Youth of Yesterday at Oxford House and Bethnal Green shopfronts
A new photography exhibition showing at Oxford House and in Bethnal Green Road shopfronts documents the area’s youth culture in the 1970s.
If you’ve walked down Bethnal Green Road of late, you may feel like you’ve been time travelling as the street is currently home to a public photography exhibition about the young people growing up in the area in the 1970s.
Philip Cunningham became interested in photography whilst he was a youth worker at Oxford House, working alongside his study of art at Ravensbourne College. His pictures, alongside other archive photographs from the era, feature for the first time in 40 years in the exhibition Youth of Yesterday, which can be found at the Oxford House, as well as in some of Bethnal Green Road shop fronts.
The photographs document some of the great changes the area was undergoing during the decade, capturing the mundanity of daily life, friendships, streets and their architecture, and youth culture.
The exhibition is running from September 22nd to December 17th 2021 and is free. Visitors can also collect maps from the Oxford House, Four Corners and participating shops to follow the exhibition trail around Bethnal Green Road, whilst exploring the past and present histories, businesses and characters that make Bethnal Green what it is today.
You can listen to Philip Cunningham talk with other early participants of the Oxford House, as well as Four Corners and the Museum of Youth Culture, on Thursday 23rd and Thursday 30th September at 6.00-7.30pm.