Colin Jones at Michael Hoppen Gallery

"Back in the seventies, when I was travelling from my home over to the Black House on the Holloway Road, I was usually full of hope and optimism," said photographer Colin Jones last night at the heaving private viewing of his seminal exhibition, The Black House, at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London.

"On leaving the place, I actually felt quite the opposite," he added. "I'd travel back and pass places like Holloway Prison, Camden Town and Regents Park. Inside the park, it felt as though the place I'd just left - The Black House, was from another world. It was only literally a mile and a half down the road, but it could have been thousands of miles away."

Spread across the twenty or so pristine black and white shots selected for the exhibition - the original prints themselves over thirty years old, the faces and frozen expressions tell of very different times in early 1970s London.

The Harambee housing project in Islington - coined crudely as simply The Black House by local residents and newspaper editors - had become a shelter for troubled young black men across the city.

This was the first generation of Afro-Caribbean youth being born into and growing up in a less-than-welcoming Britain at the time. Subsequently, problems with education, unemployment and regular encounters with police added to the growing frustration.

Jones had been commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine to photograph a front cover feature in 1973 entitled On The Edge of The Ghetto, and so began a three year-long friendship with both the inhabitants of the Black House as well as Brother Herman Edwards, who ran the hostel.

Born in London's East End in 1936, Jones, after a brief spell treading the boards for the English Royal Ballet, went on to establish himself as one of the key reportage photographers of his time. But it was The Black House exhibition, originally shown at the Photographer's Gallery in London in 1977, which cemented his reputation and the ability to show humanity and dignity in his incisive photography.

"I think the shots are as poignant now as ever. I'm really pleased with how they've been displayed and that everyone likes them, I'm just not so keen on standing in the limelight. It sometimes feels like being back in the ballet," he laughed. "I'd rather let the pictures do the talking."

The Black House runs at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, 3 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TD, until 1st July.