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Explosive seems a good way to describe the photography of Chris Dorley-Brown.
Tower blocks crumble on the Trowbridge Estate. Jet planes lift off from City Airport. You can almost hear the thunder rumbling seemingly inches above Dalston high-rises.
This is Chris Dorley-Brown's coffee table book, A History of the East End — the title very much belying the fact that there is nary a word jotted down in it. Dan Cruikshank this ain't. In Dorley-Brown's world, the pictures do the talking.
Photo essays of London's East End have become a book genre in their own right (we've previewed a fair few ourselves), but while they sometimes have the air of amateur snaps rooted out of an attic shoebox, scanned in and couriered off to the printer's, Dorley-Brown is a pro through and through. A career that's seen him work for Time magazine, and on projects with the BBC and Museum of London (now London Museum).
The photographer set up a practice in 1984, focussed on projects that hone in on east London and its hospitals, social housing and architecture. You might call A History of East London a 'best of' compilation.
The dynamism of these photos speaks of a place that is constantly reinventing itself; West Ham's stadium is bashed down, while their new home, the London Stadium, is illuminated by fireworks as the 2012 Games kick off.
Plumes of black smoke, jet fuel and clouds of concrete dust waft through the pages: not only can you hear these photos, you're occasionally in danger of choking on them.
There are moments of calm, too; the drip-drip of a puddle in an emptied out section of Dagenham's Ford factory; the lapping of the Thames on the foreshore, as framed by Queenshithe arches like a live action quadriptych. These kind of photos are no less explosive; they just speak volumes in a different kind of way.
At this point we might add in a quote from Dorley-Brown, except there are none in the book. And so, to follow suit with this article, the rest is pictures...
A History of the East End, Chris Dorley-Brown, published by Nouveau Palais éditions
