The Vanished East End

Brady Arts Centre

7 April - 28 April

This exhibition of documentary photography from the 70s and 80s highlights the huge social and economic changes in the area, including the now vanished industrial landscape and the deregulation of the financial markets.

The group show features work by acclaimed photographers Tom Hunter, Diane Bush, Mike Seaborne, Brian Griffin and Syd Shelton. Much of the work on display has been published in a collaborative venture between London Metropolitan University and Café Royal Books, a long-term advocate of British documentary photography. The books showcase each photographer’s distinctive and personal approach to capturing the area and consist of:

• Down the Lane by Tom Hunter – taken in the 1980s prior to Tom’s professional career when he had a stall at Brick Lane Market and photographed the passers-by.
• East End by Diane Bush– made whilst working with EXIT, Britain’s first photography collective, which believed in the power of photography to contribute to positive social change.
• London Docklands by Mike Seaborne – showcasing the huge social and economic changes in the area through the 1970s and 1980s, which were defined by a vanished post-industrial landscape.
• The Broadgate Development by Brian Griffin – commenting on the massive economic shifts in the 1980s when local borough borders were re-drawn as the City spread with the deregulation of the financial markets.
• Street Portraits by Syd Shelton – an ongoing 45 year conversation with people of the East End. Syd is a British photographer who is well known for his documentation of the Rock Against Racism movement.

In addition, a selection of photographs is exhibited from London Metropolitan University’s East End Archive by the world-renowned photographer Don McCullin and the actor Steven Berkoff.