Seminar In Search of Britain – SEMINAR

Date / time: 22 January, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Seminar In Search of Britain - SEMINAR

 

The next session of the British history seminar In Search of Britain will take place on 22 January (5pm – 6.30 pm (French time) and will feature Martin Evans (University of Sussex).

The Black@Sussex University Project 2025

This paper will explore the work of the Black@Sussex University Project which I have been involved in since 2021. Specifically, this work focuses on the Black student and staff experience – one key starting point has been an alumni portrait project where the photographers Charlie Phillips and Eddie Otchere have been taking photographs of Black Sussex alumni. I will talk about how the photographs have become a way into a complex conversation between past and present Black students about their educational experiences at Sussex and how these experiences have been shaped by race, class, gender and sexuality.

As such I will place the project within the history of Sussex University as an institution founded in 1961 before talking about the specific impact of the Black Lives Matter moment since 2020. I will also talk about how and why I approached Charlie Phillips whose images of 1960s London were a key part of the exhibition Paris-Londres. Music Migrations. 1962-89 which I co-curated at the French National Museum of the History of Immigration and which ran from March 2019 to January 2020.

Specifically, this paper will focus upon the slow photography approach at play here because these are not quick shoots working to a short timetable. Rather Charlie Phillips and Eddie Otchere follow a principle of slow photography. Humour, joy and meaningful conversation are an integral part of their process. These are not digital images. These images are rooted in an analogue age, the world of the dark room and the contact sheet. In each case the process is collaborative. The sitters choose where they want to be photographed in terms of a specific place that will deepen our understanding of their personal histories. They then choose which photograph they want to be the portrait out of the contact sheets. As such these photographs are about initiating conversations and institutional change. They are opening up a cross-generational reflection upon Black experiences at Sussex; a conversation about past, present and future that aims to be transformative.

Chair: Marine Schütz (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, CRAE)

Zoom link: https://u-picardie-fr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ud-yuqzoiHNCntcoUkOwwQJAHNqK_0iB_