Photographer Chris Dorley-Brown has uncovered spectacular series of Kodachrome photographs depicting London’s East End.

Taken by David Granick, these photos offer a great insight into the early days of the East End. With a mixed bag of images taken between the 1950s to 1980s, Granick’s shots offer a compelling look back at this forgotten age.

Dorley-Brown found the images at his local history library and archives in Tower Hamlets. The streets of Aldgate, Whitechapel and Mile End are brought back to life in this nostalgic look back at the London’s old East End. “The collection has about 3,000 slides going back to the fifties,” says Dorley-Brown in an interview with Atlas Obscura before adding: “but they have been well preserved. Many had been unseen for fifty years or more.”

He continued: “The East End is well documented photographically, [but] nearly always in monochrome. Those images have defined our perspective of the period: stark, foggy and loaded with political agitation and unrest.

“Granick takes a step back. Shooting in colour, we are presented with a very different matrix of information. Colour does that, it’s a different language. It’s really astonishing how few colour images survive from that era. They have a modern sensibility to them – they are minimal, topographic.”

Here, enjoy a selection of images taken from the collection via Atlas Obscura:

(All images sourced via Atlas Obscura)