For nearly half a century, Bandele ‘Tex’ Ajetunmobi photographed the daily lives of his friends and acquaintances on the streets and in the pubs, shops and clubs around Whitechapel, Stepney and Mile End. His images, rarely seen outside his circle of family and friends at the time, are an important historical document of social and cultural life.
Hackney-based visual arts charity, Autograph, has launched a new online gallery of Ajetunmobi’s work.
Ajetunmobi (1921-1994, born Lagos, Nigeria) was a self-taught photographer who stowed away on a boat to Britain from Nigeria in 1947. He chose to leave Lagos as he found himself an outcast on account of the disability he developed from having polio as a child.
After settling in East London, he documented the area from the 1950s – 1980s, focusing on immigrant communities and the multi-racial nature of the area. What distinguishes this archive from other photography of the post-war period is its informal nature and Ajetunmobi’s ability to capture the camaraderie between the long-established communities in the area, as well as the recent arrivals from countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.
Most of Ajetunmobi’s work was destroyed when he died apart for some two hundred negatives that his niece Victoria Loughran retrieved alongside his camera equipment. These are now part of Autograph’s collection of photography.
