Stills From Life
Syd Shelton, Unicorn Books, £40

 
SYD SHELTON’S Stills From Life is a 50-year focus on race and class struggle, taking the reader on a journey from the proud slums of Sydney to Brighton beach. A key activist in the original Rock Against Racism movement, his shots range from the streets to the stage and back again, and almost all with the focus on people.

Shelton’s photographic career starts on the opposite side of the world. Having studied in Wakefied he visited Australia in the early 1970s where he started to document society, taking shots of the inner-city suburb of Redfern, and most notably people of “The Block,” one of the first Aboriginal housing settlements. 

This early work is dark, moody, somewhat oppressive, but impressive. A companion piece on Woolloomooloo and the fight against gentrification and the “green ban” that stopped residents being evicted is stark, with the subjects becoming detached, mirroring the gradual erosion of the working class from the docks and surrounding area. 

The section on workers is sparse and almost bereft of women and while standing proud the workers look dated, in jobs that have all but vanished.

Conversely the energy, enjoyment and anger comes to the fore in the section on Rock Against Racism. The photos are more active, the people more engaged, the struggle and fight much more to the fore. As one of the key activists in the Rock Against Racism movement, Sheldon not only had a front seat, but helped shape what was being said. Perhaps there could have been more shots in this section.

But that energy and action also comes across in Sheldon’s street portraits. Whether focused on children in Northern Ireland “before screens and cars drove them inside,” he notes, to repeated visits to the same spot in Brighton or Jubilee Mansions in east London, the focus is on people that others just pass by. 

The cover picture stands out: a woman, vocal and focused, with a shock of hair, aged but not old, in a city but alone — front and centre but there’s a story to be told, Shelton takes a snapshot, grabs a moment, but one that makes you want to know more. 

These are people that would not normally be photographed, whose life would not have been documented. While everyone may now have a camera, only few can take a picture and create a subject. A subject with a background, a story and perhaps class in that too. 

Shelton’s eye has always been primed. These may be stills, but they are full of life and lives that have been lived, lives that matter and lives that deserve to be seen, and in this volume they are.