Nick Hedges
Make Life Worth Living - Photographs for Shelter 1968-72
Science Museum, London
'Mr & Mrs B lived in a single room with their children, a boy aged 15 months and twin girls aged 3 months. With a double bed, two small tables, a collapsible pram, two cats, a wardrobe, a dressing table, two kitchen chairs and a Television, the room measured about 15 feet by 10 feet. They were both aged 19. Peckham, London, November 1970.'
At first sight, this seems a very strange place to stage an exhibition of this kind, the Science Museum is not somewhere I would normally think of as a place to view artwork, though I love the place for the childish delight in gazing at the exhibits, even if an increasing number of them are things I have actually owned. It was only when I walking back through the museum after the exhibition that a thought crept into my mind; while we actively engaged in the 'space race' and while men were circling, then walking, on the moon, people were living in wretched poverty on our own streets.
At first sight, this seems a very strange place to stage an exhibition of this kind, the Science Museum is not somewhere I would normally think of as a place to view artwork, though I love the place for the childish delight in gazing at the exhibits, even if an increasing number of them are things I have actually owned. It was only when I walking back through the museum after the exhibition that a thought crept into my mind; while we actively engaged in the 'space race' and while men were circling, then walking, on the moon, people were living in wretched poverty on our own streets.