Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document”
Born in Sheffield in the 1980s, in a dual-heritage working-class family, Johny Pitts came to fame in 2019 with the publication of Afropean: Notes on Black Europe. His black and white photographs illustrated “the under-documented areas of Europe that often contradict the homogenized monocultured depi...
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| Опубликовано в: : | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Anglais |
| Опубликовано: |
Angles
2025
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| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_10025 |
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openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
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Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
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0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
classe ouvrière Johny Pitts afropéen photographie vernaculaire littérature de voyage décolonisation working class Johny Pitts afropean vernacular photography travel literature decolonise |
| spellingShingle |
classe ouvrière Johny Pitts afropéen photographie vernaculaire littérature de voyage décolonisation working class Johny Pitts afropean vernacular photography travel literature decolonise Robles, Fanny Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| description |
Born in Sheffield in the 1980s, in a dual-heritage working-class family, Johny Pitts came to fame in 2019 with the publication of Afropean: Notes on Black Europe. His black and white photographs illustrated “the under-documented areas of Europe that often contradict the homogenized monocultured depictions suggested by tourist boards and pocket-sized travel guides”. Pitts’ intention to focus on the “beauty in black banality” departed from what he identified as the more common presentation of Black people in Europe as “über-stylized retro hipster dandies in thick-rimmed glasses and a bit of kente cloth, or dangerous hooded ghetto-yoot”. In 2022, Pitts’ first UK solo exhibition Home is Not a Place opened in Sheffield. The accompanying book, a collaboration with the poet Roger Robinson, was selected as one of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year. The series is based on “casual images” from Pitts’ personal archive, rediscovered under lockdown, to which he added new ones, taken on the move. Moving away from Tilbury, where The Empire Windrush docked in 1948, and is “too often (…) where the history told about Black Britain begins and ends”, the black northerner, frustrated by what he sometimes calls the “Brixtonization of black Britain” (the reduction of the Black British experience into a single, neat, London-oriented narrative) followed the coastline, finding not only “Black people, but the history of Empire and transatlantic slavery to which every Briton is tethered; stories of arrival, asylum and deportation, and of that inverted, imaginative unit of history and geography known as ‘The Black Atlantic’”. In 2024, he published the extended colour scrapbook-like version of his 2019 travelogue, Afropean: A Journal, with the subtitle “Images, Notes and Ephemera from Black Europe 2004-2024”. This article looks at Johny Pitts’ photobooks as attempts at recovering a forgotten history of the Black presence in both the UK and Europe, a visual story told from the social and geographical periphery, “kente cloth in fog” where past and present meet. The analysis first focuses on Pitts’ visibilisation of a Black British and Black European history based on artistic filiation across the Black Atlantic and within the UK and Europe, before moving on to his definition of a ‘B-Side aesthetics’ relying on the Black working class and vernacular photography. The reflection ends on Pitts’ art as photography on the edge of (happy) failure, and his attempt at creating an (im)perfect Black archive |
| author |
Robles, Fanny |
| author_facet |
Robles, Fanny |
| author_sort |
Robles, Fanny |
| title |
Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| title_short |
Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| title_full |
Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| title_fullStr |
Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| title_sort |
seeing oneself written into british and european history: johny pitts and the peripheral “black document” |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2025 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/159p0 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/10025 |
| _version_ |
