Once Upon a Time in Brick Lane

Paul Trevor, one of the great unsung heroes of British documentary photography, spent many years during the 70s and 80s capturing life on Brick Lane, London’s most iconic East End street. Published here for the very first time, these images, full of humor, grit, love, and surprise, capture a vibrant time before the area went through dramatic social change.
Vintage photographs taken across 25 years in London’s East End that are full of surprise and humanity One of the lesser-known though nevertheless, brilliant members of British photography Paul Trevor has an impressive collection of documentary photos of this iconic corner of London. Brick Lane is, perhaps, one of the most photographed streets in the East End, yet these elegant black and whites taken in the 70s, 80s, and 90s capture a lost era full of surprise, joy and humanity. This is street photography in the very best tradition of Cartier Bresson.

Paul Trevor began to make pictures in his Brick Lane neighborhood after abandoning his job as an accountant and deciding to become a photographer at the age of 25. His photographs have been exhibited internationally since the 1970s and are in public and private collections worldwide.
Once Upon a Time in Brick Lane by Paul Trevor is published by Hoxton Mini Press.
This is the first edition.

About the Author

Since picking up the camera at the age of 25, Paul Trevor’s photographs have been widely published in books, magazines, films, and tv. A storyteller at heart, photography offered tools which he embraced with enthusiasm. Abandoning his job as an accountant, he applied to picture-making the rapid hand-eye coordination he acquired as a teenage table tennis ace. His work was motivated by a keen social impulse and first exhibited internationally in 1978.

Eager to collaborate with others, in 1973 he co-founded the Exit Photography Group whose joint projects over a decade produced two documentary books and various exhibitions.

In 1975 he helped set up the Half Moon Photography Workshop, an arts center in London’s East End where photography could be produced, exhibited, published and debated. He co-edited its
influential Camerawork magazine 1976-80. These collaborative projects compensated for his lack of formal photographic education. Today his work is in public and private collections around the world.