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Home / Archive / Docklands Community Poster Project / The Photo-murals / Housing Sequence The Photo-murals Housing Sequence Of all the issues affecting those living in the Docklands, housing was the most fundamental to people's lives, and the steering group felt it warranted a photo-mural sequence of its own. However it was difficult to portray the current housing conditions of the area without a context explaining the historical events that formed them. It was decided therefore that housing and history should be combined. This led to an immediate difficulty of representation. Whereas visual material for current issues was readily available from the project's own archives, historical material was embedded with the ideology of the context which led to its recording. For example, most photos of the housing of the area had been taken to promote reform - to bring better conditions to the poor and destitute. However those depicted as victims in the photographs were none less than the forerunners of the resilient and highly organised East Londoners of the present, the very people who had fought against the odds, forging those qualities of community cohesion of which East London is today so proud. Loraine and Peter used two main visual strategies to address these issues. The first was the use of drawing as a counterpoint to photography. Peter had first applied his skills in this to deal with some of the complex issues surrounding the 'scrap heap' image. The drawn imagery was able to convey a reality that remained invisible in the photography of the earlier period. The engravings of Gustav Dore's 'London: a Pilgrimage' provided technique and inspiration. Photographic montage and drawing were combined using black and white and sepia to reveal layers of reality, and to bring together documented and undocumented activity in one image. The second strategy concerned use of text. The artists had learned to keep text to a minimum in such work, understanding that imagery was both more readily assimilated and capable of holding more layers of meaning than words. Some text was usually necessary to ground the images however, and needed careful construction. Loraine developed a caption that acknowledged the role of East Londoners in not only surviving, but also in changing their lot - a hallmark of both their past and present struggles, 'The people of Docklands have always had to fight to make the best of appalling conditions - and to change them.'
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