I am very pleased and proud to announce the publication of my new book Brick Lane in 1978. It was the beginning of May. Altab Ali had just been murdered by some skinheads purporting to be supporters of the National Front.
 
The Brick Lane area of London had been an industrial area for centuries. By the 20th Century it had become a thriving centre for the textile and clothing industry. Nearly every building had some kind of clothing production with men working hard on machines in basements and back rooms.
 
What I found myself doing was representing the tensions and differences in this small area where people from the Indian Sub-Continent were living side by side with the remains of the once much larger Ashkenazi Jewish community, the West Indians and white ‘cockney’. Many of my pictures follow a different path to the other superb series produced by notable photographers working at the time. Within the frames you will get a sense of how I saw this small part of London. Each picture draws the viewer’s attention to the fundamental features that exist within a community of cohesion and harmony as well as racial, religious and social tension. I explored how identity politics played out against a rising tide of political and economic unrest.
 
You will like this small book if you are interested in visual anthropology and black & white photography of the past. This is the first book by David Gilbert Wright in the f8 Documentary Monograph series.