Today it is my pleasure to show these photographs by Thierry Girard from 1976

“More than simply pictures from my early years as a photographer, these are the starting point of my photographic work. At the beginning of 1976, when I was twenty-four, I had just graduated from Paris Institute of Political Studies and I had no specific idea about my future. I was very interested in photography, I bought my first photography books and I went to exhibitions, but I had very little experience.

At that time, my interest was in British photography and photographs taken in Britain by foreigners. I was an Anglophile. I was fond of Bill Brandt’s work, of course, and I was familiar with the photographs of Tony Ray-Jones, Homer Sykes and David Hurn  – but the real catalyst was to be Robert Frank’s portfolio of London & Wales published in the 1975 edition of the Creative Camera International Yearbook. Knowing London rather well —I had stayed there several times in the previous years— I immediately related to the atmosphere of Frank’s pictures.

So I decided to go back to London for a challenge, a rite of initiation: to face the outside world and do photography. I stayed in the East End where I had lived as a student, although I did not intend to do a reportage about the East End or Eastenders. I just wanted to walk for hours and days in, snatching bits of life, passing through dilapidated districts, pushing doors of pubs, rambling through markets and playing with kids. I spent time with a wonderful couple, clever and cheerful people, but living in poverty in a damp basement flat while sewing ties for chic French companies. At lunchtime or in the evenings I went to strip pubs. The people attending the shows, both men and women, were locals.

I hope these photographs made in London in 1976 are worth revisiting. Very few of these pictures have ever been published or exhibited, but what I did there at the time has been decisive for my future as a photographer.” – Thierry Girard

At the Elephant, Dalston

In Brick Lane

At the Elephant, Dalston

In Bethnal Green

Alan B, homeworker in Graham Rd, Hackney

In Mare St

In Wapping

In Ridley Rd Market

In Dalston

Betty & Penny B, Graham Rd, Hackney

In Hackney

At Limehouse Social Club

In Wapping

At Limehouse Social Club

In Bethnal Green

In Tower Hamlets

In Hackney

In Hackney

Hackney Empire

Photographs copyright © Thierry Girard

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Market Luskacova’s Brick Lane

Homer Sykes Spitalfields

Phil Maxwell’s Brick Lane

Philip Marriage’s Spitalfields

Sarah Ainslie’s Brick Lane

David Hoffman’s East End

Colin O’Brien’s Brick Lane

Daniele Lamarche’s East End