Homes and Homelessness: Photographs capture 100 years of living conditions in Tower Hamlets
Four Corners’ latest exhibition documents housing in East London from the Victorian era to the present day, encouraging viewers to consider the systemic nature of housing precarity and homelessness.
Conditions of Living: Images of Home and Homelessness in London’s East End is the latest exhibition at the film and photography gallery Four Corners in Globe Town.
From archival photographs to the assisted self-portraits of artist Anthony Luvera, Conditions of Living traces over one hundred years of housing in East London. Commencing with the slums and workhouses of the late nineteenth century, the exhibition takes us through post-war council estates and ends with market-driven ‘affordable’ housing, as seen with the numerous high-rise developments concentrated in the East End over the last two decades.
Conditions of Living shines a light on stories often overlooked. Black and white photographs of the determined men and women of Stepney holding placards depict the rent strike of the 1930s. Images of damp ceilings, peeling floral wallpaper and a tower block caved in remind us of the neglect of local estates, decades ahead of the Grenfell disaster in 2017. A cluster of Bengali children wound around an abandoned car at Fieldgate Mansions points to the complex entanglement of class and racial discrimination faced by East London’s Bengali community.
What comes across most powerfully is the sense of community and connection pertinent to all East London neighbourhoods. Time and again, people come together in solidarity and fight for equity, whether that be to save Fieldgate Mansions from demolition in the 1970s or Brick Lane in 2021.
A stone’s throw from the Cranbrook Estate, an example of pioneering modernist social housing, Four Corners’ exhibition encourages attendees to consider how issues of homelessness, unstable living conditions and inflated rents persist to the present day.
Against the rise of gentrification and increasing economic segregation in Tower Hamlets, Conditions of Living is a poignant and searching collection of photographs, utilising the camera as a medium for social engagement and empowerment.
Conditions of Living is on display at Four Corners until Saturday 2 September 2023.
f you enjoyed this, you may also like This is Home: memories from Clare House of Life before eviction.
