Image: Phil Maxwell
Following on from Altab Ali Day 2022, This exhibition opens at the Kobi Nazrul Centre on 5 May and runs until 27 May.
The show contains work created during and after 1978 through photography and graphic design. It documents the strength of feeling at the time and the power of photography to capture this pivotal moment in the history of the East End.
Open Monday - Friday, 2pm - 6pm. It will be closed on Friday 6 May.
Contributing artists
Dan Jones
“Rebellious, cheeky and always ready to challenge the status quo” is how one of Dan’s Amnesty colleagues described him. Few could disagree. Dan Jones has been Social Worker, trade unionist, artists and resident of Tower Hamlets for over 50 years.
Daniele Lamarche
Daniele Lamarche worked as a community worker, then a researcher with the former Greater London Council's Race & Housing Action Team which was formed in the 1980s to address ongoing harassment, intimidation and attacks on racial minority communities in London and on Tower Hamlets residents of minority heritage.
David Hoffman
Working independently as a photographer and specialising in social issues since the 1970s, David Hoffman has been driven by documenting the increasingly overt control that the state exerts on our lives. Racial and social conflict, policing, homelessness, drugs, poverty and social exclusion, plus the inevitable and sometimes violent outbreaks of connected protest make up most of his work. www.hoffmanphotos.com
Phil Maxwell
Phil Maxwell is a photojournalist, filmmaker, visual artist and writer. He has been taking photographs since the 60’s, and has worked in the East End of London for the past 35 years. His extensive photographic archive of the East End continues to expand and he has made several films about the East End with his partner Hazuan Hashim. www.philmaxwell.org
Syd Shelton
Syd Shelton began his photography practice in 1972, following a move to Australia. In 1976 he returned to home London and became a member of the Rock Against Racism team capturing one of the most intriguing and contradictory political periods in British post war history. www.sydshelton.net
Tom Learmonth
Tom Learmonth was a degree student at the Polytechnic of Central London when these pictures were taken. As for many people, the death of Altab Ali in 1978 was a crucial point in his awareness of racism. Tom documented the funeral and protest march which followed, and became active in the anti-racist movement. He was arrested on a demonstration against the National Front presence at the top of Brick Lane. He went on to run community photography at the Montefiore Centre as well as practising as a freelance photojournalist. He produced a number of exhibitions with local people. His visit to Bangladesh in 1982 resulted in a Camerawork exhibition and War on Want publication ‘Underdeveloping Bangladesh: 225 years of British involvement’. www.tomlearmonth.com