LONDON.- Childhood, a display of 20 evocative photographs of the late 20th Century East End from Paul Trevor’s extensive archive, will go on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood from 2 October.

Paul Trevor’s Eastender Archive consists of around 120,000 images taken mostly in the Brick Lane area over three decades – from the 1970s to the 1990s - and represents the lives of local East End communities during a period of rapid social and physical change. The images convey Trevor’s strong personal engagement with the area. Visually striking, they also provide a strong sense of time, place and social context.

The material within the archive is sometimes raw and challenging – reminders of the heavy policing and frequent racial attacks around Brick Lane in the late 1970s, for example – but it nevertheless presents a hopeful picture of a community working together to rise above their circumstances, kicking against adversity rather than submitting to it.

The 20 images have been selected to provide a small snapshot of the lives and social context of children in the area during this period.

Paul Trevor (b.1947) is a London-based photographer currently working in Spain. His work has been exhibited internationally since the 1970s and is held in various collections worldwide. His many projects - in photography, film, video and new media – have taken him far and wide. He has forged a lasting connection with the East End and the outcome of that is the Eastender Archive. The Archive came about not through a concerted effort to do a project, but as a result of a particular practice - the daily use of the camera for a personal, visual record. Active in the local photography scene, Paul Trevor was a founder member of the Half Moon Photography Workshop 1973-80, and co-editor of Camerawork magazine for four years.

The V&A Museum of Childhood aims to encourage everyone to explore the themes of childhood past and present and develop an appreciation of creative design through our inspirational collections and programmes. The Museum is part of the V&A, housing the national childhood collection. The galleries are designed to show the collections in a way which is accessible to adults and children of all ages.