DAVID HOFFMAN Fieldgate Mansions 1973–1985

Description

DAVID HOFFMAN Fieldgate Mansions 1973–1985

DAVID HOFFMAN Fieldgate Mansions 1973–1985 is a Café Royal Books publication.

Fieldgate Mansions 1973–1985, first published in 2021, is 14cm x 20cm and has 36 black and white pages.

East End

“The East End that I found when I arrived in 1970 was a different world to today’s bustling, regulated prosperity. Bombsites and tumbledown, near derelict housing were the unremarkable norm. Walking home from my truck driving job to my rented slum room in Chicksand Street I would step carefully over gutters running with blood from the Lewcopak Kosher Chicken slaughterhouse emptying its tanks at the end of each day.

Residents’ main source of income had evaporated as the docks and their many supporting trades closed down. Racism festered among the older population of white workers whose community was being destroyed by a lack of jobs and resentment stoked by their crumbling council estates. The area was abandoned, poverty and hopelessness hung in the air. Empty shells of buildings sheltered the most desperate homeless, mostly people with alcohol use disorder, crazed by drinking meths and surgical spirit. Violence was common.

Tumbledown, leaky old houses made for easy squats or cheap rents and began to attract impoverished students, artists, political activists and young Bangladeshi men working in the rag trade. Slowly a younger, more able population emerged and the little corner shops and cafés became busier. Life started to return to the streets.

These books document aspects of that metamorphosis, capturing the lives that set the scene for what was on the brink of becoming just another anodyne, bustling, gentrified, high value inner-city district.” David Hoffman December 13th 2021

Café Royal Books

Café Royal Books is an independent publishing house set up by Craig Atkinson in 2005. He is based in Southport, England. CRB release regular publications with the broad subject of British Documentary Photography since 1960. This includes international photographers who work within the British Isles. Alongside photographers from the British Isles who work internationally. There are a few exceptions, with titles that sit alongside this general theme.

This type of work has historically been neglected by both photographers and institutions. Café Royal Books aim is to source, gather, and re/present this work as a collective whole. And, thus, give it a wider audience. CRB publish at least one title every week, presenting, generally, one series by one photographer.

The books combine elements of zines, photobooks, artist books and educational resource. The books are affordable, democratic, utilitarian and useful. They come out regularly and in small editions. So, great to collect.

Have a look at the selection of Café Royal Books we have in stock.