Norman ‘Normski’ Anderson was born to Jamaican parents in Camden, northwest London, England in 1966. His mother had come to England as part of the Windrush Generation in the early 1960s.He became a hobbyist photographer as a teenager, later honing his photographic skills at Kingsway Princeton College (now Westminster Kingsway College). He produced photographs recording community life in Camden, as well as empowering portraits of Black youth and the fashions associated with UK hip hop scene, which appeared in style magazines including <em>The Face</em>, <em>i-D</em> and <em>Vogue</em>.
Photographer, TV presenter and radio broadcaster, Norman ‘Normski’ Anderson was born to Jamaican parents in Camden, London, England in 1966. His mother had come to England as part of the Windrush Generation in the early 1960s. He was bought his first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, by his mother at an auction when he was nine years old. His interest in photography was partly inspired by the Black British filmmaker and photographer of Caribbean origin, Horace Ove, as Normski was childhood friends with his son Zak. He quickly became a hobbyist photographer, honing his photographic skills at Kingsway Princeton College (now Westminster Kingsway College) and publishing his first shot in the Camden Journal. His photographs included a personal record of community life in Camden during the time his family lived locally in Primrose Hill. Normski recalled that ‘My skill was to capture moments in our history. My subjects appreciate my work ethic of listening to their ideas and allowing them to contribute to the creative process’ (Highet 2015, p. 66). In 1987 he started to take photographs for Black community projects organised by the Greater London Council (GLC) and Camden Council, selling his images to The Voice newspaper.
Anderson became part of the emerging hip hop music scene during the 1980s and adopted the nickname 'Normski' while visiting New York. He focused on documenting British youth culture and photographed the fashions associated with UK hip hop, exemplified by his bright, sunlit street portraits of African ‘homeboys’, African Homeboy – Brixton and Islam B-Boys - Brixton (1987, V&A collection). Hip hop style and attitude in the 1980s, and the group cohesion associated with it, was regarded as an important facet of Black consciousness. Followers of hip hop often combined branded sports clothing with pieces reflecting their cultural heritage, such as the West African fabric, Kente cloth, modelled by the ‘African homeboy’. With its bold patterns and bright colours, it expressed the pride that many members of the Black diaspora felt for their African roots. Islam B-Boys featured two teenage boys standing against a wall in a street, one of them opening his coat to reveal a white T-shirt displaying a picture of African American activist, Malcolm X. B-Boying was one of the four original elements of hip hop culture, along with rapping, DJing, and graffiti. The term ‘B-Boying’ was derived from ‘break-boying’ and referred to a style of street dance that originated in New York City, particularly among African Americans in the early 1970s. The B-Boy style and attitude gained popularity among a diverse range of British youth and was regarded as a contemporary expression of Black identity. Normski's empowering portraits appeared in magazines including The Face, i-D and Vogue, expressing ‘a provocative concept - style as a strategy for survival, for self-respect. Black, proud and beautiful’ (Highet 2015, p. 66).
In 1983, Normski participated in an exhibition organised by the Association of Black Photographers on the theme of young Black artists' views of their parents. The photograph he contributed, which was to become one of his best-known works, showed his mother holding her passport open, as she looked directly out of the frame. Normski later recalled that she was ‘a proud black woman, the archetype of the post-Windrush generation: upright, well-dressed, positive and helpful. She […] was always proud of her place in the world […]. Most of all, she was proud of her Jamaican passport with that little Commonwealth stamp that meant she was a citizen of the United Kingdom. I didn’t understand at the time how transgressive this image is. For people of her generation and background, it was axiomatic that you do not show your passport to anyone – let alone have it photographed’ (Siddons 2021). Alongside photography, Normski had a prolific career in the field of music, television, fashion and journalism. Normski worked as a DJ and television presenter for programmes including Dance Energy on BBC2 in the early 1990s, during which he took photographs of the visiting artists. Normski’s first solo show, Rap X-hibition, was held at the Rap Store, Covent Garden (1992). In 2003 he staged Hip Odyssey a show of his urban street culture photography at the Proud Gallery. Other solo exhibitions included Bar Vinyl, Camden (2005) and Arlington Gallery, Camden (2007). Normski collaborated with Four Star General, a hip hop clothing retailer, to create an outfit featuring the contemporary use of Kente cloth. This was included, alongside two other looks, at the fashion exhibition Streetstyle, From Sidewalk to Catwalk, 1940 to Tomorrow at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1994–95. Normski also featured in Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s-1990s at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2015) and Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House (2019). The Normski Hip Hop Archive was recently held at Demezka Hoxton Bistro, London (2021). His work is represented in the UK public domain in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.