FOUR CORNERS: FIFTY YEARS OF COMMUNITY FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN EAST LONDON

By Akila Asad and Helena Goundry

Image: Family archivist Tanbir Mirza-Baeg at the opening of I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive, July 2024. Photo credit: Eleni Parousi

Four Corners turns fifty this year. The organisation has been situated in Roman Road in Bethnal Green, East London since 1975. In the 1970s Tower Hamlets was beset with far-right National Front newspaper sellers, and communities were divided. Squatting was common in this run-down area, and 113 Roman Road was no exception. Here four film school graduates created a filmmaking workshop and cinema space, where they could also produce their own films.

Black and white photograph of a storefront named "FOUR CORNERS" with a person standing at the entrance, holding a bag, and looking inside, suggesting they are about to enter the shop. The shop has large glass windows and an awning over the front door. The facade is brick. A black and white striped post stands to the right of the entrance and a street leads away from the shop in the foreground.

Four Corners shop front, 113 Roman Road, circa 1970s. Photo courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Four Corners’ ethos was to make filmmaking accessible, by collaborating with local people to watch, discuss and make films. However, one of its founders recalled that many local people felt that Four Corners was not for them. Despite the organisation’s creative efforts, producing films like On Allotments (1976) and Railman (1976), its work was seen as disconnected from the immediate community. This led Four Corners to rethink its approach. Joanna Davis and Mary Pat Leece advocated for a cinema to encourage “some kind of public activity”, particularly through public screenings, while Wilf Thust emphasised the need for production and education workshops. By 1976, Four Corners had secured funding from Tower Hamlets Council to transform its space into a collaborative creative hub.

Describing these early days, Jo Davis recalled that,

“It was quite hostile – I can’t say it was an easy ride.

There was suspicion [of] who we were and what on earth we were doing there.Gradually we got more and more involved and less and less isolated – it was a very gradual process and very rewarding … through the films and the projects you make absolute contact at a human level and that’s where I think it works.”

Black and white photo of a group of six men seated in a room, appearing to be a lecture hall. The men are dressed in casual clothing, and one in the foreground holds a film reel. A poster on the wall advertises a film festival. There is a window with projection equipment visible.

Audience members inside Four Corners’ cinema, 113 Roman Road, Tower Hamlets, circa 1980s. Photo courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Four Corners’ participatory cinema screenings encouraged critical discussions. Bev Zalcock, a long-time associate of the organisation, shared her memories in a recent oral history interview. She recalled attending a screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s Letter to Jane,¹ which was “very sexist”. At a memorable moment Joanna Davis leaned out of the projection booth and asked, “Can we bear this anymore?” Bev referred to this as “a guerrilla intervention from a projectionist”, with the audience, including herself, responding with a resounding “no!”

Three people pose in a dimly lit, narrow room with a brick wall backdrop. The camera operator holds a large film camera and appears to be the camera operator. The other two people stand close by, looking at the camera.

Behind the scenes on Nighthawks circa 1978. Four Corners co-founder Joanna Davis is operating the camera and Tony Godden (right) played the DJ in the film. Photo © Tony Godden, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Four Corners offered a space where young people learned filmmaking, creating films such as Don’t Think So. The ‘Screenagers’ project offered school children screenings of matinee blockbusters in the purpose-built cinema and stop-frame animation workshops. There were unemployed filmmaking workshops and free childcare for mothers learning filmmaking. The ground-breaking gay feature film Nighthawks (1978), directed by founder member Ron Peck, was made by a cast of largely amateur actors. Women-only and Black women filmmaker groups met to view and discuss issues of film representation.

Young person smiling, wearing sunglasses and a fedora, with "SCREENAGE KICKS" text overlaying the image, a drawing of a building in the background, text below reads "A space where there are limitless possibilities to what they can imagine, create".

A response to films from Four Corners’ archive. Film still from ‘Screenage Kicks’ by an East End Stories project participant, January 2025. Photo courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

THE BENGALI PHOTO ARCHIVE
Flash forward to 2025, and the ethos of the founder members continues. In this article, we explore the Bengali Photo Archive (BPA), a project which encompasses Four Corners’ collaborative approach by engaging community groups, volunteers, donors, amateur and professional photographers.

Children and adults painting a community mural on a brick wall, with a sign reading "Come and paint this wall", while a man in a suit walks along the sidewalk with a dog.

