At Four Corners, the Creative Centrer for Film and Photography, A World Apart captures a unique moment of change in London’s East End.
Brought together for the first time, these rarely seen photographs document a now-disappeared world. Bengali migrants live side-by-side with elderly Jewish shopkeepers and artisans, dockers socialise in Wapping’s clubs and pubs, neighbours and children celebrate at a raucous, multicultural Stepney festival.
But the images reveal streetscapes and communities in upheaval. Desolation hangs over the soon-to-be demolished streets, dock cranes stand lifeless over empty quays awaiting speculative redevelopment. Amid this apparent wasteland a different East End was coming into being. New migrant communities were creating a space for themselves as economic decline displaced earlier neighbourhoods.
A young generation of photographers were drawn to record ordinary people’s lives at this moment of rapid transition and to advocate for social change. Exhibitions at the tiny Half Moon Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery attracted people to view images of themselves and their neighbours. At a time when photography was largely unrecognised by the art world, these photographers mounted ‘guerrilla’ exhibitions in launderettes, on estate walls, and even on portable sandwich boards. They were part of a flourishing community arts scene that celebrated and gave a voice to local people.
A World Apart features remarkable photographs by Ron McCormick and Exit Photography group – Nicholas Battye, Diane Bush, Alex Slotzkin, and Paul Trevor – alongside work by Ian Berry, John Donat, David Hoffman, Jessie Ann Matthews, Dennis Morris, and Ray Rising.
These ground-breaking photographs give a unique insight into an East End that is both recognisable and vanished. An area whose identity has been defined by centuries of migration, this exhibition celebrates its strong community spirit which is ever more important today.
Four Corners
Four Corners are a creative centre for film and photography, based in east London for fifty years. Their exhibitions draw on our history of radical, socially-engaged approaches, exploring often hidden and marginalised stories. Four Corners Archive comprises the early work of Four Corners and its neighbour the Half Moon Gallery/Half Moon Photography Workshop, which later became known as Camerawork after its iconic magazine.
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