Comments on: Syd Shelton’s East End

By: Achim

Achim — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 11:09:48 +0000

The East End as I saw it in the late 70s and early 80s … Wonderful Pics!

Love & Peace
ACHIM

By: Ian Silverton

Ian Silverton — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 08:35:36 +0000

What a shock these pictures are to me taken in the 197080s of where we used to live,still poor people it’s just not right,never ever new that nothing had ever changed for the better,whatever happened to the the Local MPs they always voted in come what may,for years still do we reckon sad site sorry just cannot believe nothing change for the better,left in the middle 1960s, for pastures new,looking at this makes makes it right for me not the people left behind. Stay safe,and let’s see some updated pictures make life better alround.

By: Phil Maxwell

Phil Maxwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 15:02:42 +0000

Wonderful photographs from master Syd Shelton.

By: David Cox

David Cox — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 01:44:24 +0000

Great folio of photos….thanx again for for incredible efforts and devotion to your site

By: Claire D

Claire D — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 16:44:07 +0000

Some of these photographs are quite frightening I think, visceral. Things are different now, we have moved on.

By: moyra peralta

moyra peralta — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:09:26 +0000

Lovely, strong portraits… particularly respond to the one of Widgery – and the Aldgate East young man.

By: paul loften

paul loften — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:51:23 +0000

Oh but the photos are just one aspect of the East End perhaps aiming to show how seedy and down at heel it was in parts. Anyone who lived there and can recall the dustman’s strike and the horror of rats running everywhere piles of rubbish on street corners. Stoke Newington Commons was turned into a huge rubbish tip and the residents had enough of it all. They turned against Labour in their thousands and then came Thatcher . The majority of people were not as depicted in the photos and it needs to be said. The left expected people to love living in squalor and so we got Margaret Thatcher. I saw a photo of David Widgery I knew him, not that well, just a bit from conversations whilst selling the SocialistWorker in Ridley road. He was a character all right !

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:15:28 +0000

Stunning! These portraits CHURN with intriguing stories, mysteries, provocations, cries and
whispers. I’m almost afraid to know the stories here……there is such an edge of tragedy. Yet, the photographer makes us feel care and concern; even for the most insolent youth or battered aging face. And “Linda, 1981” left me totally sputtering. “Silent but deadly”, an urban goddess, capable of divine havoc.

What an amazing group of photos!
Many thanks, GA.
Stay safe, all.

By: Pauline Taylor

Pauline Taylor — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:11:36 +0000

Photography at its best and a timely reminder of where racism, and all that it leads to, will take us if we allow indoctrination to win. I particularly enjoyed the photos of Petticoat Lane where I was taken as part of one of my tours of London with a friend of my mother’s. It came as a great culture shock to a teenager who had grown up in a very quiet remote part of a rural village, and I have never forgotten that first visit to the East End as I had never before seen people who obviously lived in such poverty, and the noise and the tat that was being sold made such a lasting impression, as did the litter which you can see also in these photos.

It wasn’t until I realized that my grandfather had been born in Whitecross Street and that his parents had been married in Hoxton that I began to see the East End in a different light and to appreciate the wealth of history to be found there. Half of me, it dawned on me, is a Londoner through and through since at least the 16th century and I am now very proud of all those ancestors, the well off and the not so well off, as they I think must have made me what I am. Someone who appreciates what people from all over the world have contributed to the rich fabric of our society and to the wealth of the nation. We forget that at our peril which brings me, very neatly, back to where I started with the horrors of racism. Thank you for the photographs Syd and to you too GA for such a reminder which is much needed by some at the moment.

By: L E Williamson

L E Williamson — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:02:02 +0000

Fantastic photos. The essential human dignity of all these people-the skins, the punks, the old ladies, the young protesting against injustice-comes over strong and clear.

I was thinking about Rock Against Racism recently (a big and wonderful thing in my youth) and wishing we could find a way of reviving it. We need it more than ever.

Thanks Syd and thanks GA.