From Middlesex Street to Middlesex University News from the School of Art, Architecture and Design

Exhibition of photography by Steven Berkoff launched at The Cass continues tour in 2013

Date: 2 April 2013

'Steven  Berkoff's East End Photographs', the exhibition  launched last November in partnership with the East End Archive at The Cass will next be shown at Middlesex University in April 2013. 

The exhibition, curated by Lucy Bell, accompanies the recent publication of Steven Berkoff’s book 'East End Photographs' by Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with The Cass East End Archive.

Born in Stepney, director, actor and playwright Steven Berkoff was given his first camera by “an enlightened cousin” as an 11 year old boy.  Ten years later his brother-in-law bought him an enlarger and showed him how to print his own pictures.

“Then one day somebody sold me a second-hand Rolleiflex and now I had an amazing machine. From then on I never stopped taking pictures. The camera became a way of communicating my feelings about sights and people. And I started to record the people who were part of my environment in the East End of London. The camera in many ways preceded the pen. The East End markets were always my playground and I liked nothing more than my weekly trip to Petticoat Lane.

The East End was changing rapidly and I felt I had to record it before it vanished forever - at the time however I did not realise quite how fast it would disappear. The area was largely Jewish and this made it fascinating, since the early immigrants came with an amazing potpourri of cultures from a score of different peoples.

For a while I lived in Anthony Street, off Commercial Road and just around the corner from the extraordinary Hessel Street, a bustling thoroughfare that could have been torn out of the Warsaw ghetto. It was a dense artery of Jewish life with chicken slaughterers, bagel sellers and delis selling that wonderful variety of Jewish food so adored by its passionate noshers.

I’d go shopping with ma and be astounded by the clamour and the noise; the shouts of introduction from bagel sellers every few yards sitting with their huge sacks of Moorish circles of dough. I was fortunate enough to capture some images of that life before it faded away along with the people who made it so memorable.”

A promotional film about the exhibition can be seen here.