Boundary Conditions: Reframing the Pepys Estate

More than 50 years after documentary photographer Tony Ray-Jones captured iconic images of Deptford’s brutalist Pepys Estate for The Architectural Review, a group of image-makers has returned to explore aspects of contemporary life at the groundbreaking housing scheme.

Gareth Gardner Gallery – the UK’s only gallery dedicated to photography of architecture and place – will host Boundary Conditions, an exhibition combining newly-commissioned photography with film, graphics and archive material. The exhibit is showing as part of the 2023 Deptford X art festival.

Inspired by The Architectural Review’s seminal Manplan editorial programme of 1969–1970, the project also commemorates the completion of construction of the estate 50 years ago, in 1973. The exhibition provides a series of contemporary perspectives of the estate, while also investigating how its fortunes have fluctuated through history.