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Just added to Collections is a substantial selection of pictures covering east London over the last twenty years or so by new contributer Alan Tucker. The collection concentrates on development and covers the whole Docklands area, the Thames and now the clearance and building of the Olympic village in Stratford. It is an excellent overview of how the area has changed over the last decades.
Areas like the Docklands are a huge problem for picture libraries as new buildings seem to pop up virtually overnight while old ones (or not so old ones!) disappear, so keeping up is almost impossible. 
We have some lovely pictures of Canary Wharf which we can only sell as historical documents because the only big tower is One Canada Square and they aren’t that old. This new collection brings the area up to date and covers a lot of the construction of many of the towers, especially the numerous apartment blocks that have sprung up beside every stretch of open water.
The Olympic development site pictures include lots of “before” pictures along with the demolition, clearance and the start of the construction. There is also a lot on the waterways of east London and some of the recreational spaces, walks, parks and environmental projects and some nice aerial photo’s.
This from Alan Tucker...
“I’ve lived in the East End of London since 1985. We moved here because it was handy for the Underground. Since then East London been transformed. It seems hard to believe, but the Docklands Light Railway has been running driverless trains for 21 years now. The improvements are not over - they are accelerating. The Olympic Stadium is being built less than a mile from my house. The East End is a wonderful, exciting and sometimes, crazy place. The centre of London is moving east and I am optimistic about the future. For some time now I have been using local knowledge and my photographic skills to document all the changes that are happening around me. It gives me great pleasure that this ongoing body of work has now found a home within Collections Picture Library.”
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