"I learned how photography and writing could give me a voice"

These images of Peckham housing estates and their residents taken in the early 1980s would be remarkable out of context - but when you add in the fact that photographer Russell Newell was "almost entirely self-taught" and captured the pictures between the ages of 12 and 20, they're positively extraordinary.

In his youth, Newell learned from the best, borrowing books to study "the lives and work of great photographers such as W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank and Ernest Cole". As such, he's a prime example of the inestimable value of public libraries as a portal to cultural worlds that would in all likelihood otherwise have remained forever inaccessible.

Full credit to Autograph (and the Guardian) for bringing this sharply rendered portrait of a time and place to wider attention.