We took a sticky bus/ tube trip across town yesterday from our little patch of West London to the unfamiliar territory of E8. We wanted to see an exhibition called ‘London Life’ currently showing at Hackney Museum. It is a collection of photographs taken by the street photographer Colin O’Brien. Primarily the photographs are of Hackney and other parts of the East End, although there are a few images from Battersea and beyond. What could seemingly be pictures of the mundane are in fact a collection of, individual stories, moments and expressions captured and preserved in time. The exhibition includes some wonderful images from his book ‘Travellers Children in London Fields’. Despite growing up myself in a very rural part of Norfolk, which is almost as far removed from East London as it is possible to be, some of the pictures of children in the 70’s and 80’s had a particular resonance.
Some of my favourite Photographs from the exhibition
images via Colin O’Brien
