Photographer Neil Kenlock (born 1950) moved to London from Jamaica in 1963 and became determined to document black pride in the face of racial prejudice.

Kenlock captured the optimism of arrival to Britain in this photograph of his teenage brother Trevor, taken in the garden of the family’s home in Brixton. Approaching his eighteenth birthday, Trevor’s migration to Britain was organised quickly so that he would arrive while still a minor. Migration from the Commonwealth became increasingly restricted in the 1960s, following the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts passed in 1962 and 1968. Prior to this citizens of Commonwealth countries, which were formerly British colonies, were free to migrate to the UK using their British passports.

Many Caribbean migrants retained affection for the music cultures of the countries they left behind, which led to these genres gaining popularity in British culture. In the background of the photograph, Neil and Trevor’s younger brother Clement appears to have adopted a local football team, as he wears a Chelsea kit.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Kenlock alongside work by his contemporaries Charlie Phillips and Armet Francis 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.