East End Photographs – Steven Berkoff

From the 1st of November The Cass Gallery will be presenting 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.

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

Steven Berkoff said “I’ve always had a camera of some sort, given to me by one or other of my enlightened relatives. One of the most enlightened of all perhaps was my brother-in-law Freddy Bentley who taught me how to develop and print. That was a real eye opener. Few things can be more peaceful than spending hour after hour in the darkroom watching your precious images come to life. In my late teens I bought a second-hand Rolleiflex, which is a dream camera, but changed to the sleeker and more adaptable Pentax. 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, beigal sellers and delis selling that wonderful variety of Jewish food so adored by its passionate noshers. introduction 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. 

Around the corner in Cannon Street there was an obdurate native called Barry Roggs. Barry ran an old-fashioned deli which bore his name and those who visited the shop never forgot it, or him, or his sad assistant Angela. All gone now, of course, almost as if they had never been there. Sadder still perhaps is there are no visual reminders of Barry Roggs, his deli and a host of other places and faces from the past. There are no plaques to recall that one of the great Yiddish theatres of Europe, The Grand Palais, entertained tens of thousands of people over the decades. 

Now it’s just one of the hundreds of dress manufacturers in that area. Not worth a blue plaque? And what happened to Bloom’s? The world-famous deli in Whitechapel, which was a legend for its great food and terrible service, is now a Burger King. Not worth a blue plaque either? I loved walking down Wentworth Street, immortalised in a painting by the great French artist Daumier. In that street was the king of all delis, Marks of the Lane. When you walked inside to queue at the counter the exhilarating aromas of spices and pickles would hit you followed by the sweet smell of smoked fish, olives, potato latkes, and a thousand other delights. To enter the deli was like stepping inside a food temple. The younger Mr Marks would serve me with the kindness reserved for loyal customers. Once again, all that has gone. I went back to the East End as a sort of compulsive pilgrimage year after year, becoming ever more familiar with the bizarre characters who seemed to hold together that fragile society. The carrier bag lady whose plaintive cry of ‘carrier bag two pence, carrier bag two pence‘ which a few years later became ‘carrier bag sixpence’, still resonates today, all these years later.

After a few years Jack Waller’s wife felt comfortable enough to show me her wedding photo that she kept in her handbag. She drew it out; her hands still covered with the chicken gore of her trade and asked if I could take a picture of the photo but not of her. Of course I had to have both: her youth and her maturity. It is my favourite photograph of all time.”