Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1951 St. Thomas, Jamaica

Year of Migration to the UK: 1965

Biography

Photographer, artist and archivist Vanley Burke was born on 8 July 1951 in Morant Bay, St. Thomas, Jamaica in the Caribbean. He grew up in rural Jamaica and began to take photographs at the age of ten, after being sent a Kodak Brownie camera as a present from his parents, who were then living in England. In 1961 his mother settled in the multicultural district of Handsworth in Birmingham, and four years later he joined her, later attending evening classes at the Birmingham School of Photography. As one of the first established Black British photographers, Burke has been called ‘the Godfather of Black British photography’ and his work documenting the Afro-Caribbean community in Birmingham is regarded as the finest record of its kind.

Burke began photographing Handsworth in the 1970s, in a period when the presence of large Caribbean and South Asian immigrant communities often brought unwelcome media interest and racial unrest. His first studio was situated on Grove Lane, where Derek Bishton, Brian Homer and John Reardon began the photography project, Handsworth Self Portrait (1979), for which they placed a photobooth on the street that Handsworth residents could enter in order to photograph themselves. Burke immediately began to document his own surroundings, creating the series known as Handsworth from Inside (1968-82), which featured images of his local community including weddings, baptisms and children at play, offering a benevolent alternative to the violent, often racist portrayals of the area and its residents in the mainstream media (Kieran Connell, 2012). Burke was intent on displaying the ‘ordinary’, in the hope that this would ‘let the ordinary become extra-ordinary’ (Vanley Burke interview with Kieran Connell, Connell, 2012). In doing so his work was both overtly and implicitly political, and existed alongside the ‘conversation around Diasporic cultural identity, captured by [the sociologist] Stuart Hall in the 1980s’ (Caroline Molloy, New Art West Midlands, 2018). Burke's photographs of the community also demonstrated an 'archival spirit', documenting the Afro-Caribbean community as it settled and thrived, in Birmingham, in particular, and in Britain in general. In 1979 he was awarded a Kodak Bursary which led to the creation of his Hansworth from Inside series, which was first exhibited at the Grove Lane Junior School in 1979. It became his first notable exhibition and was shown at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, (1983) and then toured to both the Commonwealth Institute and the Black Art Gallery in London.

In 1977 Burke captured the Birmingham crowds who gathered to celebrate African Liberation Day. The following year, in a more political series, he photographed the Handsworth protests against new immigration laws (Guardian 2017). In 1981 and 1985 media attention on Handsworth once again increased, following a series of riots catalysed by ‘racial tension and other community problems’, which resulted in two dead and 122 injured (Birmingham Mail, 1985). Fellow immigrant photographer and Handsworth resident Pogus Caesar commented: ‘Those riots were the result of frustration built up over years of people suffering from poor job prospects, poor housing, poverty, harassment, racism, and a ‘them-and-us’ situation’ (Pogus Caesar, Birmingham Live, 2019). A photograph of a ‘Black bomber’ (taken by John Reardon) which circulated among the tabloid newspapers, further profiled Handsworth as a disorderly, dangerous neighbourhood. Burke’s contemporaries, Pogus Caesar and filmmaker John Akomfrah, both actively documented the 1985 riots and Akomfrah included some of Burke's photographs in his Handsworth Songs documentary in 1986. Burke commented, ‘We ate, drank and slept politics, because our mere existence was under constant scrutiny’ (Interview with Karin Andreasson, The Guardian, 2014). In 1986 Burke and Caesar held a joint exhibition, Break in the Seal, at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, showcasing Burke's photographs of Birmingham alongside Caesar’s photographs of New York City. During the 1990s, following the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, Burke also photographed the lives of Black South Africans but he also continued to document the Black community in Britain and formed a growing collection of community objects including clothes, music, publications and trinkets, which formed an archive in his home. This functioned, like his photographs, to document the presence of the community. In 2015 the Ikon Gallery hosted Burke’s archive alongside his photographic works in the exhibition At Home with Vanley Burke. The Vanley Burke Archive is currently included in the Birmingham City Council archive collections. Burke has been awarded honorary Doctorates at both the University of Leicester (2007) and University of Wolverhampton (2009). His work can be found in UK collections including Arts Council England, the Birmingham Museums Trust, the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, Nottingham City Museum and Galleries and the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry.

Related books

Lisa Amanda Palmer, 'Each one teach one' visualising black intellectual life in Handsworth beyond the epistemology of 'white sociology'', Identities: global studies in culture and power, Vol. 27 No.1 (2020), pp. 91-113
Marlene Smith, Johnathan Watkins and Peter James, 'At Home with Vanley Burke' (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2015)
Shona Hunter, 'Being called to ‘By the Rivers of Birminam’: the relational choreography of white looking', Critical Arts, 29: sup1 (2015), pp.43-57
Vanley Burke interviewed by Shirley Read (London: The British Library, 2014)
Kieran Connell, 'Photographing Handsworth: photography, meaning and identity in a British inner city', Patterns of Prejudice, 46:2 (2012), pp. 128-153
Lynda Morris, Eddie Chambers, 'Vanley Burke: by the Rivers of Birminam (Birmingham: MAC Birmingham, 2012)
Andy Green, 'Remembering Slavery in Birmingham: Sculpture, Paintings and Installations', Slavery & Abolition, 29:2 (2008), pp.189-201
Catherine Hall, 'Black Pasts, Birmingham Futures, Birmingham, March 2002,' History Workshop Journal, no. 55 (2003), pp. 263–265
Mark Sealy, Stuart Hall, 'Vanley Burke: A Retrospective' (Chadwell Heath: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1993)

Public collections

Related organisations

University of Leicester (honorary doctorate recipient)
University of Wolverhampton (honorary doctorate recipient)

Selected exhibitions

Super Black, an Arts Council Collection National Partner Exhibition, Firstsite Colchester (2019-2020)
At Home with Vanley Burke, Ikon Gallery (2015)
Handsworth Culture Swap with Vanley Burke, Soho House Museum, Birmingham (2013)
By the Rivers of Birminam, Midlands Arts Centre (2012)
Sugar Coated Tears, Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2007) Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now, Tate Liverpool (2006)
Schools, Colleges, Pubs and Church, Handsworth Park (2006)
INVISIBLE: Identity, Disability, Culture Somaliland, Birmingham Central Library (2005)
Living Through, Optima Housing Association Birmingham (2040)
Moving Home, Light House, Wolverhampton (2004)
Redemption Songs, Symphony Hall, Birmingham (2002)
Five Years + A Life Time, EMACA Nottingham, Nottingham Playhouse (1998)
Nkunzi - Photographs of Birmingham and South Africa, Soho House (1998)
From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image, with Vanley Burke and Claudette Holmes, Watershed Media Centre, Bristol (1996)
The Journey, Watershed Bristol (1994) and Walsall Art Gallery (1993)
No Time for Flowers, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Coventry Museum and Art Gallery (1991)
Racism in Our Cities, Peterborough Arts Council (1991)
Carnival in Exile, The Cave, Birmingham (1987)
Sundays are Bloody Awful, Midlands Arts Centre (1987)
The World in Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton Museum and Art Gallery (1986)
Connections, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (1986)
Handsworth from the Inside, Commonwealth Institute London, Black Art Gallery London (1983)
Handsworth from Inside, Grove Lane Junior School (1979)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Vanley Burke]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Vanley Burke photographer