Dennis Morris moved to Britain from Jamaica in the early 1960s and began taking photographs from the age of eight. His personal photographs of British Caribbean community life in Hackney came to form the series Growing Up Black.

Morris depicted the harsh reality faced by many post-war Caribbean migrants who were forced to live in sub-standard tenement housing. He was part of this community, living in one room shared with his mother when arriving in England. Although a sense of community developed in the crowded, shared housing blocks, the living conditions were poor. Preparing meals became a communal task, in which tenants relied on paraffin heaters to do most of the cooking. Morris has since explained the way in which ‘many rooms had a series of paraffin heaters,’ as ‘one heater would be for heating, the others to boil water, etc.’ Though not all tenants had the luxury of more than one.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Dennis Morris as part of the Staying Power project. Staying Power is a five year partnership between the V&A and Black Cultural Archives. The project aims to explore black British experience from the 1950s to the 1990s through photographs acquired by the V&A and oral histories conducted by Black Cultural Archives.