Walking the streets of London’s East End in 1953

Today I am enjoying "Nigel Henderson’s Streets" which is a collection of the photographs he took in East London between 1949-and 1953.

It is a Christmas present from our Ben and Lindsey who knowing that I grew up in southeast London though it would make an old man very happy.

And of course it does.  

I may have only been four in 1953, but the scenes depicted by Mr. Henderson are little different from those I remember a few years later in my patch of Peckham, New Cross, and Deptford and later still in Woolwich.

At which point I could repeat the glowing introduction from the book on Mr. Henerson’s skill and his background.

But the pictures in the book will do that, so instead I will just reflect that as someone born in the first half of the last century these images are ones I can relate to from my own patch of London, and indeed from the streets around city centre Derby where I was dispatched for long summer holidays.

One of my favourites must be the Wig stall at Petticoat Lane taken in 1952. Amidst the bustle and interest of possible customers there is the woman perfectly framed between the model heads displaying their wigs.

There are plenty of others which match this one for the insight into street life, but there is such a thing as copyright, and I am a fierce defender of the right of the artist to retain control of his work.

So that is it.

Nigel Henerson’s Streets, Photographs of London’s East End 1949-53 Edited by Clive Coward, Tate  Publishing.

Pictures; from Nigel Henderson’s Streets