Bandele ‘Tex’ Ajetunmobi was born in Nigeria in 1921 and was apprenticed to a portrait photographer in Lagos. He emigrated from Nigeria in 1947 aged 26, an outcast due to a childhood disability from polio. He settled in Spitalfields, east London, where he became one of Britain's first Black photographers, capturing the area’s immigrant communities and multi-racial character through photography for almost 50 years.
Photographer Bandele Ajetunmobi – widely known as ‘Tex’ –was born in Nigeria in 1921 and was apprenticed to a portrait photographer in Lagos. He emigrated from Nigeria in 1947 at the age of 26, an outcast due to his childhood polio disability. He settled in Spitalfields, east London, where he became one of Britain's first Black photographers, capturing the area’s immigrant communities and multi-racial character through photography for almost 50 years. Two photographs from the 1950s, both entitled Members’ Club, Whitechapel, London (Tate) are early depictions of multicultural London after the Second World War, when an increasing number of people emigrated from former colonies. The pictures portray a musician and a mixed-ethnicity couple in a Whitechapel club in a neighbourhood where many Caribbean immigrants lived. Although the clubs were originally designed by and for Black people, they were visited by white people from their inception. As art historian Kobena Mercer pointed out, ‘the nightlife surrounding black music was always a cross-cultural affair’ in Britain (Mercer 2012, p.15). Ajetunmobi was particularly interested in photographing mixed ethnicity couples. One of his later photographs, Couple Kissing, Whitechapel, London (Tate), captured the moment a black man and a white woman embraced, seemingly unaware or unconcerned about the presence of the camera. The photograph also offered a glimpse into a past time, with its bold wall-paper, typical of a type that was popular in the interiors of private homes and public venues in 1950s and 1960s Britain, serving as a dominant background element. Later, during the 1970s, Ajetunmobi began using colour film for his portraits. In his photograph, East End, London, (c.1975, Tate Collection), a young mixed race couple proudly pose on the bonnet of their car.
Ajetunmobi lived for many years in Cable Street, London E1, in a house, now demolished, opposite Noble Court. Bandele ‘Tex’ Ajetunmobi died in London, England in 1994, leaving a basement full of negative stock that possibly formed the earliest collection of photographs taken by a black British photographer. Unfortunately, most of his work was destroyed, but approximately 200 negatives were rescued by his niece, Victoria Loughran. These are now preserved in the archive of Autograph ABP in London, while prints in the Tate Collection were produced from these negatives and were previously part of the Eric and Louise Franck Collection in London. A posthumous solo exhibition of Ajetunmobi’s work, entitled Tales of a Lonely Londoner was held at the Spitz Gallery, Commercial street, London in 2003, as part of Black History Month. His photographs were recently featured in Stan Firm Inna Inglan: Black Diaspora in London at Tate Britain in 2017, an exhibition which brought together works from the 1960s and 1970s by eight photographers who documented Black communities in London, including Ajetunmobi, Raphael Albert, Neil Kenlock, and Al Vandenberg, among others. Ajetunmobi's name was also included in a special version of London’s Tube map, with stations named after Black figures who influenced and shaped British history, produced by Transport for London (Tfl) in partnership with the Brixton-based Black Cultural Archives to mark Black History Month in 2021.