Charlie Phillips moved to London from Jamaica in 1956 and began to document life in his Notting Hill community, taking photographs with a Kodak brownie camera he had been given by a black American serviceman. His photographs have become a visual record of London in the 1960s, especially of the growing black population and the experiences they faced.

The overt racism of the flat advertisement is evidence of the kind of discrimination against the emerging black community, which persisted in Britain throughout the post-war period. Refusing people housing because of their race was comparable to the racial segregation in the United States at the time. Although segregation was not legally enforced in Britain, the press often referred to a British ‘colour bar’ to describe the continuing discrimination. Notting Hill became one of the few areas where black people could find housing, but conditions were often poor as local landlords like Peter Rachman took the opportunity to exploit tenants.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Charlie Phillips as part of the Staying Power project. Photographs by Dennis Morris, which document living conditions for the black community in Hackney during the 1970s, were also acquired as part of the 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.