Project description

The purpose of the project, called Empire Windrush in recognition of the importance of the 1948 event, is to produce an accurate, in depth photographic and sound documentary record of the people living and working in Britain towards the end of the Twentieth Century. I am not working within every minority culture; to do so would produce an innocuous travelogue, so diluted, as to be of little consequence. I am working in those communities which best convey the idea that new arrivals in Britain represent very old cultures, transferred to a new place.

I am documenting those settler communities that bring into British society, as a whole, events beyond The Channel. Above all, I am working in those areas that are organising as communities, to defend and extend their collective interests. I am photographing those settler communities that are not passive; where people don’t perceive themselves as victims. I am recording how communities are organising, what are the issues involved and to what extent the people of these communities are successful. In addition to photography, I am extensively using sound recorded interviews of people from these communities talking about their own lives.

It is obvious that Britain is not a melting pot. Ostracism and racism are the every day experience of immigrants. This very word, used to describe settler people, indicates separateness and the lack of equality.

I have been working on Empire Windrush for three years and I am building a documentary record that contradicts the idea that Britain’s culture is stable and everlasting. For most of the history of humanity, the world’s people were almost entirely isolated from each other. Today, our fortunes are inextricably linked! Events and cultures, through the world, brought to Britain, first handed by newer settler communities, directly and in discernibly profound ways, alter the status quo.

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