Comments on: Thierry Girard’s East End, 1976

By: John Walton

John Walton — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 17:28:36 +0000

Some interesting images of Ridley Road market and its environs too, taken at a time when Hackney (mid 70s) was an area most, if they could, looked to leave but despite this it was always a good trading borough with some great locally based industries (textiles) and local markets like Ridley, Broadway, and Well Street.

By: Homer Sykes

Homer Sykes — Sun, 24 May 2020 09:33:18 +0000

Some great photographs, that I have never seen, it is amazing how so much has changed and as someone else wrote in less than 50 yrs. I guess that really is the most important aspect of documentary photography.

By: Pamela Traves

Pamela Traves — Sat, 23 May 2020 19:58:54 +0000

So Dark, Sad and Bleak. We need to keep these pictures to remember.???

By: Nicholas Sack

Nicholas Sack — Sat, 23 May 2020 16:07:09 +0000

Superb photographs: sharp-angled compositions fizzing with energy. For many years I have owned Thierry Girard’s book of images along the Flanders coast and around Dunkirk, published in 1982: marvellous work of the same order. A book of his Hackney photographs would be sensational.

By: Phil Maxwell

Phil Maxwell — Sat, 23 May 2020 12:06:26 +0000

Thanks for publishing these marvellous photographs.

By: paul loften

paul loften — Sat, 23 May 2020 11:48:12 +0000

I knew all these pubs from Dalston to Tottenham as they were in the 1960’s. It was the time of the Wilson government.I was a Young Socialist schoolboy and we went in pairs round the pubs on the round to sell the Keep Left paper to the locals. I was probably just below the legal age of admission but generally, the landlords allowed us to approach the tables and chat with the drinkers. The pubs were not nice middle-class places but I feel Thierry has sought to depict a rather depraved and coarse image of the area. the pubs were really working class and most of the locals thought we were selling the “War Cry” which was the Salvation Army paper. Sometimes we had some very good political discussions with the drinkers and other times we were shouted at insulted and threatened. I left the Young Socialists in 1968 but I still knew the pubs in the area in the ’70s and some had descended into live striptease, live bands, and stand up comedy. Many pubs remained as traditional sawdust on the floor drinking and social pubs but the clientele were generally, decent working-class people who were there for a drink a chat or to play at the pool table or have a game of darts and would have never been seen in such raucous and bawdy establishments, leering at strippers

By: Mathilde Grange

Mathilde Grange — Sat, 23 May 2020 09:56:28 +0000

It’s another world. How quickly things change. Poignant pictures.

By: L E Williamson

L E Williamson — Sat, 23 May 2020 09:23:48 +0000

Brilliant. There is a Hogarthian quality to the pub scenes and the tie maker (sadly, shamefully) a situation Mayhew would have recognised. I hope that things improved for this couple.

On a lighter note, I smiled to see the arcane art of “drinking from a pint pot with a cigarette in the same hand” demonstrated. Fond memories (the demon cigs went years ago!) For me it involved extra caution due to the prodigious quantity of hairspray in use.

Laura

By: Feds

Feds — Sat, 23 May 2020 07:49:44 +0000

Bonkers, love seeing bits of an older London

By: Jill Wilson

Jill Wilson — Sat, 23 May 2020 07:16:20 +0000

Incredible to think that these photos were taken less than 50 years ago…