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Young, disenfranchised and black
We last featured the work of Colin Jones way back in 1998 (Ag11) in a portfolio of his work shot in the 1960s and experimentally reprinted using variable contrast papers. Much of that work appeared in his 2002 book Grafters. It is therefore high time we saw some more from Jones. The Black House derives from a project shot for The Sunday Times between 1973 and 1976, documenting life at the Harambee project in Holloway, North London. This was a hostel for troubled black youth, a group then shunned by much of society and facing a bleak future. The project was set up at the beginning of the '70s by Herman Edwards, a Caribbean immigrant - Brother Herman to those who knew him. The reputation of The Black House was not helped by its geographical proximity to a building with the same nickname that had once been home to the infamous Michael X. The project was one of those dealing with 'special social need', funded by the local authority under the provisions of the 1966 Local Government Act, and designed to ameliorate the effects of various forms of social discrimination that followed the migrations to the UK of the early 1960s. Not only does Jones' work provide a record of this one particular community project, it is an important document of a highly significant piece of British social history. It's the kind of photojournalism that marked out the UK's quality newspapers of 40 years ago, but for which there appears to be little room today.
The Black House, by Colin Jones, is published by Prestel, £30, ISBN 3-7913-3671-1.
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