Abandoned Austin A35, Lambeth, London, 1974
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
View of gas storage tanks seen through window of abandoned house. Greenwich Peninsula, 1976
Close-up of wall at abandoned Beckton Gas works, East London, circa 1984
Industrial plant, East London, circa 1978
Disused site of Millwall football club, circa 1977
Alfreds Way, Barking, circa 1980
Car wreck and model car wreck in woodland. East Sussex, circa 1980
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Nightfall at the future site of 2012 Olympic Stadium, Stratford, East London, UK, 1988. View of junction of River Lea and City Mill River, and Marshgate Lane which no longer exists. The stadium will be sited on the raised industrial land on the far side.
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Allotment shed, Lee Valley, East London 1979
Ruined house, Honor Oak, South London, circa 1983
Interior of abandoned factory, East London, circa 1979
Brownfield land, East London, 1991.
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Donkey in East London on land vacated by electricity generating industry, Barking, London, 1991
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Abandoned burnt-out cars near Basildon in Essex, 1990
Close-up of derelict building on abandoned sewage farm, Wimbledon, 1979
Abandoned fire surround, Wandsworth, 1976
Dockland wall, Grove Street, Deptford, 1978. Now a residential area.
Battersea Park, 1975
Lewisham, 1990
Abandoned jetty, Swanscombe Peninsula, Kent, 1992
Former sand and gravel quarry, Thurrock, Essex, 1990
Abandoned house, Greenwich Peninsula, 1978
Abandoned House, Greenwich Peninsula, 1978
Abandoned office, East London, 1982
Room in abandoned house with model ship, East London, 1978
Trees and floodlight, Crystal Palace, circa 1980
Washed up chemical container on beach, Grain, Kent, 1991
Landscape transformed by former chalk quarrying. Northfleet, Kent, 1991.
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Junction of City Mill River and River Lea, Stratford, in 1978, now the site of the London Stadium, formerly 2012 Olympic stadium
Demolition of cooling towers at Croydon B power station, 1985
Open edition print from Getty Images collection
Close-up of brick structure on abandoned sewage farm, Wimbledon, 1979
Robert Brook: photographer, one time film maker, digital artist. In the 1970s and 80s had pictures exhibited in public galleries, purchased by public and private collections, worked on music album covers, won an award for film work. Between 1985 and 1990 worked on a graphics software project. Then specialised in photojournalism for many years before returning to personal and experimental work in 2012, largely made possible by advances in digital technology.
Projects:
London in the margins 1975 - 1990. Series of square format, mainly black and white photos of marginal areas and edgelands of London. First tranche exhibited at the the Serpentine gallery in 1977.
Pond 1975 - 1995. An ornamental garden and pond in Battersea Park depicted over time.
Software project 1985 - 1992. Worked on an application that used a simple command language for producing 3D forms and modifying them with mathematical functions. Eventually aborted due to the decline in usage of Acorn desktop computers.
Environmental journalism 1990 - 2012. Mainly concerned with heavy industry and its consequences. Photos published widely and used in a variety of media. Example >
Night photography 2000 - 2002. Incorporated a series of black and urban night photographs into a website display: UK Nights selected by Yahoo as a Pick of the Day.
35mm traditional street photography collection 1996 - 2004 in association with Photofusion. Observational, rather than subjective, mainly in Northern towns and cities including Blackpool - featured in Mass Photography: Blackpool through the camera >
Night Photography 2010 - 2016. More night photography, but using digital rather than film cameras, and covering areas that are now known to be Red Wall. Pictures were acquired by Corbis Contemporary
CGI series 2014 to present. Digital images illustrating ideas from maths and physics, used in books and journals
The pictures here are selections from personal projects between 1974 and 1992. Since then, mainly occupied by paid work for publications, I largely ceased doing my own thing for many years until digitisation opened up new possibilities. My main interest now is in 3D work.
Most pictures fall roughly under heading 'urban landscape', although when I took them I don't remember ever thinking I was conforming to any particular set of rules that would allow them to sit comfortably within any notion of a genre. Most were shot in East and South London, some in South Essex, North Kent and Sussex.
All were shot on either medium format or 35mm film. Quite a few had been sitting in files for decades and forgotten about. Now with improvements in digital processing and use of AI algorithms, have been able to solve many issues that had prevented me archiving these images in the past. This is an ongoing project, and pictures will be added as they become available.