillett Square, Hackney — a unique and vibrant mosaic of life in London’s East End. Through intimate black-and-white photographs, it records interwoven experiences of addiction, resilience, community, joy and transformation.

The work offers an honest look at lives often overlooked, touching on universal themes of love, hope and loss amid the ongoing evolution of urban communities.

Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing

Retro style

The typographic style for Dominoes is strong, bold, and colourful, incorporating striking 3D graphics inspired by vintage domino pieces. Endpapers in deep purple and green add vibrant colour, creating a cohesive visual experience throughout the book.

Elegant references

Lettering for the title was directly inspired by domino pieces—formatted into groups of three letters, each stacked like domino tiles, featuring bold black type set against bright backgrounds.

‘Working with VIKA Books has been a seamless and hugely positive creative collaboration. They have worked over and above to thoroughly understand the work. The editing process has challenged me to think about my book project in a new way and produced a result that was way beyond my expectations and definitely not a destination I could’ve reached alone.’

Roland Ramanan, photographer
‘Ramanan’s intimate portrayal includes the youngest daughter of a family man battling addiction… lives here are precarious, and often set up to collapse.’

The Guardian
‘As photographers and practitioners, we are often weighed down by the package of anxiety about how the work will be judged and what is or is not good enough to include. A skilled editor/designer like Victoria is completely free to make the best choices for the story you are trying to tell, often in surprising and revealing ways, I’m looking forward to continuing the journey.’

Roland Ramanan, photographer
‘Dominoes is a unique and vibrant mosaic of the lives that float in and around a particular corner of Hackney in London’s East End. … Dominoes touches on universal themes of love, death, hope and the evolution of urban communities. The work is an honest look into lives that we often ignore; there is sadness but there is also always a sense of hope.’

All‑About‑Photo
‘A distinctive and dynamic collage of the narratives intertwined within a specific enclave of Hackney.… Dominoes delves into timeless themes of love, mortality, aspiration, and the dynamics of urban metamorphosis. It offers a candid glimpse into lives that society frequently overlooks, where sorrow coexists with an enduring glimmer of optimism.

Exibart Street

Cover tipin

The cover tip-ins on both the front and back are circular. Each is blind-blocked into the cloth, with a black-and-white photograph mounted inside the deboss — a quiet but deliberate design choice that reflects the simplicity and strength of the book’s themes.

Screenprint on cloth

Macro close-up of the spine — the only text on the otherwise blank cover. White lettering sits between red lines placed like domino tiles, referencing the game and subtly reinforcing the book’s central metaphor.

Duotone printing

The book was printed in duotone black and white at EBS in Verona. This macro image shows the dot gain in close-up — revealing how the duotone process brings out subtle depth, tone, and texture across the photographs.

The original form of Dominoes was a limited portfolio edit — tightly curated to around 10 images for review purposes. But portfolio reviews are not designed for books. Somewhere in the process, the edit had lost touch with the complexity and humanity of the square’s community.

When VIKA Books was invited to see the wider archive, the richness of the lives, voices, and relationships in Gillett Square became unmistakably clear. It was vital that these people be shown with dignity — empowered even in their vulnerability.

Images that felt distant, confrontational, or dehumanising — portraying people as oddities or caricatures — were removed. In their place, we selected photographs that embraced the rawness of daily life while inviting empathy and understanding.

As the new sequence began to take shape, the book’s title emerged too. The game of dominoes, played often in the square, brought people together — but it also served as a powerful metaphor. Their lives echoed the game’s rhythm: moments rising and falling, individual pieces connecting, toppling, and starting again. That rhythm became the backbone of the photo editorial — a structure shaped around joy, pain, resilience, and community.

As featured in The Guardian: Sound systems and struggle: Community spirit in east London.