"There is no such thing as a black photographer." The Golden Eye of Dennis Morris.

Dennis Morris became fascinated with photography when - eight years old - he was a choirboy in the Church of England. Donald Patterson, a member of the church, had donated photographic equipment to the church which the youth used. Patterson, in fact, was also one of the few to encourage Morris saying that he had a future in photography, telling him: "Dennis, you have the eye, the golden eye."

When Dennis told his mother that he wanted to become a photographer she was concerned about how he was going to make money from it. And when, aged 16, he told his career's adviser at his school about his plans, the reaction was: "The guy just looked at me like I was mad." Then the adviser said: "Be realistic. There is no such thing as a black photographer." (via) "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." (via)

When the careers master asked whether Morris wanted to shoot weddings, Morris was insistent: “No, I want to be a photographer.” The prevalent idea then, Morris explained, was that black photographers were good enough only to shoot the sentimental — weddings and babies — and not explore the other side of the profession: fashion and press photography. (via)

"Growing up Black" is a documentation of the West Indian communities living in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.

It’s a title I gave because when I was growing up, my generation was the first to be called black. My parents’ generation were called coloured people. We went from being called coloured people to being called black. Dennis Morris

But what we see in Dennis Morris’s pictures of black Britons in the 60s and 70s — collected together in a new book — both challenges the limitations inherent in that framing and provides a counter-narrative to it. For in the photographs of people at church and at play, styling and protesting during this critical period in our racial history, he transforms black Britons from objects to subjects and recipients of hospitality to cultural agents. We see not just a group of people shaped by their presence in Britain but shaping it: not content with being tolerated by ‘hosts’ they demanded engagement in their new home. Gary Younge

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