A Heartwarming Response
Merle Curtis, Sultana Begum, Armagan Middlemast & Husna Begum, Food Bank Volunteers, Bethnal Green, 2022
Since the end of last week, our crowdfund to publish Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK, East End Portraits 1992-2025 has nearly doubled, surging from £8,054 to more than £15,500 thanks to the additional support of over fifty more readers.
I must confess there has been some handwringing behind the scenes over the past three weeks, because – of all the books we have published – this could not be the one that we fail to deliver. Hopefully, we are in the home stretch with less than £9,500 left to raise now and 6 days left.
I believe we can do it.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CROWDFUND
Here are some more extracts from the book with commentary by Sarah Ainslie.
It was a journey finding, meeting and photographing these women and each workplace was a completely different experience and some were more dramatic than others. This was especially true when I was invited to go out on the beat with WPC Helen Taylor in her car. I was sitting in the back seat when we went into an emergency response mode with the blue light flashing and siren blaring, hurtling through the streets at breakneck speed. It was absolutely terrifying and hard to focus and take photographs. In what seemed ages, but was probably about five minutes, we reached the estate where I had to wait in the car whilst she and her colleague went to investigate, and when they returned I was able to take some pictures.
At Tesco, everyone knows Anita Patel who is often to be found helping customers at the check-out or stacking shelves with the rest of the staff and always happy to show you where a product is. Photographing with her was so much fun as there was much laughter with her colleagues when they wanted to join in. Anita is also very involved in helping to raise money for charities in the community.
Nikki Brewer was someone I located through an agency for tradeswomen, she was working independently and with Amy’s Electric a company of women electricians. I took photographs of her whilst she was working in this very small bathroom, standing on the bath and backed up against the wall as there was hardly any space in the room but she just carried on working. She is very passionate about sharing her skills and knowledge with younger women to encourage them to become electricians. She has since become my electrician.
