Vanley Burke explains how he exposed the untold tales of adversity, resilience and perseverance of African Caribbean settlers, tales that he photographed, archived but also personified
Almost 50 years since arriving in Birmingham, Vanley Burke has retained just a trace of his lyrical Jamaican accent. It adds great authenticity to his description of a childhood spent in rural Jamaica fascinated by the letters, the manufactured goods – including a Kodak ‘Box Brownie’ Camera – and the intriguing stories of floods, factories, snow and fog that came in the regular mail from family and friends who were already beginning to settle in Britain. “People were fascinated by life in the UK, we wanted to know, what is fog? What is a factory? What does that look like? What is life like there?”
“People were fascinated by life in the UK, We wanted to know, what is fog? What is a factory?”
I glance over his shoulder at his work currently on display at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery and, though none showed grey plumes of smog, nor grey screens of fog that often fill the Midlands’ skies, I was flooded with answers: there’s vicious, sneering, racist graffiti; there’s the playful laughter and cool breeze of ‘An Educational Outing from Handsworth’; a forlorn silence and homesickness of ‘The Widow from Handsworth’ and the loving silence and thoughts of distant family at a wedding. The images are imbued with humanity, patience and affection for a man’s own community. Together they tell the true story of adversity, resilience and perseverance, of religion, music and politics that is the last five decades of African Caribbean settlers, arriving in the slipstreams of the Windrush and establishing themselves in the UK.
It’s a story of which Vanley is the photographer, the archivist and in some ways the personification: “It’s about capturing the essence of peoples lives as they struggled to establish themselves in a new environment. As well as the photographs I collected a lot of ephemera; books, newspapers, clothes anything that reflects the community; it adds another layer of information. I wanted to document life as it is lived. Document it as I’ve seen it.” That commitment to detail and to truth sets his work apart. Like the man, his photographs are patient, calm and dignified, regardless of their subject.
They are the antithesis of the mainstream press, whose ignorant and declamatory headlines vilified the black community and fuelled the insidious xenophobia that threatened to alienate the African Caribbean community altogether and gave dangerous credence to the likes of the National Front and to Enoch Powell. It was a conscious effort on the photographers’ behalf to dispute the newspapers’ poisonous doctrine: “I felt the need to document what I perceived to be the truth, contrasting with the negative images found in the press. I didn’t want to express positivity, just what I saw. I didn’t think in positive-negative when I photographed, I still don’t.”The prejudiced press is a problem that hasn’t subsided, merely refocused it’s warped lens: ‘The emphasis has shifted to the new people that have come here, and to the Muslim community. Sadly I think racism will always exist, even if it’s just a spark somewhere. It’s borne out of unknowns. I tried to eradicate those unknowns. It was about educating and informing as much as it was about reporting. It’s what people don’t see, what happens in the shadows, that creates the animosity.’
Those shadows are a deliberate presence in Vanley’s work and they cast themselves long and dark – the black shawl of the widow is the manifestation of bereavement, the graffitied wall is a black canvas for a demented scrawl, Pastors’ white gowns are brilliant flashes emerging from the dark baptistery pool. “I print my photographs quite dark because I felt there was almost a sinister side to a community that wasn’t in the light – a sinister side that was placed on them by the media, rather than one that came from within. When you find out what’s happening in the shadows, then you will find they are not so much of a threat. I wanted to ask the question ‘How much of this community are you really looking at?’ That is why I took those photographs.”
“I print my photographs quite dark because I felt there was almost a sinister side
to a community that wasn’t in the light”
Taking those photographs has been a lifelong pursuit. Inspired by the conversations with friends in Jamaica, and cultivated by overheard exchanges in his parent’s Handsworth grocery store after moving to the UK, Vanley Burke heard of the pleasures and the concerns of neighbours, cousins and friends and was compelled to record a story that would one day be told on the walls of galleries from Mali to New York. He was in Handsworth for the visits of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, to meet the young boy cycling through the park with a Union Jack adorning the handle bars, and then 30 years later to photograph the funeral of that young boy’s son after he’d been shot dead.
He was there to be threatened with his life for taking photographs in a notorious social club and to be asked ‘What are you doing that for?’ countless times, eventually carrying a box of 10×8 prints to better explain his work. He shot 10 rolls of film on African Liberation Day in 1977 and exhibited his work in pubs, clubs, schools and cafeterias; all the time casting generous and compassionate light onto a society in which he became an integral part: “I remember one of Bob Marley’s songs, and he sings ‘You runnin’ and you runnin’ but you can’t run away from yourself’. It’s not about where you’re from or where you are, it’s about what you do. I spent all my adult life here taking photographs. I can’t imagine where I belong if not here.”
Vanley is exhibiting as part of group show As Exciting As We Can Make It: Ikon In The 80s at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. Part of their 50 year anniversary, the group exhibition runs until 31 August. Click for details
