Carlton Hill – The Children of Brighton’s Displaced Community

An exhibition of photographs taken in the 1930s, originally commissioned by the public health department for site mapping purposes of the Carlton Hill area. Frequently these images inadvertently captured children at work and at play. At the end of 2015, the University of Brighton Circus Street building, which had been home to the BA Photography course for 23 years, was to be demolished. When first built, this was one of three local schools for the Carlton HIll community. At the time of the exhibition, it was one of the few remaining visual traces of the community, which was dispersed to the new estates of Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk when their homes were demolished. In addition to the photographs there was a short documentary about the eminent photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky, made by Julia Winckler and Tony Wallis. Wolf was the cameraman on Children of the City, a 1942 documentary made for the Department of Education. He is also the author of a series of early 1940 show to do it Focal guides on photographing children. The exhibition and projection event were part of a larger SSHRC Insight Grant project, and connect to the VM presentation by Adrienne Chambon and Julia Winckler. The project was supported by Selma Montford (former director of the Lewes Cohen Urban Studies Centre) and Kevin Bacon (Brighton Pavilion and Museum, Digital Development Officer) through the granting of permission to use the exhibited images