Stoke Newington

There’s an article on Flashbak to a set of images that interested me with the title ‘A Faded Suburb with a Jaunty Air’ – Photos of Dalston 1979-1984, with pictures by Alan Denney, a teacher who became a mental health social worker, and who photographed the area he was living in.

They interest me in part because I was photographing at times in the same area as Denney at around the same time, though as a local his work has a far greater focus on the local people and events. To me Dalston was just one small part of London and my projects ranged across the whole of the greater city. His work is also far more politically engaged than mine at that time, though I think we share some of our views.

We both also share an interest and claim some inspiration from the work of Tony Ray-Jones, a photographer I’ve written about on many occasions, and who before his early death in 1972, as I wrote “gave the whole of British photographic culture a much-needed boot up the backside.”

Of course, Denney isn’t a great photographer like Ray-Jones was (or might have become), but does show how interesting a clearly focussed body of work can be, and can become with the passage of time. It’s interesting to go and look at the wider selection of his work on his Flikr site, where you will ifnd that he is now photographing many of the same events and people as I do, and also to read and listen to interviews and articles about him, for example on East London Lines and The Eel.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.