Perhaps best known for documenting the Rock Against Racism movement in the late Seventies, photographer Syd Shelton takes his place in the illustrious Café Royal Books catalogue with his three-part Street Portraits:
These portraits are a sort of ongoing conversation with people in the theatre of the street. My approach, in some ways, has more in common with the studio photographer, and as I have returned many times to the same location, somewhere like Hare Row in Hackney I even called ‘my studio’. Usually I like to position people in a shallow theatrical space with a fixed backdrop and the combination of favourable available light which provides the venue for that conversation. Sometimes the trust between photographer and the people I am photographing happens very quickly and other times it takes a long time for the camera to disappear, and for it to become about me and the person I am photographing — there becomes a sort of implicit contract between us.
From the UK to Australia, the US, Ireland, Jamaica…
Chester 1981 [The Undertones!] / Brick Lane 1978
The Docks, Dublin, 1985
Johaneburg, 2011
Watts, Los Angeles, 1984
Brighton, 2014
Deal, Kent, 1981 / Walkerswood, Jamaica, 2011
Sydney 1973
Belfast, 1979
Brick Lane, 1980 / Hackney, 1979
Stamford Hill, London, 1987
The Docks, Dublin, 1985
Sydney, 1975
Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1983
Hare Row, Hackney, 1979
The Falls Road, Belfast, 1979
Dublin 1979
Hare Row, Hackney, 1979 (both)
[Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Syd Shelton]
Mick Hartley 
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