Dennis Morris: 'Suddenly we were black, not coloured' – interview
I meet Dennis Morris on the steps of Hackney town hall in east London, and we set off up Mare Street, through a church yard that leads into a small park, and out on to Homerton High Street, where his old school, Upton House Comprehensive, has been transformed into City Academy. It was there, aged 16, that Morris told a careers adviser that he wanted to be a photographer.
"The guy just looked at me like I was mad," he says. "Then he said: 'Be realistic. There's no such thing as a black photographer.' Those were his words and I've never forgotten them. I told him about Gordon Parks and James Van Der Zee, but he just looked at me blankly and shook his head."
Nearly 40 years later, with his new book of photographs, Growing Up Black, about to be published in a limited art edition, Morris has agreed to guide me around the streets of Hackney, where he grew up in the late 1960s and early 70s. It is a place that, as we soon find out, only fully exists now in his memories. The street names are the same, the churches and the schools remain, but four decades of redevelopment have rendered much of his boyhood manor all but unrecognisable. "It's strange," says Morris. "So much has changed but it's still the same vibe on the street, still the same mixture of people, though it's a lot more trendy these days."
For those of us who know Dennis Morris primarily for his music photography, specifically his evocative shots of the Sex Pistols in their mid-70s heyday – Malcolm McLaren made him the group's official photographer – and his portraits of reggae pioneers such as Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs and the Abyssinians, the book is a surprise. It is a slice of social history as well as a kind of impressionistic visual autobiography. As Morris puts it: "Alongside the music stuff, I was also taking photographs at a pivotal time for black people in Britain, politically and culturally. Suddenly we weren't coloured people any more – we were black. It was a question of pride and of self-definition. I see it now as a pioneering time, a time of great struggle and change."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/25/dennis-morris-growing-up-black-photography
For picture gallery see here : http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/25/growing-up-black-dennis-morris?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
NB. "black, not coloured" - this is the UK. Black is an expression is of pride and distinguishes those of African or Afro /Caribbean family origins from Asians.
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