1877291862607265793 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_10025 https://doi.org/10.4000/159p0 urn:doi:10.4000/159p0 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/10025 2025-12-03T01:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/159p0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Seeing oneself written into British and European history: Johny Pitts and the peripheral “black document” Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Robles, Fanny classe ouvrière Johny Pitts afropéen photographie vernaculaire littérature de voyage décolonisation working class Johny Pitts afropean vernacular photography travel literature decolonise Born in Sheffield in the 1980s, in a dual-heritage working-class family, Johny Pitts came to fame in 2019 with the publication of Afropean: Notes on Black Europe. His black and white photographs illustrated “the under-documented areas of Europe that often contradict the homogenized monocultured depictions suggested by tourist boards and pocket-sized travel guides”. Pitts’ intention to focus on the “beauty in black banality” departed from what he identified as the more common presentation of Black people in Europe as “über-stylized retro hipster dandies in thick-rimmed glasses and a bit of kente cloth, or dangerous hooded ghetto-yoot”. In 2022, Pitts’ first UK solo exhibition Home is Not a Place opened in Sheffield. The accompanying book, a collaboration with the poet Roger Robinson, was selected as one of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year. The series is based on “casual images” from Pitts’ personal archive, rediscovered under lockdown, to which he added new ones, taken on the move. Moving away from Tilbury, where The Empire Windrush docked in 1948, and is “too often (…) where the history told about Black Britain begins and ends”, the black northerner, frustrated by what he sometimes calls the “Brixtonization of black Britain” (the reduction of the Black British experience into a single, neat, London-oriented narrative) followed the coastline, finding not only “Black people, but the history of Empire and transatlantic slavery to which every Briton is tethered; stories of arrival, asylum and deportation, and of that inverted, imaginative unit of history and geography known as ‘The Black Atlantic’”. In 2024, he published the extended colour scrapbook-like version of his 2019 travelogue, Afropean: A Journal, with the subtitle “Images, Notes and Ephemera from Black Europe 2004-2024”. This article looks at Johny Pitts’ photobooks as attempts at recovering a forgotten history of the Black presence in both the UK and Europe, a visual story told from the social and geographical periphery, “kente cloth in fog” where past and present meet. The analysis first focuses on Pitts’ visibilisation of a Black British and Black European history based on artistic filiation across the Black Atlantic and within the UK and Europe, before moving on to his definition of a ‘B-Side aesthetics’ relying on the Black working class and vernacular photography. The reflection ends on Pitts’ art as photography on the edge of (happy) failure, and his attempt at creating an (im)perfect Black archive Né à Sheffield dans les années 1980, dans une famille ouvrière multiculturelle, Johny Pitts accède à la notoriété en 2019 avec Afropean: Notes on Black Europe. Ses photos en noir et blanc illustrent “les endroits d’Europe qu’on ne documente pas assez et qui viennent souvent contredire les tableaux homogènes et monoculturels mis en avant par les offices du tourisme et les guides touristiques de poche”. L’intention de Pitts de se focaliser sur “la beauté de la banalité noire” vient s’opposer à ce qu’il identifie comme la représentation plus commune des Noir.e.s d’Europe en “dandy hipsters rétro hyper-stylés, portant des lunettes à montures épaisses et un peu de tissu kente, ou bien en dangereuses racailles à capuche”. En 2022 se tient la première exposition solo de Pitts en Grande-Bretagne, dont le catalogue est réalisé en collaboration avec le poète Roger Robinson. La série de photos est basée sur des “images informelles” provenant des archives personnelles de Pitts, redécouvertes à l’occasion du confinement, auxquelles il a ajouté de nouveaux clichés. Partant de Tilbury, où l’Empire Windrush est arrivé en 1948, et qui est “trop souvent (…) là où l’histoire des Britanniques noir.e.s commence et finit”, cet afro-descendant du Nord de l’Angleterre, frustré par ce qu’il appelle parfois la “brixtonisation des Noir.e.s du Royaume-Uni” (la réduction de leur expérience à un seul récit bien net, focalisé sur Londres) a suivi la ligne de côte, trouvant non seulement “des personnes noir.e.s, mais aussi l’histoire de l’Empire et de l’esclavage transatlantique à laquelle tout.e Britannique est lié.e; des récits d’arrivée, d’asile, de déportation, et de cette unité imaginaire historique et géographique connue sous le nom d’“Atlantique noir””. En 2024, il publie la version augmentée en couleur et en format scrapbook de son récit de voyage de 2019, intitulée Afropean: A Journal. Cet article envisage les livres photos de Pitts comme des tentatives de recouvrer une histoire oubliée de la présence noire au Royaume-Uni et en Europe, un récit visuel raconté depuis une périphérie sociale et géographique. L’analyse se penche d’abord sur la visibilisation par Pitts de l’histoire des Noir.e.s du Royaume-Uni et d’Europe, à partir des filiations africaines-américaines, britanniques et européennes, avant d’examiner sa définition d’une “esthétique de la Face-B” fondée sur la classe ouvrière noire et la photographie vernaculaire. La réflexion se termine par une analyse du travail artistique de Pitts comme photographie au bord de l’échec (joyeux), et tentative de créer une archive noire (im)parfaite. |