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Notting Hill Couple

Photograph
1967 (photographed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Charlie Phillips moved to London from Jamaica in 1956 and began to document life in his local community, taking photographs with a Kodak brownie camera he had been given by a black American serviceman. Phillips lived in Notting Hill, an area of London which had a large British Caribbean community following mass migration from the Caribbean in the immediate post-war period.

His personal photographs of local people take on the political issues of the time. This couple’s connection to the Notting Hill area recalls the eruption of racial hostility there less than a decade earlier, when groups of white youths sought to divide Notting Hill’s mixed-race community in a series of violent attacks. The events became known as the Notting Hill race riots (1958), and were thought to have been started when a group of white men assaulted a white woman on the basis of her marriage to a black man.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Charlie Phillips 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.

Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleNotting Hill Couple (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Gelatin silver print
Brief description
Black and white photograph of Anita Santiago and Osmond (Gus) Philip by Charlie Phillips, 'Notting Hill Couple', gelatin silver print, London, 1967
Physical description
A black and white photograph a mixed race couple. A young black man wears a suit jacket over a pullover with a shirt and has his arm around a white female wearing a jumper. Their heads touch in the middle of the image. Behind them is floral wallpaper giving way to a wooden wall. The sitters in this photograph are Anita Santiago and Osmond (Gus) Philip - Notting Hill couple.
Dimensions
  • Image size height: 212mm
  • Image size width: 300mm
  • Paper size height: 302mm
  • Paper size width: 399mm
Style
Gallery label
(16/02/2015-24/05/2015)
Text label for the exhibition, 'Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s-1990s
16 February – 24 May 2015

Charlie Phillips (born 1944)
Portobello Road, 1974
Westbourne Park Tube Station, 1967
Notting Hill Couple, 1967
The Pisshouse Pub, 1969
Big Maybelle, Cue Club, 1966
Cue Club Regulars, 1966

Phillips moved from Jamaica to Notting Hill in 1956.
This area of London had a large Caribbean community
following mass migration after the Second World War.
Phillips documented local life using a Kodak Brownie
camera that he had been given by an African-American
serviceman. His photographs provide a visual record of the
influence of the growing black population on this part of
London during the 1960s and ’70s.

Gelatin silver prints
Museum nos. E.260, 261, 264, 266 to 268-2011
Credit line
Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Object history
The V&A acquired this photograph 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.

The sitters in this photograph are Anita Santiago and Osmond (Gus) Philip - Notting Hill couple.
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Association
Literary references
Summary
Charlie Phillips moved to London from Jamaica in 1956 and began to document life in his local community, taking photographs with a Kodak brownie camera he had been given by a black American serviceman. Phillips lived in Notting Hill, an area of London which had a large British Caribbean community following mass migration from the Caribbean in the immediate post-war period.

His personal photographs of local people take on the political issues of the time. This couple’s connection to the Notting Hill area recalls the eruption of racial hostility there less than a decade earlier, when groups of white youths sought to divide Notting Hill’s mixed-race community in a series of violent attacks. The events became known as the Notting Hill race riots (1958), and were thought to have been started when a group of white men assaulted a white woman on the basis of her marriage to a black man.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Charlie Phillips 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.
Associated objects
Bibliographic references
  • Roots to Reckoning; the photography of Armet Francis, Neil Kenlock and Charlie Phillips, London : Seed Publications, 2005 Image appears on page 68
  • Phillips, Charlie and Mike Phillips. Notting Hill in the Sixties. London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd, 1991, ISBN 0 85315 751 0 Image appears on page 13
Collection
Accession number
E.264-2011

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Record createdJuly 12, 2011
Record URL
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