ABSTRACT
In this essay, Johny Pitts highlights the connection between colonialism and photography and relates how he, as a practitioner, attempts to subvert some of the medium’s problematic elements. Drawing from his experience of growing up in the multicultural hinterlands (and disappearing landscape) of the north of Britain, Pitts explains how the preservation of Black European culture through visual documentation is essential but demands an alternative philosophy and methodology if it is to work as a counter-current in the stream of Western observers hunting “the other”. He draws attention to photographic philosophies that operate outside the white male-dominated tradition at Magnum, the world’s most famous and influential photographic agency. Ultimately, using his own position within the Afropean community, Pitts concludes that taking images of one’s own community requires a heuristic approach, with one foot in and one foot out of both the photographic tradition and the community being documented.
