Syd Shelton’s East End
Tickets are available for The Gentle Author’s Tour of Spitalfields on Saturday 25th May
Brick Lane 1978
Photographer Syd Shelton‘s enduring fascination with the East End was sparked by a childhood visit from Yorkshire with an uncle and aunt more than fifty years ago. “My cousin was was working in a mission somewhere off Bethnal Green Rd,” Syd recalled, “It was a scary part of London then and I remember my uncle looked out of the window every few minutes to check the wheels were still on his car!”
“The day I left college in 1968, I came down to London and I have worked here ever since, photographing continuously in Hackney and Tower Hamlets,” Syd admitted to me.
In the seventies, Syd became one of the founders of Rock Against Racism, using music as a force for social cohesion, and his photographs of this era include many affectionate images of racial harmony alongside a record of the culture of racism . “It was an exciting time when, after the death of Altab Ali, the Asian community stood up to be counted and the people of the East End became militant against the National Front,” he explained, “In 1981, I got a studio in the Kingsland Rd and I only gave it up recently because the rents became too expensive.”
Syd’s portraits of East Enders span four decades yet he did not set out consciously to document social change. “I never started this as a project, it’s only when I looked back that I realised I had taken swathes of pictures of people in the East End,” he explained, “So now I come back and spend a day on the streets each week to continue.”
“I say I am not a documentary photographer, because I like to talk to people before I take my picture to see what I can coax out of them,” he qualified,“Taking photos is what makes my heart beat.”
Bethnal Green 1980
Linda, Kingsland Rd 1981
Bethnal Green 1980
Bagger, Cambridge Heath Rd 1979
Columbia Rd 1978
Jubilee St, 1979
Petticoat Lane 1981
Brick Lane 1978
Aldgate East 1979
Hoxton 1979
Tower Hamlets 1981
Brick Lane 1976
Jubilee St 1977
Brick Lane 1978
School Cleaners’ Strike 1978
Petticoat Lane 1978
David Widgery, Limehouse 1981
Sisters, Bow 1984
Sisters, Tower Hamlets 1988
Bow Scrapyard 1984
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1995
Whitechapel 2013
Shadwell 2013
Brick Lane 2013
Dalston Lane 2013
Bethnal Green 2013
Photographs copyright © Syd Shelton
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Impressive photos from the time when I first came to England. Little has changed — protest against the Nazis and against racism is once again necessary and the order of the day…
Love & Peace
ACHIM
I love these because they are so evocative.
The old lady with the tiled fireplace was just like our home in Milward street Whitechapel .
Yes I remember the violence well .
A brilliant series of documentary photographs. I believe the one in a Bow scrapyard appeared in ‘A Day in the Life of London’ a beautiful book in which photographers were commissioned to photograph the capital at various times of the day. Thanks again GE for this excellent post.
Simple, yet with such depth and presence throughout. Exceptional work.
Amazing images. Life in the Raw. Thank you so much for sharing.
Tough, hard, radical, poverty stricken, pride infused, sub cultures abounded. The London I mixed in during the late seventies and eighties. T.v. progs like The Sweeney made it pretty glamourous to us country bumpkins.
Supa snaps.
Was there cause for dancing here? Apparently so — “Opening soon! – Farr’s School Of Dancing”.
These photos put me under their spell — I could imagine the engaging Linda on the dancefloor, lost in thought and twirling while those languid boys from Hoxton look on. They are too cool for dancing, but expert at striking poses. The older folks gather, sitting on folding chairs, all around the dance floor. The sisters from Bow murmur, recalling long-ago dance frocks, and boys they once both dated. A thousand years ago. The names of the boys come easily, stored so carefully in both sisters’ memories. The pomp and uproar of the Royal Wedding…….the churning turmoil of street protests…….a solitary figure sits in their familiar chair, a mirror reflecting the outer world………
Stories unspool.
An incredible array of photos. The stuff of life.
The school cleaners reminded me of my late mother. She got a job cleaning a local primary, then a High School after my dad was made redundant as a miner in 1969. It was hard heavy work at times, but she enjoyed the cameraderie of the other ladies and stayed until she retired in 1980. Sadly, she passed away within a year of retiring as she’d been diagnosed with a progressive condition. School cleaners were always fighting for better pay, I think my mother got about 10 pounds a week to start and it was only about 15 pounds when she retired. She was highly respected by a lot of the teachers who attended her funeral with the Headmaster and Headmistress.
I was born in Bethnal Green and stayed until I got married and had to move out as there was no place to live.
It’s interesting to see these photos but please don’t portray us as some kind of
sub culture.
Sub cultures?
Punks skins, rastas etc.
That’s what we were.
You may have been. You miss my point. Not all of us were
The person in the Aldgate East 1979 photo is Roi Pearce one of the lead singers of the 4 Skins.