#6 CAMERA Book Review: Ian Berry - This is Whitechapel

A quick look at this Whitechapel Art Gallery commissioned project in 1972.

40 page saddled stitched booklet to accompany the exhibition

Ian Berry's This is Whitechapel originated as a commission from the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1972 to document a district undergoing rapid social and physical transformation. Produced as a companion publication to the exhibition of the same name, the project records Whitechapel and Spitalfields at a time when long established Jewish communities were moving away, new families from South Asia and the Caribbean were settling in the area and extensive slum clearance programmes were reshaping the urban landscape. Rather than concentrating on a single event, Berry created a detailed record of everyday life during a period of significant demographic and economic change.

Working as a Magnum photographer with a background in observational photojournalism, Berry photographed markets, streets, shops, places of work and neighbourhood life with an emphasis on ordinary daily activity. His photographs examine the relationship between people and place, documenting both continuity and change within one of London's most historically diverse districts. This is Whitechapel has since become an important visual record of East London in the early 1970s, preserving a community at the point where post war redevelopment, immigration and changing patterns of employment were fundamentally altering the character of the area.

Ian Berry:
Whitechapel Gallery

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CAMERA:

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