100 Years In The East End

Photographer Jenny Lewis has taken a hundred portraits of people in the East End aged between zero and one hundred. Below I have published a selection of favourites and you can find them all in her book One Hundred Years.

“It’s clear to me now, from the people I’ve met while making ‘One Hundred Years,’ that every sorrow we endure helps us live a little deeper, love a little stronger, experience the world with a few more hues. Human interaction has an energy. It recharges the batteries in a way nothing else can. Working on this series has changed how I want to engage with the world, and the people in it.”

Jenny Lewis

Herb
0 years old

Rory
2 years old
‘Have it, eat it, apple.’

Blanche
8 years old
‘I have a black eye because I was playing sword fighting with a cardboard tube. It’s my fourth black eye. The only thing that would scare me is if a sabre-toothed tiger came up to me. I do get worried sometimes. I get loads of thoughts, at night-time mostly. When one comes, then another one comes, then another one comes. I write things that worry me down. It doesn’t look as scary then.’

Nia
15 years old
‘I push myself and I push myself, like I do with everything. I don’t like losing. I always want to be first and be at the front. I’m always going to try my hardest to win. That’s my motto, I just want to win. I did one of my raps about racism in front of the whole school. If I was rubbish at rapping it would be different, but I know I’m good.’

Alex
23 years old
‘When you’ve been told at a young age that you mean nothing, you don’t matter, you’re not focused, then you act like it. Now I work with kids. I’m very careful not to use any harsh or negative adjectives towards them, because it sticks, and I would rather help them find who they really are than plant a negative seed in their brain.’

Josh
25 years old
‘I talk very slowly. I go over everything I’m going to say in my head, like a script, checking it’s safe. I’ve always thought that’s just the way I am, but recently I discovered it’s a common trait among survivors of childhood abuse. Everyone is shaped by their experiences, whether it’s trauma or privilege. We all have a choice about how we respond to whatever happened to us.’

Sam
30 years old
‘My generation is probably the last that grew up without social media and I think we were very lucky to just be ourselves. I understand the compulsion, but it’s just not for me. I don’t have social media or seek that trigger. I’d like to think I don’t seek other people’s approval, which is not to say I don’t want to be liked, but I have no interest in taking pictures of myself having a good time.’

Martha
34 years old
‘This stage of life has surprised me. I thought I’d be the perfect mum. I thought I could give and give and give. But then I turned around and realised I was totally depleted. You think you’re throwing love at someone, behaving with the best intentions, but what your children actually need is to see you taking care of yourself; saying no sometimes. I can tell them whatever I tell them, but what they’re going to learn is what they see me doing.’

King
38 years old
‘I was arrested for doing a graffiti mission the day before my wedding – I made it out a few hours before the ceremony – but when my first child was born, that was it. I promised my wife I was done. There are four kids now looking up to me. It’s what I signed up for. They need me and I’m hungry for it. Can you imagine the amount of times I hear “Daddy” each day? This is my life and I love it.’

Anka
42 years old
‘I had anorexia, bulimia and everything in between. To me, it felt like an addiction, like being an alcoholic. It’s a distraction from life. I don’t see my traumas as doom and gloom, but as positive things – they are my chapters, you know? My family is my close group of friends, and my partner. We’re solid: both very independent, free souls, but together. I always call it “together alone” – and that’s where I’m most comfortable.’

Wilfrid
50 years old
‘I feel a little bit sheepishly luxurious in my life, compared to people who have to go to work every day and do what they don’t want to do.’

Len
56 years old
‘At 18, it was key for me to have someone older in my life to guide me. I was so happy and proud to work for Joe. Everyone just loved the man. We could trust each other, he was 100% my mentor. We worked together for 25 years until he got really sick from cancer. He deteriorated so quickly. I bought the workshop and changed everything over to my name. He was more a father to me than my actual father, the connection was very powerful. Knowing how important it is to have a mentor I’ve carried on that tradition. You can see the effect on kids when their father isn’t there that much. You have to listen so they can talk. You hold their hand until they let go and then you see them fly.’

Saskia
57 years old
‘The older I’ve got, the more I enjoy acting. I thought that after I’d had my family I might have softened and let go a bit, but actually I’m more fiercely passionate.’

Rob
59 years old
‘You need an incredible doggedness to be an artist. I was always fairly positive that I’d make my living out of my art, but it took a while to happen – it wasn’t till I was about 40 that it kicked off. Even when I started to have success my dad was still saying, “Why don’t you become a picture framer on the side to make a bit of cash?” There’s a part of me that wants to keep going and create more and more, but there’s also a side that thinks maybe I can relax a bit now, and not be pushing myself so hard all the time. Having said that, there are still stories I want to tell, there are still things I want to do.’

Kimberley
62 years old
‘A friend of mine brought their niece and nephew round. He was like, “I told them we were going to a museum.” I didn’t know if it was a compliment or not. They couldn’t stop talking about it to their parents. “Do we pay you?” They really thought it was a sort of gallery that I only opened to special people, you know. He brought her back a while ago as she’d asked to come back to the museum. It’s quite sweet.’

Geoff
63 years old
‘My parents were really strict, and yet they let me have 14 arcade machines in my tiny bedroom. I was a pinball hustler. First time I played, it was literally love at first sight. It was like a religion to me. The machines seemed alive, with personalities. I’d practise for eight hours a day. My parents were a little worried about me. I’ve got about 190 pinball machines now. I chat to them in my workshop.’

Elaine
69 years old
‘I’ve never lived on my own. I’m finding it fun. The only time I find it really scary is alone in bed at night. That accentuates the fact that there is no partner in my life anymore. And I’m beginning to realise that might be permanent. That’s the biggest sadness, but there’s fuck all I can do about it. I miss sex. Christ yes! And that to me is bizarre, because for me a whole life includes that. And yet somehow I can’t have it, I’m not allowed it. It’s horrible not being fancied. And I know that is such an unfeminist thing to say. But I would really like to be fancied.’

Sherlock
80 years old
‘I always wore my own clothes that I made. When I arrived here in my twenties, I had a jacket like Liberace with black and silver thread in it. I had a checked shirt, black trousers with white stitching down the sides, moccasins that were off-white, and lime green socks. One said “rock”, one said “roll”. When I see my boys in football shirts and tracksuit bottoms made of the nastiest fabric, I think to myself, they should be arrested walking around in those clothes. I wear better things to clean my car… when I had a car.’

John
83 years old
‘Before the war, virtually every garden had pigeons. People didn’t have radios – they didn’t have much at all – so many men, young and old, kept pigeons. They may also have used them for eating purposes. Even today, someone will stop and say to me, “Are you selling them? Can I eat them?” I still race them but, like me, they’re too old really. I’ve raced three times this year, but they came last each time. That’s never worried me. I’ve had some good times with them.’

Alec
99 years old
‘I don’t feel any different to when I was 30 or 40. Or 20, to be honest. When my daughter was round a few years ago, I was using a pickaxe in the garden and she started taking photos. I couldn’t understand why. She said, “Dad, not many people use a pickaxe when they are 95.”’

Photographs copyright © Jenny Lewis

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One Day Young

Jenny Lewis’ Hackney Artists & Makers