Tom Hunter shows ‘Down the Lane’ at the Brady Arts Centre, London

Tom hunter will be showing his ‘Down the Lane’ series in the Vanished East End, Documentary Photography from the 70’s & 80’s at the Brady Arts and Community Centre, London.

7th – 28th of April 2022

https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/vanished-east-end-at-brady-centre/

Opening Night 7th of April 2022, 6-8pm

All Welcome, Free

Refreshments

There will be an opportunity to meet some of the artists participating in The Vanished East end exhibition, as well as a chance to talk to the curator Susan Andrews, at a preview evening.

Previously unpublished images of London’s East End taken by leading documentary photographers in the 1970s and 80s will be exhibited at The Brady Arts and Community Centre in Whitechapel. The exhibition, which takes place from the 7-28 April follows a successful show of the same name at Tower Hamlets Community Library and Archive in response to the high level of public interest in the photographs.

The Vanished East End exhibition evolved from a special collaborative box-set publication between the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University and Café Royal Books, who share a similar ethos regarding the cultural importance of the preservation and dissemination of British Documentary Photography. Released in March 2020 during the first Covid-19 lockdown, the set comprises four books made for what was then The East End Archive at The Cass.

Each book represents work made in London’s East End during the 1970s and 1980s by the renowned photographers Tom Hunter, Brian Griffin, Diane Bush and Mike Seaborne who are joined for the Tower Hamlets exhibition by the photographer Syd Shelton. The majority of this work has never been published before with the exception of Brian Griffin’s, for which it is the first time within a documentary context. Each book has been edited specifically for the box-set publication, with both box-set and individual publications selling out quickly.

Each photographer has taken a distinctive and personal approach to the area: Tom Hunter’s Down the Lane dates from a time, now disappeared and prior to his professional career, when he had a stall at Brick Lane Market and photographed the passers-by; Diane Bush’s work in the old East End was made whilst working with EXIT, Britain’s first photography collective, which believed in the power of photography to contribute to positive social change; Mike Seaborne’s work at London’s Docklands represents huge social and economic changes in the area and is defined by a vanished post-industrial landscape; and a decade later in the 1980s, Brian Griffin’s work also comments on massive economic shifts but this time in the City of London where borders were re-drawn as the City spread with the deregulation of the financial markets. Syd Shelton is a British photographer who documented the Rock Against Racism movement. His work is held in the collections of Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In addition to these four photographers a selection of photographs of the East end will also be exhibited from London Metropolitan University’s East End Archive by the world-renowned photographer Don McCullin and the actor Steven Berkoff.

Brady Arts and Community Centre
192-196 Hanbury St
London
England
E1 5HU