Dennis Morris’s “Colored Black” photo exhibition documents the English Caribbean diaspora of the 1970s at Galerie Agnès b.

Famous across the Channel in the music world for his photos of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols, Dennis Morris also immortalized the life of the Jamaican community in his London neighborhood in the 1970s. His photos are exhibited at the Agnès b Gallery . in Paris until January 14, 2024.

Dennis Morris is a British photographer known in the world of music, in particular for his photos of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols, to which he devoted a book (Sex Pistols : Anthology). As artistic director of the Island label, he also created legendary record covers, such as that of Public Image Limited’s first album, for which he also designed the logo and innovative packaging of the famous Metal Box. To his credit also the covers of Broken English by Marianne Faithfull and Live ! (at the high school) by Bob Marley & The Wailers.

A very early photographer

Born in Kingston (Jamaica) in 1960 and came to live in London with his mother as a child, at a time when Great Britain needed help to rebuild itself, Dennis Morris developed a passion for photography very early on. From the age of eight he discovered the magic of the darkroom and the developer, thanks to the parish photo club in his neighborhood of Dalston (Hackney, North-East London).

HAS Eleven years old, he sold his first photo to the press, that of a pro-PLO demonstration. In 1973, he waited for Bob Marley outside the Speakeasy Club in London, where he was performing. No doubt touched by the young Jamaican’s determination, the pope of reggae not only agreed to let him take his photo but took him on board for the rest of the tour. It will only last a few days but Dennis Morris is thirteen years old and his professional friendship with Marley is only just beginning.

The Caribbean diaspora in 1970s London

Throughout the 70s, equipped with a small Leica that knows how to be forgotten, Dennis Morris learned his hand by documenting his environment, his community, his neighborhood, and dub musical evenings (which he called “blues parties”) ) which are in full swing every weekend. He also makes inexpensive portraits in his room, in front of a stretched sheet, for those who wish to send them to their loved ones back home. For a long time, these photographic testimonies of the life of the Caribbean diaspora in North-East London were met with only indifference. Nobody wants it. Today, he exhibits them successfully.

The “Colored Black” exhibition at Agnès b.

The exhibition Colored Black, first presented in April 2023 at Kyotographie (in Kyoto, Japan), is visible at the Galerie du Jour Agnès b. until January 14, 2024. Although a little short (barely forty prints) and rather thin on explanatory labels, it nevertheless includes a delightful “immersive” installation which reproduces a typical living room of the Caribbean community in the United Kingdom at that time, with wallpaper, sofa, artificial flowers and a vintage phonograph, as well as a wall of sound system speakers.

While awaiting a retrospective commensurate with his work, it is an opportunity to present Dennis Morris and his memories, borrowed from the exhibition catalog (on sale at the Agnès b. gallery). Memories that echo those of the wonderful novel Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks released in France this year, but also to the remarkable series Small Ax by Steve McQueen (the British director, not the actor), broadcast in 2020 on Salto, which come together on the forgotten history of black England.

Make your place

“When the first immigrants arrived in England from the Caribbean, they faced multiple difficulties; one of them was housing. It was difficult to find, with many landlords reluctant to rent rooms to black people There were signs saying: rooms for rent, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs“, remembers Dennis Morris in the exhibition catalogue. The accommodation they managed to rent was often very cramped, separated by curtains, with shared toilets and kitchens.

“Later, some Caribbeans were able to buy their own homes. The salons of these interiors were like temples. Children did not have access to it, except in the event of a visit. Sometimes the sofa remained covered in plastic.”

“I was known in the neighborhood for being a good photographer and cheap, so I had a stream of people coming to the tiny apartment my mother and I lived in. I would push furniture aside, pin up a sheet white on the wall and, with a tungsten lamp borrowed from the photo club, a studio was born. For me, it was a way to perfect my technique and, above all, to buy film and save money to buy equipment. ”

Sound system evenings

The musical evenings, which lasted from Friday at 10 p.m. until the next day at 8 a.m., “were vital to the community“Caribbean from London, remembers Dennis Morris in the exhibition catalogue.”On Saturday, everyone dressed to impress: mohair and two-tone suits, miniskirts and Afro cuts.”

On Saturday, Trojan’s record store on Ridley Road was full of people listening to the latest releases and choosing which sound system to go to. “All the evenings took place in the basements of the houses.” The paid entries (between 10 and 20 shillings), but also the drinks and goat curries served on site, helped the lucky owners to repay their loans.

In these evenings, certain rules had to be respected, under penalty of triggering a general fight: “Never step on a man’s shoes, never ask another man’s girlfriend for a dance and never question the music decided by the DJ and the sound system Selecta.“