A vital insight

Overlooked for decades, the archive of one of Britain's greatest photographers is being brought together in a new book. Peter Dench finds out more

- Peter Dench

‘I’ve been recognised as an archivist – over the past 50 years, I have documented our life from an Afro Caribbean point of view, which has been left out of the mainstream history,’ says Charlie Phillips, once described by Time Out magazine as the greatest London photographer you’ve never heard of.

Phillips could also be one of the greatest photographers outside of London you’ve never heard of. That is changing. The Charlie Phillips archive funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund began in 2015. The website launched in 2018, marking the culmination of a painstaking and intensive project of restoring, cataloguing, and digitising Phillip’s vast collection of images. It provides a vital insight into some of the expressions of British identity and culture, with a focus on the multicultural character of Notting Hill during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

Charlie Phillips – A Grassroots Legacy, a major new 240x320mm book by Bluecoat Press, was crowdfunded on Kickstarter and reached its target by the campaign deadline in June. The independently published collection promises to deliver on Phillips’ ethos of grassroots art and revolutionary spirit, bringing together highlights of his archive with over 100 tritone printed images.

Born in 1944 in Kingston, Jamaica, Phillips spent his early childhood with his grandparents in St Mary. Leaving them he arrived in England in August 1956 to join his parents who’d left their business employing six workers making tourist souvenirs, migrating to answer the post-war needs of the ‘mother country’.

They settled in London’s Notting Hill, now a gentrified neighbourhood, then regarded as a ghetto populated by Caribbean, Irish and Hungarian immigrants. A place of slum landlords. Race riots were just a few years away. It was unfamiliar and a long way from a childhood playing barefoot in the garden.