Sensational Kodachrome Photos of London’s East End by David Granick

These photographs taken by David Granick between the late 1950s and 1980s might be the best images of London's East End we've seen.

These gorgeous Kodachrome photographs taken by David Granick between the late 1950s and 1980s might be the best images of London’s East End we’ve seen. Found by photographer Chris Dorley-Brown at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, David Granick’s images take us back to the streets of Aldgate, MileEnd, Stepney, Whitechapel and Spitalfields. “The collection has about 3,000 slides going back to the fifties,” says Dorley-Brown, “but they have been well preserved. Many had been unseen for fifty years or more.”

The New Globe, Mile End Road, 1977The New Globe, Mile End Road, 1977

“The East End is well documented photographically, [but] nearly always in monochrome. Those images have defined our perspective of the period: stark, foggy and loaded with political agitation and unrest.

“Granick takes a step back. Shooting in colour, we are presented with a very different matrix of information. Colour does that, it’s a different language. It’s really astonishing how few colour images survive from that era. They have a modern sensibility to them – they are minimal, topographic.”

 

David Granick London

The George Tavern, Commercial Road, 1969, London

Whitechapel Road, 1965 London

Whitechapel Road, 1965

David Granick London

Gardiners, London, circa 1977

David Granick London

Brushfield Street, 1970, London

David Granick London

Alie Street, London, 1963

David Granick London

Commercial Road, 1974

Spitalfields Market, 1973

Spitalfields Market, 1973

David Granick London

Belhaven Street, 1977

David Granick London

Watney Market, 1974

David Granick London

Stifford Estate, Stepney Green, 1961

David Granick London

West India Dock, 1971

The East End in Colour 1960-1980 by David Granick is published by Hoxton Mini Press. An exhibition is at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives until 3 May 2018.

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