{"id":4037,"date":"2021-04-01T23:33:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T23:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4037"},"modified":"2021-04-01T23:33:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T23:33:25","slug":"charlie-phillips-why-did-it-take-so-long-for-one-of-britains-greatest-photographers-to-get-his-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/4037","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Phillips: why did it take so long for one of Britain’s greatest photographers to get his due?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

His photographs of Muhammad Ali and Jimi Hendrix sold around the world. Cartier-Bresson was a fan, while Fellini liked him so much he put him in a film. Yet in the UK, Phillip\u2019s work was ignored for decades<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Steve Rose<\/a> Thu 25 Mar 2021 06.00 GMT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>C<\/strong>harlie Phillips never planned to become a photographer. His childhood dream was to be an opera singer, or a naval architect. But then a camera fell into his lap. It was 1958. The 14-year-old had arrived from Jamaica two years earlier and was living in Notting Hill, west London, at that time the first port of call for many Caribbean immigrants. The area was also a destination for African American soldiers stationed at nearby military bases, who didn\u2019t feel so welcome in central London\u2019s white venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn Saturdays, if you had a basement flat, you\u2019d move the furniture to one side and make a party,\u201d says Phillips. \u201cAnd these GIs used to bring their rhythm-and-blues records and cigarettes. They\u2019d come to have a good time and, you know, dance \u2026 and the young Afro-Caribbean women would come to meet them.\u201d Phillips\u2019s family often befriended these GIs. \u201cOne of them got legless one night and couldn\u2019t get back to his base, so he had to borrow 15 shillings from my dad. He left behind a Kodak Retinette camera, but he never came back to pick it up. So I kept it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That camera became Phillips\u2019s passport to a career that took him across Europe and into contact with notable figures including Jimi Hendrix, Federico Fellini, Muhammad Ali and Henri Cartier-Bresson. At the same time, Phillips was one of the few people minded and able to document London\u2019s African-Caribbean community. His images, many of which were gathered together in the book Notting Hill in the Sixties, capture the richness and complexity of the landscape. Children play on litter-filled streets; young Black people show off their fashionable attire outside rundown houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A group of children on Basing Street in west London, 1969. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was an era marked by regular racist assaults on the African-Caribbean community, and the 1958 Notting Hill \u201crace riots\u201d. Phillips\u2019s images show hand-scrawled adverts for rooms to let, spelling out \u201cNo coloured\u201d, and graffiti on walls reading \u201cKeep Britain white\u201d. But his work also captures black and white Londoners socialising together, laughing, drinking, kissing. One of his best-known photographs, known as Notting Hill Couple<\/a>, has come to symbolise that spirit. Taken at a party in 1967, it depicts a young Black man with his arm around a young white woman. Both look into the camera with serious expressions that could be interpreted as hopeful, innocent, perhaps even defiant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips chronicled African-Caribbean funerals in London over several generations, in all their passion, style and sartorial exuberance. This was his own community, and his images speak of an insider\u2019s intimacy and familiarity. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, we haven\u2019t been given a proper platform to show our culture, our side of the story,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not Black history; this is British history, whether you like it or not. And we\u2019ve been sidestepped. I feel that personally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Portobello
Portobello Road in the late 60s. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Phillips has good reason to feel excluded. As well as that fateful camera, his career has been shaped to some extent by British attitudes towards race. Like many Windrush-era immigrants, his family did not come to Britain because they were poor but because they were invited. In Jamaica, his parents ran a business making tourist souvenirs, employing six other people. \u201cThe mother country called, so we answered,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we never had any welcoming party; we had to fend for ourselves.\u201d The now-gentrified Notting Hill was \u201ca ghetto\u201d at that time, populated not only by Caribbean but also Irish and Hungarian immigrants. Phillips\u2019s first accommodation was a boarding house in Blenheim Crescent, where he slept three to a bed with other recent arrivals. Later, his parents would move into a room, then two rooms in a shared house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At school, Phillips\u2019s mostly white classmates were less hostile than curious, he says. \u201cThey would call me \u2018Curly\u2019 and sometimes feel your hair. There were rumours that we had tails on our backs.\u201d Phillips was surprised by their ignorance. \u201cI\u2019d say: \u2018I\u2019m from Jamaica.\u2019 They\u2019d say: \u2018What part of Africa is that?\u2019 The British empire was all over the world, and yet some of the local population was so ignorant about the colonies. It was unbelievable.\u201d His teachers were equally surprised that Phillips knew how to read, write, draw, do geometry and even sing Ave Maria in Latin. He had a good voice, he says. He also had a fascination with ships; in his free time he would take the bus to Victoria Docks to watch them. But as a Black child in 50s Britain, Phillips\u2019s dreams of designing ships or singing opera were not considered realistic. \u201cThey laughed at me. The youth employment officer said: \u2018Why don\u2019t you get a job with London Transport? That\u2019s more security. Or join the RAF or get a job with the post office.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Notting
