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ExhibitionTalkFilm screening

Fri 24 October 2025 – Sat 6 December 2025

A WORLD APART: Photographing Change in London's East End, 1970-76

PRESS RELEASE

Events

Exhibition late opening & Anniversary Print Sale launch. Weds 19 November, 6.30-8.30pm. BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE

Alright We'll Do It Ourselves, film screening and talk with arts activist Maggie Pinhorn. Thurs 27 November, 6-7.30pm at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives. BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE

Harry Diamond's East End Blues. Thurs 4 December, 6.30pm. Maria Andrews talks about her research into these little-known photographs taken in the 1970s and 80s, held at the National Portrait Gallery. BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE

 

Four Corners' autumn exhibition captures a unique moment of change in London’s East End.

As the docks closed, and wholesale slum clearance replaced old neighbourhoods, many communities were being transformed beyond recognition. Yet a different East End was also coming into being, as new migrant communities created a space for themselves.

­­A new generation of photographers were drawn to document ordinary people’s lives and give visibility to working-class experiences. They showed their photographs in everyday spaces where local people could view images of themselves and their own communities.

The exhibition features remarkable photographs by Ron McCormick and the Exit Photography collective of Nicholas Battye, Diane Bush, Alex Slotzkin, and Paul Trevor, alongside work by Ian Berry, John Donat, David Hoffman, Jessie Ann Matthew, Dennis Morris, Val Perrin, and Ray Rising.

With many thanks to Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Hackney Museum, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Spectrum Photographic.

 

Press

BBC London online

Ian Visits

Daily Telegraph magazine (paywall)

Spitalfields Life

The Eye of Photography

Artblart

 

Image credit: Child playing in a tenement block courtyard, Whitechapel or Wapping, around 1972. © David Hoffman