Homelessness, drug addiction and racism in the 1970s and 1980s will be explored in a photography exhibition running from this week at Hoxton’s Museum of the Home.
“Endurance & Joy in the East End: The Photography of David Hoffman” is on from 15 October to 30 March, featuring photographs taken by Hoffman when he lived in a squat in Fieldgate Mansions, Whitechapel.
Hoffman is a photojournalist who has spent over 40 years documenting social change in the East End, gaining a particular reputation as a protest and riot photographer.
Many of the photographs were taken in the homeless shelter at St Botolph’s Aldgate, which closed in the early 1980s.
On his first visit, Hoffman said he was ‘“scared stiff by the noise and the stink of piss and people drinking surgical spirits”, before realising “it was something I had to photograph”.
The resulting images show “the blind drunk, heroin addicts, [and] fighting-mad alcoholics”, as well as analysing the homelessness and racism which was “very prevalent” at the time.
The exhibition’s curator, a Spitalfields blogger known as The Gentle Author, crowdfunded £10,000 from around 500 supporters.
“it was something I had to photograph”
To coincide with the exhibition, The Gentle Author has published a book of the photographs under the same title, saying that “because [Hoffman’s] work draws from the community, these are images that people are hungry to see.”
Danielle Patten, the museum’s director of creative programmes and collections, said the images “invite all to engage in important conversations about social justice and community resilience”.
The photographs will remain in the museum’s permanent collection.
Cosmo Adair is a postgraduate journalism student at City, University of London. He writes about Haggerston and very little else.