Renowned British Jamaican photographer, Vanley Burke, is mentoring local artists for a community project asking ‘when was the first time you saw a black person’.
Nature in Art, Gloucester
- Credit: Candia McKormack
I last caught up with Cotswold artist Natasha Houseago in 2019 when she was working onsite at Gloucestershire Archives on her huge abstract piece for them, called
The Archivist.
Carved from green oak rescued from a country estate near Chipping Norton, after the tree had to be felled due to decay from fungus, the piece was representative on the work Natasha does – working on a large scale, and always with the community in mind. For the Archives, Natasha had incorporated elements associated with Gloucestershire’s history and the collections, including items representing mining in the Forest of Dean, an aerial view of GCHQ, the boat hulks at Purton, and a buckle found in Huntley on an archeological dig.
BBC News
By Aleisha Scott
image copyrightVanley Burke
image captionVanley Burke s images of the Windrush generation have established him as the ‘godfather of black British photography’
Vanley Burke s work is regarded as the greatest photographic record of African Caribbean people in post-war Britain, capturing its evolving cultural landscape and social history over the past four decades. He is now working with black artists in Gloucester to create a black history of the city and will be a guest speaker at the Gloucester History Festival on 17 April. In the 60s and 70s the way that black people were represented was in derogatory statements like lazy or go back home , Mr Burke said,