Montefiore Centre mural painting, circa 1970s-1980s. Photo: Tom Learmonth, Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

The project emerged through discussions with Swadhinata Trust, the East London secular Bengali heritage organisation, which works to embed British Bengali history in school curriculums. Four Corners had recently partnered with Swadhinata Trust on the project Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point in 2022. Community archives often spring from activism originating in collective trauma or grief, and we witnessed this from recording oral histories with activists on the Brick Lane project, who recalled experiences of racist violence in the 1970s. The project also identified a lack of photographic archives of everyday East London Bengali life, which led to the creation of the BPA project.

Five young Bengali men in casual denim and leather jackets pose together on a beach in a black and white photograph, the ocean and sky visible in the background.

Photo: Mayar Akash, circa 1990s. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Our aim was to establish a new collection created by and featuring the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets. We looked at examples of participatory archiving, such as the South Asian American Digital Archive in the USA and UK based Black Country Visual Arts whose models of community archiving, collaborating and exhibiting mirrored our own approach. We partnered with Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives to house the digital collection, enabling ongoing public access. Funding was secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, the National Lottery Community Fund and other trusts.

Twenty-five participants were recruited and trained in archiving skills, Premiere Pro editing, and oral history techniques. Most engaged for three months, with a core group of eight people staying for over 6 months. We aimed to scan 500 photographs but in the end we scanned over 4600! We also conducted oral history interviews and created ten short films made up of oral history recordings and donated images.

Further funding enabled us to develop a website and an exhibition in Four Corners’ gallery, I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive, ran in July 2024. It displayed over 275 images and attracted nearly 800 visitors. We also hosted a panel discussion on images and representation, and a walking tour.

Three women seated around a table, reviewing photographs and documents related to the Bengali Photo Archive displayed on an easel; the table also has a laptop, a printer, and materials for scanning.

BPA Participants scanning images with a donor at Southern Grove Community Centre, June 2023. Photo courtesy of Four Corners.

The BPA participants were integral to the project, becoming ‘information champions’ of individual collections through meeting donors, conducting oral histories, scanning and cataloguing photographs.

“Being part of the project has enabled me to take my own interest in British Bengali history and take it in more directions and make connections that would’ve been difficult before”. Tanbir Mirza-Baeg, BPA project participant.

Participants were equally involved in the exhibition curation, deciding on themes, editing images and contributing ideas on how the show should look.

Two people arranging printed photographs on a gray gallery wall and a wooden floor, with scattered photos on the floor and some taped to the wall.

A gallery space with white walls displaying numerous small photographs, a table with documents and a laptop, and black chairs.

BPA participants begin the exhibition layout at a curation session in Four Corners’ gallery, June 2024. Photos courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

A man in glasses points upwards at a display of framed photographs on a gray wall, while two women look on with interest in a well-lit gallery setting. The wall is covered in numerous small photos, some featuring people and scenes. The man wears a colorful shirt, and the women are wearing headscarves, one red and one grey.

Image: Family archivist Tanbir Mirza-Baeg at the opening of I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive, July 2024. Photo: Eleni Parousi.

Outreach to build relationships and trust with donors was central. We set up mobile scanning stations in community centres and relied on word of mouth in the community to get people involved, engaging around 100 individuals and local organisations and nearly 40 donors, both professional and amateur photographers of Bengali and non-Bengali heritage. The images ranged from snapshots to family portraits, photographs documenting work, political events, music, and the arts.

ACHIEVEMENTS
Akila Asad, the joint author of this article, was a volunteer on the BPA project, and is currently working at Four Corners on a paid internship programme as part of The People’s Gallery, also funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. She writes:

“I want to share some reflections from visitors to our BPA exhibition, as well as my own thoughts on the overall impact of the collection and exhibition.”

As part of the exhibition, we invited visitors to write their thoughts on postcards, each featuring a photo from the BPA. These postcards were then displayed in the windows of the gallery. This interactive element allowed others to read their reflections, but the primary purpose was to encourage visitors to process what they had seen and create meaningful connections with the archive.

Exterior of Four Corners Centre for Film and Photography, a grey building with a multi-paned glass storefront displaying photographs and promotional text. The upper portion of the building has a sign reading "four corners" with "four" in grey and "corner" in red. The shop window lists services such as exhibitions, training, workshops, a darkroom, studio, equipment hire, workspace, and archive. Several framed photographs are hung in the window.

A handwritten thank you note, attached with a small wooden clip to a red string strung in front of framed photos, with text referencing a Birmingham exhibition and personal connections, accompanied by a blurred backdrop of other photographs and reflections.

