Cass Gallery,
Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design
Central House
59-63 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7PF
(Aldgate East Tube) www.thecass.com
PV 1st November 6pm – 8pm
Book Signing 12th November 5.30-7.30
Opening Times. Wednesday – Friday 11am-7pm / Saturday 11am – 5pm
www.thecass.com

The Cass Gallery is delighted to present the exhibition of East End Photographs by Steven Berkoff to coincide with the launch of The East End Archive at the Cass and the publication of the book East End Photographs by Steven Berkoff published by Dewi Lewis. www.dewilewispublishing.com

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.”

“Berkoff has left us with a unique historic portrait of the East End area from the 60’s and 70’s. Images of the people, the shops and streets that we would have encountered daily, of a changing East End, that would not have been recorded so gently without Berkoff’s insightful eye”. Susan Andrews

Exhibition runs during Photo Month www.photomonth.org

Exhibition tours to Lucy Bell Fine Art 8th December 2012 – 21 February 2013.
For more information see www.lucy-bell.com 07979 407629. Print sales and book sales through the gallery 01424 434828