Vanley Burke | |
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 Burke in February 2019 | |
| Born | 1951 (age 72–73) Saint Thomas, Jamaica |
| Nationality | British |
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| Website | www |
Vanley Burke (born 1951) is a British Jamaican photographer and artist. His photographs capture experiences of his community's arrival in Britain, the different landscapes and cultures he encountered, the different ways of survival and experiences of the wider African-Caribbean community.
Vanley Burke was born in St. Thomas, Jamaica, in 1951. [3] For his 10th birthday, he was sent a "Box Brownie" camera—a Kodak Brownie 127—by his mother, who in the late 1950s had gone to live in England, [4] while he remained with his aunt in St.Thomas. [5] In 1965,at the age of 14, he went to join his parents in the UK, leaving his radio to his aunt as a parting gift but taking his camera with him. [6] [7]
Burke seriously started photography around 1967, making a conscious decision to document the black community and lifestyle in England. His first studio was in Grove Lane, Handsworth, Birmingham. [5]
His photographs capture experiences of his community's arrival in Britain, the different landscapes and cultures he encountered, the different ways of survival and experiences of the wider African-Caribbean community. His photography sought to counteract any perception of negative or stereotypical imagery of black people found in mainstream media. His photographs represented members of the black community back to themselves in intimate portrayal and were taken from his perspective as an integral member of the community as opposed to basic documentary images perceived from "outsiders". Burke's interests have expanded to include other communities in the city and their experiences.
Burke's first notable exhibition, Handsworth from the Inside, was held at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and then the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1983. Since then his work has been exhibited at Light House, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, The Black Arts Gallery in London, Cornerhouse in Manchester and Walsall Museum and Art Gallery, and he has held solo exhibitions abroad in New York City and Mali. In addition to traditional galleries and other such settings, Burke has purposely exhibited his work in locations more easily accessible to black audiences such as community centres, clubs, pubs, churches, pool halls and schools. [8] The 1993 exhibition From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image , organised by Birmingham Central Library, included his work alongside that of three other Birmingham photographers: Sir Benjamin Stone (1838–1914), Ernest Dyche (1887–1973) and Claudette Holmes (born 1962). [9] Burke was a significant contributor of imagery to the Birmingham photography magazine and collective, Ten.8 .
Burke's work has also been used in documentaries (including Handsworth Songs , 1986), [10] television programmes, books and on record sleeves such as UB40's "Geffrey Morgan". A biography entitled A Retrospective, on the life and works of Burke, was published in 1993 by Lawrence & Wishart, edited by Mark Sealy. [11] In 1990, Burke received a call from a friend in South Africa saying: "South Africa is going to be free and we need you here." During two visits to the country, in 1990 then in 1996, Burke photographed the life of black South Africans just after Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the subsequent ANC celebrations hosted and attended by Mandela for the anti-Apartheid veterans.
The "Vanley Burke Archive" maintained by Birmingham City Council is a constantly growing photographic and documentary community resource. Complementing his photographic documentation, Burke collects material that samples and evidences developments and activities of the black community in Britain. The material comprises things such as posters or flyers and funeral cards that may have been seen as disposable at the time of their creation but take greater significance when maintained in the context of his archive. They evidence and provide insight of the daily activities and everyday lives, cultural and religious beliefs, the arts, political ideals, health and other facets affecting the black community and others in Birmingham and in Britain. Burke is still documenting the black community in the UK and has more recently worked on a number of projects including an exhibition and publication project documenting the Asian community in Birmingham. [12]
Having won a Kodak Award as early as 1984, he has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Leicester University, UK, in 2007, and the Wolverhampton School of Art and Design awarded him an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Art in 2009 [13] at their award ceremony. Stuart Hall endorsed that:
"the personal, social and economic life of black people as they arrived, settled and became established in British society – is being constructed, given a certain meaning, significance, value, by Burke's camera eye, not merely 'captured'."
Burke said in September 2005:
"It's just about the ability to see something others may be unable to see, in terms of the value. Then show people. They need to see their contribution to this community. I mean, they have been contributing to this thing from the 50s and it's gone beyond, but there is no reference anywhere. It's about having themselves reflected, they are so desperate to see themselves. But this will be there, it isn't going anywhere....".
