New Exhibition Features Previously Unseen Portraits of Blacks in the Victorian Era. | SUPERSELECTED - Black Fashion Magazine Black Models Black Contemporary Artists Art Black Musicians

New Exhibition Features Images of Blacks in the Victorian Era Previously Unseen for 120 Years.

by superselected · Art, Blacks in the Victorian Era, Exhibitions, History, Photography · 16 Sep 2014

The Black Chronicles, Blacks In the Victorian Era

If you are in London anytime soon, you should definitely take advantage of the opportunity to see this rare collection of photographs unearthed by the British organization Autograph ABP.

Autograph ABP is a foundation that seeks to inform world history as it relates to people of color, by sharing archives documenting the experiences of marginalized peoples in the Western world. Their latest project “Black Chronicles II”, features beautiful, haunting images of blacks in the Victorian era. The images were last published in The London Illustrated News in 1891. The images are a brief look into the diverse populations from Jamaica, India, and Ethiopia, among other countries who came to settle in the United Kingdom for various reasons. The Guardian reports,

“Black Chronicles II is part of a wider ongoing project called The Missing Chapter,” says Mussai, “which uses the history of photography to illuminate the missing chapters in British history and culture, especially black history and culture. There is a widespread misconception that black experience in Britain begins with the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the first Jamaican immigrants in 1948, but, as this exhibition shows, there is an incredible archive of images of black people in Britain that goes right back to the invention of photography in the 1830s.”