Exterior and interior shots of ‘memory postcards’ during the I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive exhibition, July 2024. Photos courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

The feedback revealed that the exhibition had a strong emotional impact, especially for those of Bangladeshi heritage. For them, the photos represented moments from lives they personally recognised. Many described the emotional impact of seeing images that reminded them of their own families – bringing back ‘’beautiful memories,’’ or filling a gap in their understanding of their parents’ lives growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Handwritten note on white paper, detailing the author's fond memories of childhood experiences, playing in local parks with trees and flowers around.

Handwritten thank you note on white paper, addressed to the exhibition organisers, expressing appreciation for the exhibition, and mentioning the author's connection to the pictures, family history, and personal reflections on community, culture, and resilience.

‘Memory postcards’ were handwritten by visitors to the I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive exhibition, July 2024. The memories were then pegged up in the window for others to read. Images courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Vintage black and white photograph of five Bengali teenage boys posing in a classroom; three stand behind two seated boys, and a single boy reads at a desk to the left.

Group of boys in a classroom, Tower Hamlets, circa 1970s-1980s. Photo: Peter Musgrave. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

This emotional connection was part of what made the BPA impactful. By capturing everyday moments – family gatherings, celebrations, and the seemingly mundane sense of home life – the collection offered a familiar and personal reflection of British Bangladeshi experiences. These images resonated with exhibition visitors across generations, evoking a shared sense of history and belonging within the Bangladeshi diaspora.

A group of children and an adult woman gather around a table set for a birthday party. A banner overhead reads "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". The woman, wearing a pink top and purple sari smiles while standing behind the children. Several children sit at the table, some wearing party hats and looking at a small birthday cake with candles. Additional food and drink are on the table. The date "12 12 98" is visible on the bottom right of the image.

Children’s birthday party, Tower Hamlets, 1998. Photo: Sabina Khan. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Two young girls, seated indoors, pose for a photograph. The older girl wears a red dress with a matching scarf and sandals. The younger girl, seated on a small wooden stool, wears a green and white patterned dress and shoes. They are positioned in front of a wooden cabinet displaying various decorative items. The room features floral patterned wallpaper, a television set, and a patterned rug on the floor. A plant sits near the window.

Children dressed for Eid at home, Tower Hamlets, circa 1995. Photo: Shaira Jahan. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Three young women in park setting pose among yellow daffodils, one standing and two seated in the field, with trees and a cloudy sky in the background.

Girls among the daffodils, Kew Gardens, Richmond, 1987. Photo: Tanbir Mirza-Baeg. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Another achievement of the BPA was the level of control it gave to its contributors, most of whom were of Bangladeshi heritage. While the project invited people to submit photographs and oral histories, what they chose to share was entirely up to them. This open approach allowed people to shape the narrative on their own terms. One visitor remarked on how the exhibition highlighted the “normal aspects of Bengali history,’’ not just the “horrific racist attacks,’’ and portrayed British Bangladeshis as “more human’’ and “not just statistics.’’ That freedom to define what felt important to share created a thorough, more nuanced archive. As another visitor beautifully put it,

“its [sic] so important to not divorce the people from the archive and the archive from the people.’’

Handwritten message on white paper, the text discusses seeing everyday and beautiful aspects of Bengali history, rather than just negative events, signed "Thank you".

Handwritten text on a white sheet of paper, a summary of ideas about how various aspects of life are interconnected. It discusses the interconnectedness of "Domestic, personal lines & protest, art, community, identity," emphasizing that they are all part of the same life and cannot be separated. The text then discusses how the archive presents a community that has experienced these issues under the weight of discrimination and marginalization. It emphasizes the importance of not divorcing people from the archive.

A group of seven people gathered around a wooden picnic table, reviewing papers and photographs outdoors on a sunny day. A woman in a purple jacket and head covering points at a document, while another woman in a black blazer assists. Several open photo albums and folders are on the table along with coffee cups. Other people are seated at a picnic table in the background.

BPA participants running an outreach session at Spitalfields City Farm, June 2023. Photo courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

While the BPA did include stories of resistance – especially from the 1970s, when the Bangladeshi community stood against far-right groups – it also widened the narrative. The archive expanded its scope into the community’s activism in the 1990s, including their resistance to the British National Party (BNP), while also exploring broader themes like migration, work, family and celebration.

Anti-Nazi League protest with several people holding signs. A man with a white coat and a light-colored beanie holds a sign with "Anti Nazi League" on a yellow circle with a red arrow.
Another sign reads "Smash Fascist BNP".

