Colin O’Brien In Brick Lane Market
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Shall we take a walk through Cheshire St, Brick Lane, Sclater St and Club Row with Photographer Colin O’Brien to experience the life of the market in the nineteen-eighties?
“I loved markets as a child, because I grew up during the nineteen forties in Clerkenwell and I used to go to Leather Lane to hear the patter of the stallholders. There is this mystique about markets for me. I love being surrounded by people and I feel safe in a crowd.” Colin told me, his grey eyes shining in excitement, as we made our way through the crowd onto the bare ground between Cheshire St and Grimsby St where traders sold their wares directly on the earth by the light of lamps and candles.
“I’m a bit of a collecting sort of person, myself.” Colin admitted as we scanned the pitiful junk on sale, “I like old things.”
Examining Colin’s pictures later, just a fraction of the total, I realised that most were taken when the market was clearing up and portrayed individuals rather than the crowd. “Packing up is when everything happens,” he explained to me, “they dump all the unsold stuff in the street and the scavengers come to take it. You look at what’s discarded and it’s the history of the time.”
I noticed that the woman sitting at the centre of Colin’s photograph “Coming and goings at the corner of Brick Lane” was surrounded by five men and yet not one was looking at her. I realised that he had photographed her invisibility, and that the same was true for his other soulful portraits of market-goers, market-traders, homeless people, old people and marginal characters – all portrayed here with human sympathy through the lens of Colin O’Brien, yet gone now for ever.
Coming and goings at the corner of Brick Lane.
At the time of the miners’ strike.
Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien
I find these sad as they epitomise a time and vision I remember and now gone forever .
Colin O’Brien was such a gifted photographer.
Hardly anyone has captured poverty and the decay of civilisation more impressively than Colin O’Brien. And he started doing this when he was just 8 years old. Unbelievable.
Love & Peace
ACHIM
No wonder Colin had the urge to capture the lady bending over to inspect the sad, cold remnants of shoes left at the curb? She is one of his people…………..”a bit of a collecting sort of
person”. And if you look closely, within that hopeless pile of shoes, are some real keepers. She
found something useful, I’m sure of it. Within the depths of winter (judging by the clothing)
I spotted a strappy high-heeled summer sandal………Now where is the mate? I so enjoyed this series. It clearly reveals the keen eye of the photographer/story-teller/chronicler — someone dedicated to preserving the remains of the day.
Love these photos as show us an time that will never be recaptured! Love the 2 ladies with their hair nets and trolleys! I would to see these photos colourised and would show such a different story x
I wonder what delights were served in Yummy’s Café?
Jesus saves….. and Pele scores on the rebound or something. When London was my stamping ground in the eighties I visited this market. Made me despair of our leaders and weep inside for these poor folk. Somebody was selling used rusty and bent nails. That stayed with me but not in a good way. The poverty was palpable. A sad visit, never repeated. The photos show the truth.