Armet Francis was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica on 29 January 1945, immigrating to London, England to join his mother in 1955. Following his participation at Festac '77 (the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture) in Lagos, Nigeria, Francis devoted his practice to photographing the African diaspora. In 1983 he became the first Black photographer to be granted a solo exhibition, 'The Black Triangle: People of the African Diaspora' at The Photographers' Gallery, London.
Photographer Armet Francis was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica on 29 January 1945. Aged three, he was left in the care of his grandparents when his mother immigrated to England. He joined her in London seven years later. Growing up in the 1950s as the only Black child both at Joseph Lancaster School and subsequently at Tower Bridge School, Francis was subjected to verbal insults and physical aggression. He later reflected that: ‘England changed me from a smiling little boy into the resilient person I am now. There were a lot of bullies. I had to defend myself everyday. I had to learn their ways of being. The things that made me different were the things I got rid of first’ (Armet Francis quoted by Jilke Golbach in ‘Photographing black Britain: Neil Kenlock & Armet Francis’, Museum of London website, 16 October 2019). After leaving school at fourteen, when his mother and step father moved to Kent, Francis began working for an engineering firm in Bromley, where he developed an eye condition that subsequently forced him to abandon his marine cadet training. As a result, he became a messenger boy at Jack Carter Studios in Tottenham Court Road, then an assistant at Roy Lee Studio in Covent Garden before assisting fashion photographer Eric Swayne, friend of renowned photographers of the time, Terence Donovan and David Bailey. Francis later worked for Mike Cooper, freelancer for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and for advertising photographers, Peter Kerno and Peter Isaac.
The fashion business in the 1960s was a predominantly white environment and Francis was, at first, little exposed to the social changes propelling the struggle for civil rights, reflecting that: ‘I realised this is what it’s about now, the Civil Rights movement, the Rastafarian movement. There was no history of black photographers in England. I decided to do black images, to capture how black people perform in a certain vernacular, with certain experiences and history with all its social and political implications’ (Armet Francis quoted by Jilke Golbach in ‘Photographing black Britain: Neil Kenlock & Armet Francis’). Among many subjects, Francis photographed the Notting Hill Carnival. A major showcase of black diasporic music, dance and culture, the Carnival was first organised in 1959 as a ‘Caribbean Carnival’ in St Pancras Town Hall as a direct response to the Notting Hill race riots. ‘From a photographer’s point of view it’s perfect’, said Francis later, ‘It is the most influential two days in the black community because of the numbers of people that come together to celebrate, to interact and politic’ (Francis Armet quoted by Jilke Golbach in ‘Photographing black Britain: Neil Kenlock & Armet Francis’).
Following his participation at Festac '77 (the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture) in Lagos, Nigeria, Francis became devoted to photographing the African diaspora in Britain, Africa, America and the Caribbean. He has said: ‘In 1969 I embarked on a lifetime project [...] I was living and working in the first world, materially that is, but becoming more aware of inequalities to the third world, to be more specific the Black World. As a Black photographer I started to realise I had no social documentary images in my work [...] I went back [to Jamaica] in 1969 [...] I had been away 14 years, it would take another 14 years to make sense of this project’ (Armet Francis, Armet Francis website). In 1983 Francis became the first Black photographer to be granted a solo exhibition, The Black Triangle: People of the African Diaspora at The Photographers' Gallery, London. In 1985 he self-published a photographic book of the same name, and in 1988,
In 2005, Francis was appointed the official photographer of Africa '05, a major celebration of African arts across the UK. Later that year he was one of three pioneering Jamaican-born photographers (including Charlie Phillips and Neil Kenlock), whose work was showcased in Roots to Reckoning held at the Museum of London. In 2009, with the assistance of the Art Fund, the Museum of London acquired the Roots to Reckoning archive, comprised of 90 photographs of London's black community dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. In 2013 the British Library conducted an oral history interview (C459/214) with Francis for its Oral History of British Photography collection and in 2015 his work featured prominently in Staying Power, a collaborative project at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A) in association with the Black Cultural Archives. Armet Francis lives and works in London. His work is held in UK public collections including the Museum of London and the V & A, among others.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Armet Francis]
Publications related to [Armet Francis] in the Ben Uri Library