“The triangle is: The Americas & Caribbean, Europe and Africa. The black triangle for me is a very deep feeling, politically, culturally and socially one that is to be presented in a simple way. I had to capture it through my camera, through my work and present it as honestly as possible”. - Armet Francis

Borrowing Francis’ poignant image of a Black Triangle unifying communities spread between the UK, America and Africa, the exhibition will focus on some of the key events, portraits, demonstrations, protests, tragedies, struggles and crimes that took place across these regions.

Bob Adelman, Eve Arnold, Danny Lyon, Steve Schapiro and Ernest Withers documented the dramatic events and protests in the US, focusing their lens on Dr Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcom X and the march from Selma to Montgomery. Dr Doris Derby chose instead to capture the everyday human effort required to live in the deep American South.

This approach focused on showing the daily life of the community was also shared by photographers in the UK. Jamaican-born Charlie Phillips, Armet Francis, Vanley Burke and Pogus Caesar arrived in the UK at a young age and turned their eyes to London and Birmingham’s African-Caribbean communities.

Phillips and Francis depict life in black and white Notting Hill in the Sixties through to the 80s, showing both moments of integration and violent frictions such as the Notting Hill Carnival, the Southall Riots and the 1985 Handsworth Riots.

The dramatic events of 1977’s Lewisham March are denounced through the images of Syd Sheldon, who also followed closely the early days of the Rock Against Racism movement, born out of a reaction to a pervasively racist culture in the music scene. The works by this group of photographers offer an invaluable account of a part of the British history that is often overlooked.

The work of Ernest Cole, Jürgen Schadeberg and Ian Berry focused on life in South Africa, the anti-apartheid protests and key figures across several decades – including Berry’s seminal images of the Sharpeville Massacre which marked a defining moment for the anti-apartheid movement. 

As Dr Mark Sealy, curatorial consultant to the show, wrote, “when repressed knowledge is allowed a voice, expressed, and then embraced, it critically functions to help us understand that nothing in the past is over and that time and history, when considered through photography, can and will be reworked. Photography, in essence, is our judgement, our jury, and we stand on trial before its all-seeing eye, trapped, framed, and caught awaiting times sentence.’