Monday 31 May 2010
The Black House - Colin Jones
The Black House is another really interesting book that deals with the issues of race in and around the time I was looking at in my dissertation (the 1970's - 1980's). This book is a very good documentation of a troubled time in the UK in terms of social issues such as racial integration. 'The Black house' was a halfway house on the Holloway Road in London for young black men who were or had been in trouble with the Police.
This is an extract from an article on the Time Out website that talks about the project in more depth:
'In 1973, Colin Jones (dubbed ‘the George Orwell of British photography’) was commissioned to produce illustrations for a newspaper article about a community project for young black men in Islington. Published by the Sunday Times under the headline ‘On the Edge of the Ghetto’, the story proved explosive and by 1977, when more of Jones’ pictures were exhibited at the Photographers’ Gallery, the media had nick-named the hostel ‘The Black House’.
Though the project was officially called Harambee, the media took advantage of the fact that it was less than a mile away from the so-named lair of black power activist and infamous murderer Michael de Freitas (Michael X), the subject of a high-profile trial in 1972. Jones’ pictures had nothing to do with the site where de Freitas lived, but when news of the hostel broke, the papers resurrected the name.'
More here, very interesting: http://www.timeout.com/london/features/2936/Colin_Jones_and_the_Black_House.html
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