Notting Hill Couple, 1967. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To pass the evenings in his family\u2019s one-bedroom flat, Phillips began to take an interest in the camera. With money from his paper round, he bought a do-it-yourself photography book from the local chemist. He began developing his prints at night in the bath after everyone else had gone to bed. His first photographs were of friends and family in the neighbourhood, who would pay for a photo to send to relatives back home. \u201cI used to take \u2018snaps\u2019 of people,\u201d he says. \u201cWe never called them \u2018photographs\u2019 in them days. It was just for fun, as an amateur, because we only thought we\u2019d spend five years in England.\u201d After leaving school in 1960, he bought a better camera and continued his DIY photography education. He never had any formal training. \u201cIt was just common sense. This is how I picked up my trade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the mid-60s Phillips\u2019s parents were running a Caribbean restaurant in Portobello Road where he would help out. In his free time he snapped other aspects of local life: people and scenes on the street, events such as the Jamaican Independence Day celebrations in 1962. He would take his camera along to student protest marches against nuclear weapons, apartheid and the Vietnam war. In solidarity with the student uprising of 1968, he decided to take a boat to France to see what was going on in Paris. \u201cI\u2019ll always remember, I was outside the Gare du Nord, and it was a big student riot and the police were there, and a student got his head busted in. I saw the blood spurting, and I got panicky. It still shakes me up.\u201d He decided to hitchhike around Europe, and ended up in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Waiting
Waiting for the Tube, 1967. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The term \u201cpaparazzo\u201d had been coined eight years earlier by Fellini in the movie La Dolce Vita, which mapped a postwar Rome of frenetic modernity and celebrity culture. Phillips found himself living that life for real, hanging around with genuine paparazzi in cafes or outside film studios, waiting for a tip or a sighting of a passing star to snap: Marcello Mastroianni, Omar Sharif, Gina Lollobrigida, John Mills, Peter O\u2019Toole, spaghetti western actors \u2013 Phillips got them all. Claudia Cardinale was especially friendly, he says. She once gave him tickets to the premiere of Oliver!. Lesser-known actors would pay to be photographed for their own portfolios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an exciting, if hand-to-mouth lifestyle. \u201cAn agency would take some of my work. You\u2019d get two or three quid, which was survival.\u201d He even met Fellini himself, who cast him as an extra in his 1969 film Satyricon. Easygoing and conversational, Phillips seems to have made friends wherever he went. \u201cSometimes in my travels, people took a liking to me,\u201d he acknowledges. \u201cThat\u2019s how I survived. Seeing as I was the only person of colour, everybody was curious: who\u2019s this Black guy taking photographs?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Portobello
Portobello Road, 1966. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Phillips still harboured dreams of opera, despite living in a commune with Italian revolutionaries who considered it \u201cborghese<\/em>\u201d, or bourgeois. He often worked as an extra at La Scala, an opera house in Milan. But as a photographer, he was doing pretty well. He sold work to Italian magazines including Vogue, Harper\u2019s Bazaar and Life. He would travel to ski resorts or to the south of France as a paparazzo. And he was travelling back and forth to England. \u201cThis is when I started photographing my community in a more serious fashion,\u201d he says. As well as the streets and the Caribbean funerals, he visited the pubs, the shebeens (illegal drinking clubs) and nightclubs such as the Cue Club in Paddington<\/a>, a venue for soul and bluebeat (early ska music), which was frequented by Black celebrities and rock stars. \u201cI was in the alternative culture of London at the time,\u201d he says. \u201cThe sex, drugs and rock\u2019n\u2019roll era, the free love era.\u201d He captured rock stars such as Hendrix and Eric Clapton visiting the head shops and fashion boutiques in Portobello Road. He spent more time with Hendrix and others at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. \u201cI managed to get backstage. I had photographs with Hendrix, Joan Baez, Tiny Tim, I think some of the Who were there, Sly and the Family Stone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Silchester
