Some brutal images here.

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Well when these images were taken I was in boarding school back in England, oblivious to this poverty.
Photographer claims he used a Leica, a surgeon my father worked with back then had a Leica, my father was a 6x9 black and white photographer. So this chap must have invested a serious amount to have that camera back then.
Anyhow, you are in for a shock at the living conditions that were in and around England and Scotland.

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...iety-britains-slum-housing-crisis-in-pictures
 
Thanks a lot for posting these! Remind me a little of the work by the Federal Works Administration and also some pictures you see in the opening titles sequence of a British TV show, "Call the Midwife."

I'll do my best to look at the other photos that appear listed at the bottom of the page.
 
Ironic to see ads for KPMG and "stakeholder capitalism" and banks appear in between the photos! They are indeed shocking, and they serve as a reminder that buildings can be razed and rebuilt, and people lifted out of squalid poverty, if the political will is there.
 
Thank you for sharing these, and the article, quite remarkable.

My dad had his office in the South Bronx but kept us at bay from visiting. It wasn't until I drove a cab in NYC during college that I ventured in to that part of the world. I was well aware of the conditions there but seeing was something else.

These pictures here paint a different picture than one that I had of the UK for sure.

David
 
Thanks for posting the article. One doesn't expect to see that there was such urban squalor in a first world European country as late as 1970.

Here in the US, we currently are in the midst of a stunning increase in homeless people. It too is very disturbing.
 
sooner said:
Ironic to see ads for KPMG and "stakeholder capitalism" and banks appear in between the photos! They are indeed shocking, and they serve as a reminder that buildings can be razed and rebuilt, and people lifted out of squalid poverty, if the political will is there.
Click to expand...

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Remarkable. Very powerful to include their names, real individual people. Mrs Thomas in her basement flat has it all quite neat, almost house-proud. The little of the text we get is also powerful. Very strong captions, the care, and the shame.
 
More thanks for posting this. Powerful images and commentary by Hedges that is still relevant.

The Guardian Culture Section features excellent photography work and photojournalism.
 
jmpgino said:
Well when these images were taken I was in boarding school back in England, oblivious to this poverty.
Photographer claims he used a Leica, a surgeon my father worked with back then had a Leica, my father was a 6x9 black and white photographer. So this chap must have invested a serious amount to have that camera back then.
Anyhow, you are in for a shock at the living conditions that were in and around England and Scotland.

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...iety-britains-slum-housing-crisis-in-pictures
Click to expand...


I was born in 1950 .
In any of the large UK cities up until the mid sixties this situation was common.
It took many years for the country to recover from the war .
The bomb sites were still there and times were hard .

I lived on the outskirts (fields and parks) but when you traveled into town it was a different world .
All this was cleared around about `64 and families moved out to new modern housing .
 
Living in Australia, we had nothing like this, except perhaps remote impoverished towns. We're looking at the aftermath of a war, which in fact, it was. It's a side of Britain that isn't seen in the popular culture depictions of the swinging 60s, the rise of the Beatles, and 60s underground scene.
 
I have seen official photos of housing in Toronto before it was rebuilt for first time. It wasn't this bad.
Soviet territories were destroyed significantly more than in UK. But I can't recall photos showing situation this bad for same period of time.
Mother family house in Rzev was gone during war, they moved to Moscow suburb and spend one winter in the shed, but after it they got decent shared apartment in the basement near Kremlin.
Those who were deported under Stalin time tyranny were homeless somewhere in Siberia.
In Moscow I met people who were moved from baraks to the apartment building where my wife family lived. It was special bond among those people.
 
Thanks, powerful pictures.

I can recommend Paul Trevor's work on Liverpool and North Wales in the 1970s. His book 'Like You've Never Been Away' is very moving.

I can also recommend Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's series on Byker. In 1969 the young Ms Liisa_Konttinen moved from Finland to the community of Byker in Newcastle to embed herself in the community during the demolition of their housing estate. A very humanist approach.

But neither artist's work is as bleak as Nick Hedges' photographs in the linked article.
 
Archiver said:
Living in Australia, we had nothing like this, except perhaps remote impoverished towns. We're looking at the aftermath of a war, which in fact, it was. It's a side of Britain that isn't seen in the popular culture depictions of the swinging 60s, the rise of the Beatles, and 60s underground scene.
Click to expand...

If you listen to the early reminiscences of photographers like David Bailey and Don McCullen they talk about being raised in those conditions .Both of course were London based and London like the other industrial port cities ,Manchester and Liverpool were flattened and already poor housing was made much worse .

Bailey often says that the soundtrack to his childhood was broken glass .
Kids played on the bomb sites .

This changed due to the Marshall Plan but it wasn`t until the early to mid sixties that better housing was made available at least here in the North .

Even then people were living in accommodation which had no running hot water and an outside toilet .
It was common (at least in London) to have more than one generation occupying the same property.
What you don`t see in these pictures is the persistent fog .
At least that`s what it was called before it was properly named smog from heavy pollution .

People wore masks almost all the time in winter and children were often sent home from school when it was so bad you couldn`t see your hand in front of your face .
 
Ko.Fe. said:
...Soviet territories were destroyed significantly more than in UK. But I can't recall photos showing situation this bad for same period of time....
Click to expand...

The situation wasn`t helped by the fact that most of what you see was already old, from the Victorian period.

Another factor, often overlooked, is lack of space.

The whole of the UK is only 51,330 sq miles.
I remember some years ago driving a Russian scientist around and he couldn`t get over how small GB was.

He said they had national parks (I forget what the precise term was he used) larger than the UK.

It all brings to bear on the problem.
 
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