Liverpool : 1972 – 2025 Volume 1
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During the 1980s I often saw this woman pushing her shopping trolley through Spitalfields. I admired her quiet determination as she made her way around the Sunday market in search of bargains. The trolley carried her purchases, but it also seemed to steady her steps.
The 1980s brought profound social and economic change to the East End, yet I suspect that, for her, material circumstances had changed very little over the course of her life. I could only respect this elderly, physically frail woman. Her heavy overcoat, headscarf and sensible shoes spoke of a generation shaped by wartime austerity. In the East End of the 1980s, many older residents were among the last to remember the Blitz, the hardships of post-war poverty, and the area’s long-established Jewish working-class communities.
When I moved to the East End in 1982, the tower block where I lived was home to many elderly Jewish residents, each with a fascinating story to tell. The woman who lived on the floor below me was always impeccably turned out and made the finest pastries I have ever been offered by a neighbour. As the years passed, the pastries gave way to curry as the block gradually became home to mainly Bangladeshi families. If I was lucky, a knock on the door often meant a plate of delicious food from a generous neighbour.
In the early 1980s, Spitalfields stood on the threshold of transformation. Much of the old East End remained poor and semi-derelict, but redevelopment and gentrification were already beginning to reshape the area. I hope these photographs preserve something of that vanished world before it disappeared almost entirely.
Everyday Stories: A Walk Through East London’s History
I think I photographed this woman a number of times during my wanderings around Whitechapel in the 1980s. On this occasion she stood out because of her determined walking style, the fag in her mouth and her customised push chair redesigned for shopping.
Next to her is a large billboard proclaiming, “Turn right at the Bow Flyover”, while a bank sign is visible in the background. These commercial signs speak of a changing city, yet they seem disconnected from the woman herself. The advertisements represent movement, development, and consumer culture, whereas she embodies continuity and everyday survival.
I think she humanises a generation of East End residents who had lived through war, post-war austerity, and the profound social changes that reshaped the area during the twentieth century. She’s actually walking past a former derelict bomb sight hidden by billboards. Although she occupies only a small part of the photograph, she’s undoubtedly its emotional centre.
The buildings, signs, and street furniture suggest the physical city, while the woman represents the lived experience of those who inhabit it. Her presence is fleeting as she is simply passing through the frame. Nevertheless she carries the history of the East End in a way that the architecture alone cannot.
This photomontage combines two photographs taken on Brick Lane. The image of the woman was captured as she walked past the Seven Stars pub in the 1980s, while the background photograph was taken on a rain-soaked evening in 2003.
I wanted to create a strong visual contrast between permanence and change, using photographic techniques to explore Brick Lane as a place shaped by history, migration, and continual urban transformation.
The blurred background was created using a slow shutter speed combined with intentional camera movement. It conveys a sense of energy, motion, and instability. Streaks of neon light sweep across the frame, evoking nightlife, commerce, and the constant flow of visitors—qualities closely associated with Brick Lane’s identity as a destination for restaurants, bars, and tourism. In contrast, the woman remains relatively sharp and still. Her presence provides a visual anchor within the swirling environment, suggesting resilience and continuity amid relentless change. I wanted her to appear as a figure from another era inhabiting a contemporary, fast-moving city.
The photomontage reflects on Brick Lane’s evolving identity, juxtaposing tradition with modernity, permanence with movement, and individual experience with the spectacle of urban life. Rather than simply documenting the street, the image invites viewers to consider how places evolve over time and how those changes affect the people who have long called them home.
Shopping malls have never really been a go to destination for me but they are an incredible place to photograph people. First of all the lighting is generally the same and consistantly unworldly. Furthermore the ‘street’ funneling shoppers around various shops, cafes and bars is full of a range of different subjects that create different photographic opportunities. I would place the image above into my surreal category.
The remarkable shop mannequin, dressed in shorts, polo shirt, sunglasses and a sweater tied around its waist, stands rigidly inside a display window. Just outside, a tiny designer fluffy white dog walks cautiously across the polished floor. The contrast is immediate: the mannequin represents perfect, manufactured stillness while the dog embodies spontaneous life. The similarity of their pale colouring subtly links them visually despite belonging to entirely different worlds. This is street theatre with a backdrop, courtesy of the shops window dresser. The photograph suggests that modern urban life consists of countless parallel narratives; here it’s an opera with a security guard. A surreal chance coincidence, surely one of the defining pleasures of street photography.
Gentrification in East London: A Photographic Study
The photographs above depict the same stretch of Commercial Street in East London, taken almost three decades apart. Together they provide a visual study of continuity and change in one of London’s most rapidly transformed neighbourhoods.
The first photograph documents the area in 1990, when Spitalfields was still marked by the effects of economic decline following decades of deindustrialisation. Much of the surrounding district retained its traditional working-class character, and only a few years after this image was taken the historic Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market closed and relocated to Leyton, bringing to an end more than three centuries of trading on the site. The closure marked a significant turning point in the area’s economic and social history.
By contrast, the second photograph, taken in 2019, juxtaposes a passer-by with a large fashion advertisement, reflecting a neighbourhood increasingly associated with design, creative industries, boutique retail and affluent consumers. Commercial Street has evolved into a place where global brands and lifestyle marketing occupy spaces that once served working-class communities, local workshops and independent businesses.
Together, the photographs chart a profound transformation in the area’s social identity. The 1990 image belongs to an East End still characterised by relatively affordable housing and long-established immigrant communities, particularly those of Jewish and later Bangladeshi heritage. By 2019, the same streets had become emblematic of London’s wider process of gentrification, attracting professionals, technology companies, galleries, restaurants and rapidly rising property values.
The two photographs therefore raise important questions about who ultimately benefits from urban regeneration. While investment undoubtedly brought improvements to the physical environment and generated new economic activity, these gains were accompanied by escalating rents and house prices that made it increasingly difficult for lower-income residents and independent traders to remain. House prices in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets increased by well over 300 per cent between the mid-1990s and the late 2010s, while commercial rents followed a similar upward trajectory. At the same time, census data show that the proportion of residents employed in professional and managerial occupations rose substantially, reflecting a marked shift in the social composition of the neighbourhood. The fashion poster in the second image becomes more than an advertisement: it symbolises a consumer economy increasingly directed towards a different demographic from the communities that historically gave the East End its distinctive character.
Urban renewal is rarely a straightforward story of progress or decline. Instead, it is a story of competing interests, changing identities and the continual reshaping of place. The transformation of Spitalfields undoubtedly created wealth and restored much of the built environment, yet it also displaced many long-standing residents, small businesses and traditional street markets. Although developers and often the local Council promoted regeneration as a process that would benefit the wider community, the evidence suggests that its rewards were very unevenly distributed.
