London street corners photographed by Chris Dorley-Brown

Rio Cinema

Chris Dorley-Brown has been photographing the East End of London for nearly 30 years and as such has built up a vast body of work. He is interested primarily in documenting the evolution of the ever-changing social landscape. For this series, The Corners, Chris to began shooting the streets of London, specifically where his maternal and paternal ancestors had lived during the last 200 years. In this process of genealogical research he noticed that “standing on those same street corners 150 years later, my curiosity shifted from the buildings to the people walking, cycling and driving past- nameless, anonymous figures, but continuing this endless choreography of social mobility’.

The challenge was now how to image these ‘corners’ and the people that passed through them. To do this, he utilized composite techniques with each individual image taking many hours to shoot. Chris says, ‘The finished picture is deceptively simple, a snapshot on first seeing, but revealing complex layers of relationship between people and architecture.’

Laburnam Street