A BLACK@SUSSEX ARTIST TALK

Charlie Phillip’s life in photography is mirrored in his stories. Much of his famed photographs are personal and not commissioned and therefore represent nuanced moments of his life which hold a thousand words of socio-political context. This talk joins the missing threads from his present Black@Sussex portraits project, the subject of the exhibition First Contact at the Jubilee Library, Brighton, 22 May to 4 June 2023, to snapshots taken on the day in 1962 in London when Jamaica exited the Empire. Charlie will connect the dots between these two moments, in particular the way he has documented Black British life since 1962 – photographing his community in Notting Hill to share with the family back home. In this sense the Black@Sussex portraits represent deep history. They are 60 years in the making, connected to this much longer-lived history of education, aspiration and resistance.

THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE CULTURE CONNEX FESTIVAL SEASON IN COLLABORATION WITH URBANFLO, PACE, BRIGHTON FRINGE, BRIGHTON PRIDE & UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX (BLACK@SUSSEX)