London Life
by Colin O’Brien
(Spitalfields Life Books, £25)

COLIN O’BRIEN was just eight years old when he took a picture of his two Italian friends on his family’s old box camera in London’s Clerkenwell in 1948.

That working-class Clerkenwell is now a distant memory — today it’s an area of sky-high rents, loft apartments, hipster boutiques and ubiquitous coffee shops.

His early love of photography developed with his acquisition of a Leica camera which “fell off the back of a lorry” and he went on to document everyday life in the ’50s and ’60s – children playing, lovers taking a stroll and even car crashes outside his window on the junction of Clerkenwell Road and Farringdon Road.

O’Brien would hawk such pictures around the nationals on Fleet Street, where they often found a home.

The images’ fascination is in providing a glimpse into a way of life in black and white that has long since ceased to exist and this photographic coffee table book certainly offers a trip down memory lane for those Londoners old enough to recall the 1950s in a collection that covers seven decades, recapturing the street life of the post-war years up to today.

His portraits of small traders and workers towards the end of the book are the most evocative and memorable, probably because they encapsulate a passing era and a disappearing neighbourhood most graphically.

The short series of his mother trying on hats she couldn’t afford in a big West End store are endearing too but what’s absent is a specific O’Brien perspective on life or an indication of a deeper understanding and reflection of the changes he is capturing in his images.

Most of the photos have the quality of arbitrarily chosen snapshots rather than carefully composed images or selected subjects.

For those with an interest in everyday life on the streets of London’s East End, this is a book certainly worth dipping into.

But if you are looking for photographic innovation or deep insight into the post-war era you may be disappointed.