Johny Pitts

Home is Not a Place, 2022

In 2021, photographer Johny Pitts and poet Roger Robinson rented a red Mini Cooper and circumnavigated the British coast clockwise in search of Black history and communities. They began in London and followed the river Thames east towards Tilbury, where the Empire Windrush docked in 1948. They encountered Black British culture overlooked in official narratives, alongside the history of Empire and transatlantic slavery that continues to tether every single Briton.

Home is Not a Place is galvanised by its aim to build an archive for the future where images of everyday Black life are collected and inserted onto today’s incomplete visual history. This new body of work draws on an archive of images Pitts has been making over the past 15 years, beginning in his hometown of Sheffield and spreading out across the UK. The project is an important continuation of Pitts’s work to make everyday Black experiences visible. The artwork included here resembles the format of a fold-out map, offering an alternative reading of the British coast.

Johny Pitts (born in Sheffield, UK) lives and works in London.