TUC Unite Against Racism march and demonstration, Tower Hamlets Photo: Mayar Akash. 1994. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

To me, this shift in focus helped diversify the narrative of British Bangladeshi history. The ‘70s remain a defining era for the community, but that period can feel distant or disconnected for younger generations. By broadening the archive’s scope, the BPA didn’t just revisit that legacy – it built on it. Including experiences from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond helped create a more continuous narrative. making space for more people to see themselves in the story and encourage a connection to those who came before.

The BPA also brought visibility to the experiences of Bangladeshi women. Their stories are often overlooked – rarely recorded but framed in a limited way, typically focusing on their traditional roles within the family, such as being brought to the UK by their husbands, to care for their children and manage the household. While this portrayal may contain some truth, it fails to capture the full scope of their lives, often reducing them to roles defined in relation to men.

However, efforts to shift this narrative are underway. One notable example is the Stepney Community Trust’s project Home Machinists & Seamstresses, which highlights the economic contributions of Bangladeshi women, many of whom supported their families by sewing from home. The BPA has also made strides in this area. Through my involvement, alongside other volunteers, we conducted interviews with Bangladeshi women, recording stories that went beyond the traditional images of housewives and homemakers.

The oral histories and photographs submitted to the archive reveal a more nuanced portrait of these women. They show Bangladeshi women pursuing education, participating in paid work, and reflecting on their relationships with their parents, as well as their thoughts on life in London’s East End.

We also found there were different perspectives:

“Sad thing was my mum never accepted UK as her home. She hated it. those days when she used to talk about going back and she did go back, didn’t she? She hated the weather. She hated the isolation. Everything. Back in Bangladesh, everybody’s your family. And everybody comes and goes as they like. And it was a different environment for her, and she did not like it. So she promised like one day she will go back forever.’’ Shahnaz Siddiqa-Baeg

By focusing on their voices, the archive not only preserves these narratives but also challenges one-dimensional portrayals, allowing Bangladeshi women to be recognised on their own terms.

Black and white photograph depicting a woman in a floral sari, assisting two young boys with their schoolwork. The boys are writing in a notebook while the woman observes intently.

Rehana Rahman (right), teaching British-Bangladeshi children at a primary school in Tower Hamlets, circa 1970s-1980s.Photo: Rehana Rahman. Bengali Photo Archive, courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Overall, we feel that the project went really well, although its success posed a challenge – we did not anticipate how many people would want to get involved. As news spread and trust was built, more people wanted to submit images to the collection and to share their stories; we simply couldn’t capture them all. This interest continues, and we are looking at possible funding opportunities to expand the scope of the archive and to tour the exhibition. We also wished that we had been able to offer our volunteers some remuneration above travel and refreshments. The reliance on volunteers in our sector is vital, and it is important that funders understand the need to support them financially, to avoid excluding those who cannot afford to dedicate their time for free. Four Corners is keen to take forward this approach on future participatory projects.

THEN AND NOW: HOW THE BENGALI PHOTO ARCHIVE REFLECTS FOUR CORNERS’ HISTORY
Over the past fifty years Four Corners’ creative focus has evolved. In 2003 it expanded its remit to include both film and photography, when it reopened the darkrooms and gallery at 121 Roman Road which were formerly run by arts charity Camerawork². Four Corners’ history reveals a consistent commitment to its local community. From its early efforts to break down barriers and involve residents in the creative process, to its current workshops, screenings, and community-driven projects, it remains rooted in collaboration and inclusivity.

Overhead shot of a group of three women in hijabs gathered around a table holding black and white portrait photographs printed on fabric, with various supplies like thread, needles, and patterns scattered around the table.

BPA workshop with mothers and daughters at Mulberry School, Tower Hamlets, May 2024. The workshops were led by artist Jenny Matthews. Participants embroidered over photos printed on canvas and were framed and displayed as part of the exhibition. Photo courtesy of Four Corners, 2025.

Notes:
1. Letter to Jane is a 1972 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Narrated by both Godard and Gorin, the film focuses on a single news photograph of Jane Fonda in Vietnam. Susan Sontag praised the film, however other critics found it misogynistic. Fonda herself later called the
film “a big pile of bullshit.”

2. Camerawork was a radical photography organisation which emerged from the Half Moon Photography Workshop. The Workshop was established in 1975, taking the name Camerawork in 1981, after the influential magazine it published from 1976 until 1985. It moved to Roman Road in Bethnal Green in 1977, close to Four Corners. After Camerawork closed, Four Corners took on their building, where they are based to this day, reopening the gallery and darkrooms and merging both film and photography practice in one organisation. With support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and other trusts, Four Corners has been researching and documenting both the Camerawork and the Four Corners archives.