COVER STORY Why is Black History Month important and how can or do you use your photography to raise awareness about Black excellence? History is important. Black History Month is needed because Black history is excluded from history. If that history was taught it would not be needed. Yet Black people’s existence is always being written out of history even today. Black History Month is a small way of writing it back in. So for example I remember watching a documentary about Birmingham in the 80s, the film took us all around the city, past the old Bull Ring, down the ramp of Mark One, all around the markets etc. There was not one single Black person in the whole film. To someone viewing that in 200 years, history will tell the story of no Black people being in Birmingham in the 1980s. so just the same as people look at books of the 1800s and believe no black people lived in the UK because we have been written out of that history, people will still do the same in future years because this process is still happening. I go to Remembrance Day and the mainstream press have all left by the time the Black soldiers march so most of the country forgets this reminder that Black people also fought for our freedoms and independence in this country. We have local films like this to huge Hollywood blockbusters that are made in countries populated by Black people that feature no Black people. We even have films like The World Trade Centre made about current heroes such as Jason Thomas who was a black ex-marine decorated for this heroism, but who is played by a white actor in the film.
PHOTOS (LEFT PAGE): ADAM YOSEF / MIGRANT VOICE
Because we all have a set of personal value filters every time we shoot. What and how a man will capture a picture may not be the same as woman, the same with colour and culture. Have you ever looked at a shot and automatically known something about the perspective of the person behind the camera taking it? Have you ever thought “a woman would not have taken that photo” “a Black person would not have taken that photo” “why did the photographer make that person look like that?” etc. This is to do with their perspective being different to yours. By having these different perspectives this raises awareness. Scenes will automatically be shot differently to each other, different things will be focused on etc. without many viewers even being aware of the fact that that is a filter being imposed on that image.