The V&A's new photography exhibition documents Black British experience

Date
17 February 2015

The new exhibition at London’s V&A Museum, Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s -1960s came as the result of a conscious decision by the organisation to broaden and enrich its collection, curator Marta Weiss explained at the opening yesterday. “Over the last seven years the V&A has been working with Black Cultural Archives to acquire photographs either by black photographers or which document the lives of black people in Britain,” Marta says, “a previously under-represented area in the V&A’s photographs collection.”

It’s an admirable and incredibly important effort to diversify the national collection, and it makes for a very compelling show. The artists included range from Yinka Shonibare, with his large-scale photographs of inverted traditional white colonial scenes in which he places a black man dressed as a dandy as their focal point, to J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere’s iconic black and white photographs of Nigerian hairstyles and headwraps.

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Al Vandenberg: High Street Kensington from the series On a Good Day © The Estate of Al Vandenberg / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Black identity was a key focus in putting the show together, Marta explained, from aspects like hair and clothing to the environment the subject is photographed in. This emphasis is very much evident in British photographer Normski’s vibrant street-style shots, which place Brixton’s Islam B-Boys next to an African Homeboy dressed in red and yellow Ghanaian kente cloth, reasserting the status of both.

There’s a political undertone, too: in Maxine Walker’s experimental self-portraits she uses photographic equipment, wigs and make-up to change her appearance entirely from one shot to another, even lightening the tone of her skin with different flashes, and placing the final images to look as though they were taken in a photobooth. The composition raises questions around identity photographs and immigration, and highlights the unfixed nature of her sense of identity.

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Armet Francis: Self-Portrait in Mirror, London, 1964, gelatin silver print © Armet Francis / Victoria and Albert, London

Elsewhere in the show, Jamaica-born photographer Charlie Phillips’ wonderful shots of Notting Hill in the 1960s and 70s sit alongside Neil Kenlock’s photographs of Caribbean families in their homes in England, casting a gloriously retro vibe over the hazy golden images. Meanwhile, at one end of the show headphones offer up oral histories of black experience, adding a more immediate and accessible way into the subject matter. Most importantly though it’s a resolutely positive portrait of black British culture, and it marks a small but vital step by one of the UK’s grandest institutions to ensure all cultures are fairly and equally represented in the country’s archive of the arts. At last.

Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience will run at the V&A Museum until 24 May.

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J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere: ’HD-55774 (Beri Beri) from the series Hairstyles, gelatin silver print, Nigeria, 1974 © The Estate of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere / Victoria and Albert, London

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J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere: Untitled, HG 423-04 from the series Headties, gelatin silver print, Nigeria, 2004 © The Estate of J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere / Victoria and Albert, London

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Neil Kenlock: Untitled [Young woman seated on the floor at home in front of her television set C- type print, London, 1972 © Neil Kenlock / Victoria and Albert, London

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Title: Normski, ‘African Homeboy – Brixton, London, 1987’, printed 2011, c-type print © Normski / Victoria and Albert, London

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Yinka Shonibare: Diary of a Victorian Dandy © Yinka Shonibare / Victoria and Albert, London

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Staying Power Poster

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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