The British Library conducted an oral history interview (C459/217) with Burke in 2014 for its Oral History of British Photography collection. [14]
In 2015, Burke recreated the front room of his home in Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, for a show characterised as "a living archive of untold black British history". [15]
In 2018, the site-specific installation Vanley Burke: 5000 Miles and 70 Years was part of the events at mac, Birmingham, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush from the Caribbean to the UK. [16] [17]
Burke was a guest on BBC Radio 4's programme Desert Island Discs , first broadcast on 4 November 2018, when he was interviewed by Lauren Laverne and explained his motivation for documenting culture and history. [18]
In 2021, London's National Portrait Gallery acquired a portrait of Burke by photographer Pogus Caesar. [19]
Burke was the recipient of a 2022 Paul Hamlyn Award for his contribution to Visual Art. [20]
Burke is a father to three sons, a grandfather to six children.[ citation needed ]
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(January 2022) |
Soho House is a museum run by Birmingham Museums Trust, celebrating Matthew Boulton's life, his partnership with James Watt, his membership of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and his contribution to the Midlands Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It is a Grade II* listed 18th-century house in Handsworth, part of Birmingham since 1911, but historically in the county of Staffordshire. It was the home of entrepreneur Matthew Boulton from 1766 until his death in 1809, and a regular meeting-place of the Lunar Society.
Dr. Pogus Caesar is a British artist, archivist, author, curator, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.
Break In The Seal: The Photographs of Pogus Caesar and Vanley Burke was a photographic exhibition held 23 August – 21 September 1986 at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry, by two United Kingdom artists: Pogus Caesar, born in St Kitts, and Vanley Burke from Jamaica. Both came to the United Kingdom from the West Indies as children and have spent most of their lives in Birmingham, where they were educated and still work.
Dame Sonia Dawn Boyce is a British Afro-Caribbean artist and educator, living and working in London. She is a Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London. Boyce's research interests explore art as a social practice and the critical and contextual debates that arise from this area of study. Boyce has been closely collaborating with other artists since 1990 with a focus on collaborative work, frequently involving improvisation and unplanned performative actions on the part of her collaborators. Boyce's work involves a variety of media, such as drawing, print, photography, video, and sound. Her art explores "the relationship between sound and memory, the dynamics of space, and incorporating the spectator". To date, Boyce has taught Fine Art studio practice for more than 30 years in several art colleges across the UK.
Keith Piper is a British artist, curator, critic and academic. He was a founder member of the groundbreaking BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students, mostly based in the West Midlands region of the UK.
The BLK Art Group was the name chosen in 1982 by a group of five influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in England. Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Eddie Chambers and Donald Rodney were initially based in the Midlands.
Ronald "Charlie" Phillips, also known by the nickname "Smokey", is a Jamaican-born restaurateur, photographer, and documenter of black London. He is now best known for his photographs of Notting Hill during the period of West Indian migration to London; however, his subject matter has also included film stars and student protests, with his photographs having appeared in Stern, Harper’s Bazaar, Life and Vogue and in Italian and Swiss journals. Notable recent shows by Phillips include How Great Thou Art, "a sensitive photographic documentary of the social and emotional traditions that surround death in London's African Caribbean community".
David A. Bailey, is a British Afro-Caribbean curator, photographer, writer and cultural facilitator, living and working in London. Among his main concerns are the notions of diaspora and black representation in art.
Hurvin Anderson is a British painter.
Armet Francis is a Jamaican-born photographer and publisher who has lived in London since the 1950s. He has been documenting and chronicling the lives of people of the African diaspora for more than 40 years and his assignments have included work for The Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Supplement, BBC and Channel 4.
Mark Sealy is a British curator and cultural historian with a special interest in the relationship of photography to social change, identity politics and human rights. In 1991 he became the director of Autograph ABP, the Association of Black Photographers, based since 2007 at Rivington Place, a purpose-built international visual arts centre in Shoreditch, London. He has curated several major international exhibitions and is also a lecturer.
Rita Keegan is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist, based in England since the late 1970s. She is a multi-media artist whose work uses video and digital technologies. Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK's Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in Britain.
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John Myers is a British landscape and portrait photographer and painter. Between 1973 and 1981 he photographed mundane aspects of middle class life in the centre of England—black and white portraits of ordinary people and suburbia within walking distance of his home in Stourbridge.
Neil Emile Elias Kenlock is a Jamaican-born photographer and media professional who has lived in London since the 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kenlock was the official photographer of the British Black Panthers, and he has been described as being "at the forefront of documenting the black experience in the UK". Kenlock was co-founder of Choice FM, the first successful radio station granted a licence to cater for the black community in Britain.
Janine Wiedel is a documentary photographer and visual anthropologist. She was born in New York City, has been based in the UK since 1970, and lives in London. Since the late 1960s she has been working on projects which have become books and exhibitions. In the early 1970s she spent five years working on a project about Irish Travellers; in the late 1970s two years documenting the industrial heartland of Britain. Wiedel's work is socially minded, exploring themes such as resistance, protest, multiculturalism and counterculture movements.
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