East London squatters in the 1970s

A forgotten world. Photos found after the death of photographer Joyce Edwards.

When filmmaker Derek Smith began sorting through the belongings of his friend Joyce Edwards after she died in 2023, he didn’t expect to uncover more than 100 rolls of unseen film.

Edwards, who died just months before her 100th birthday, had quietly spent the 1970s photographing a squatting community in East London. Nearly 50 years on, her intimate portraits reveal a group of musicians, artists and radicals who reclaimed abandoned houses and, against the odds, built a housing co-operative that still exists today.

Remarkably, Edwards was not a professional photographer. She began taking pictures in her own North London property, capturing a cast of eccentric tenants that included actor Henry Woolf and James Bond villain Vladek Sheybal. But her curiosity soon pulled her further east, towards Bethnal Green, where three streets known as ‘The Triangle’ had been left empty after plans for a major motorway were abandoned.

What she discovered there was a young, makeshift community that had moved into some derelict houses, repairing roofs, fixing plumbing, and turning neglected buildings into liveable homes. Edwards returned repeatedly, earning their trust and creating portraits that feel unguarded, warm, and quietly defiant.