Silchester Road, demolished to make way for the Westway flyover, 1967. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1972 Phillips held his first solo exhibition \u2013 on Notting Hill life \u2013 in Milan. To his surprise, the show was visited by Cartier-Bresson, the godfather of street photography and one of Phillips\u2019s idols. \u201cAs a matter of fact, I used to dress like Cartier-Bresson. I used to wear a beret at the time. Some of my Italian friends used to compare my work with his.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1974, Phillips was getting homesick and decided to return to England, but again, there was no welcoming party. Showing his photographs to editors and galleries in London, \u201cpeople would say: \u2018Did you really take this?\u2019 Nobody believed I took them. I used to get fobbed off all the time. I couldn\u2019t get any assignments.\u201d One gallery even had a photograph of Muhammad Ali, taken by Phillips, on the wall (taken in Zurich in 1971, during Ali\u2019s bout with German champion J\u00fcrgen Blin; Phillips went on to meet Ali on numerous occasions) yet refused to believe Phillips was the photographer. \u201cThis is how absurd it was.\u201d Did the fact that Phillips was Black have a bearing on his treatment? \u201cI can\u2019t comment on that,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that\u2019s a question you should ask the institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ali
Ali on Boxing Day … Muhammad Ali in Zurich before his fight with Jurgen Blin, 1971. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Phillips grew demoralised. \u201cI became homeless. And I became kind of destitute. I ended up washing up dishes and working in a cafe and restaurant and I put the photography aside.\u201d From 1974 until 1991, Phillips didn\u2019t take a single photograph. Making matters worse, moving between various squats and bedsits, he lost many of his photographs. His images of Hendrix, Cartier-Bresson, the Paris 1968 protests, the Dolce Vita movie stars and so many others are now missing. \u201cIf anyone can find my Jimi Hendrix collection, that\u2019s my pension fund.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1988 Phillips opened a Caribbean diner, Smokey Joe\u2019s, in south London, which he ran for 11 years. During that time, his previous career underwent a process of rediscovery. A music magazine contacted him in 1991, seeking to use his photographs from the bluebeat era, he says. By chance, when a courier returned Phillips\u2019s photographs to his diner, one of his customers was Ben Bousquet, a local Labour councillor<\/a>. Bousquet, originally from St Lucia, had also grown up in 60s Notting Hill. He was amazed when he discovered Phillips\u2019s archive of London immigrant life, which had lain forgotten in a box under his bed. \u201cHe said: \u2018Bloody \u2019ell. You mean you have all these photographs sitting there? This is history here!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"At
At the \u2018Piss House\u2019 pub on the Portobello Road, 1969. Photograph: Charlie Phillips\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That led to the Notting Hill in the Sixties book, and a steady career rehabilitation. In 2003, the Museum of London exhibited Phillips\u2019s work, and it has featured regularly in exhibitions since then. His photograph of the young Notting Hill couple is now part of the V&A\u2019s collection. Simon Schama included Phillips\u2019s work in his book and TV series The Face of Britain<\/a>, describing him as \u201cone of Britain\u2019s great photo-portraitists\u201d. Just last year, Steve McQueen requested Phillips take his portrait when he guest-edited the Observer<\/a>. Phillips is somewhat ambivalent about his newfound recognition, however, especially when he is pigeonholed as Black culture, rather than just culture. \u201cI feel sometimes I\u2019m being used as political propaganda when they talk about multicultural Britain. I\u2019m sorry, I don\u2019t want to play the colour game. I\u2019m tired of ticking the boxes, because they only call you in Black History Month to show images of Black people, and I\u2019m fed up of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Charlie
Charlie Phillips: \u2018I feel sometimes I\u2019m being used as political propaganda.\u2019 Photograph: Aliyah Otchere\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Phillips still takes pictures, he says, but just for himself, \u201cas a hobby\u201d. Occasionally he travels down to the coast to photograph ships. He loves photographing horses. \u201cI still haven\u2019t taken the perfect photograph yet,\u201d he says. \u201cI still make a lot of mistakes.\u201d He now lives in Mitcham, just outside London. \u201cNothing happens over here. Everything finishes after the News at 10,\u201d he jokes. \u201cAll I wanted to do was to spend more time in my allotment and catch up on my reading. I\u2019ve been reading War and Peace for about the last 20 years and I still haven\u2019t finished it yet. But they took me out of retirement because people think I\u2019ve got an interesting life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, he received a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to manage his archive. \u201cThis is the only thing that keeps me going. I\u2019ve got lots of young volunteers who say: \u2018Uncle Charlie, you\u2019ve got to keep your legacy alive, because we don\u2019t see this in schools. We don\u2019t see this in exhibition centres.\u2019 I think we\u2019re not well-represented within the culture of England how we should be. There has been a missing section in our history. Most of our records have been destroyed or weren\u2019t there in the first place \u2026 I\u2019m just here to document our side of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2021\/mar\/25\/charlie-phillips-why-did-it-take-so-long-for-one-of-britains-greatest-photographers-to-get-his-due<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His photographs of Muhammad Ali and Jimi Hendrix sold around the world. Cartier-Bresson was a fan, while Fellini liked him so much he put him in a film. Yet in the UK, Phillip\u2019s work was ignored for decades by\u00a0Steve Rose … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[297,299,296,295,300,298,171,301],"class_list":["post-4037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-britains","tag-charlie","tag-due","tag-greatest","tag-long","tag-phillips","tag-photographers","tag-take"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4038,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037\/revisions\/4038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}