[The Guardian] The big picture: wedding celebrations in London’s Banglatown, 1991

The big picture: wedding celebrations in London’s Banglatown, 1991

Wayne Tippetts’s shot of young Bangladeshi women preparing for a Gaye Holud ceremony is part of a series exploring a pivotal moment in the  neighbourhood’s history

Wayne Tippetts took this picture in what became known as Banglatown – the area between Brick Lane and Whitechapel High Street east of the City of London – in 1991. Tippetts was, he recalls, in the habit at the time of walking up from near the river at Wapping where his photo agency, Select, had its offices, and taking pictures of the Bangladeshi community, families who had mostly arrived in London in the 1970s. Tippetts’s pictures have now become a monograph that captures a pivotal moment in the history of that ever-changing part of London, when second-generation Bangladeshis were starting to assert their cultural identity, and to feel fully at home.

In this image, the photographer recalls, “young Bangladeshi women, known as ‘sakhis’, friends of the bride, had gathered outside her home on a council estate in Tower Hamlets”. The women were preparing to shower other guests from the balcony with yellow and red flower petals and sweets during the Gaye Holud ceremony, a pre-wedding tradition. Though embracing the customs of their parents, Tippetts notes, the young people he met, including these young women, were at that time balancing that heritage with “multicultural influences of fashion, music, and youth subcultures that were flourishing in the city at the time”.

Wayne Tippetts – Banglatown, London 1991 is published by Café Royal Books (£6.70)

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Source: The big picture: wedding celebrations in London’s Banglatown, 1991

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