THE MISSING CHAPTER

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund over three years (2013–16), The Missing Chapter: Black Chronicles is Autograph ABP’s ongoing archive research programme, with the mission to bring together a body of photographic portraiture to highlight diverse ‘black presences’ prior to 1948, especially in Victorian and early Edwardian Britain.

The photographic portraits in The Missing Chapter portfolio offer a unique (visual) insight into a diversity of black lives and migrant experiences during the decades following the official birth of photography in 1839. The programme’s core research remit is locating and identifying the earliest photographs taken in Britain of sitters from culturally diverse backgrounds, primarily those of African, Caribbean and South Asian heritage. While some were merely ‘passing through’, the photographs represent a diverse range of people, from visiting performers, politicians, dignitaries, servicemen and women, royalty and missionaries, to society personalities and many as yet unidentified individuals living and working in Britain at the time. Their collective presence bears direct witness to the nation’s colonial and imperial history and the expansion of the British Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Produced in commercial studios during the latter half of the 19th century, many lay buried deep within the archives for decades until 2014 – unseen for more than 125 years. They reveal an important, complex black presence in Britain before the SS Empire Windrush steamship arrived in 1948 with nearly 500 Caribbean migrants, a moment traditionally cited as the key moment in the emergence of a multicultural British society. The Missing Chapter project aims to gently readjust this historical narrative.

Read more

Morley College London

Chelsea Centre

Hortensia Rd, London SW10 0QS