From the 29th of August until the 22nd of September, shop fronts along Lower Marsh will present newly sourced archival photography from London and Kyiv and Odesa providing fresh insights into street and theatre culture in both cities.
This includes photographs from the SE1 collection, a community photography project which took place in Waterloo in the 1970s and captured the people who worked and lived with Lower Marsh market as well as Ukrainian works by Ranchukov who captured raw images of working people in soviet Kyiv.
This exhibition is simultaneously a reflection of the theatrical history of Lower Marsh, whose neighbouring Old Vic Theatre housed the National Theatre between 1963 and 1973, and of the changing demographics of this community, which has welcomed the large number of Ukrainians since the country’s war. Within archival photographs similarities in the working lives of both cultures come to the fore and highlight the path to greater cultural exchange between the two communities now living side by side.
Photographs by celebrated London-based theatre photographers including Angus McBean and John Vickers will be exhibited alongside their Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Maruschenko. These will be displayed with images of local life and community, including views of Lower Marsh’s longstanding market and images from our local photography competition.
A community outreach programme will run alongside Working Lives, encouraging participation in or a response to the exhibition materials. This includes creative workshops in local schools, a volunteer-created audio guided sampling memories from local people alongside the newly arrived Ukrainian community, and a projection of photographic works.