Johny Pitts
Home is Not a Place
Launched in 2021, the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship is a new biennial research and development opportunity for mid-career artists using photography. The fellowship offers a substantial bursary with access to a production budget, a mentorship programme, a series of events, and a national touring exhibition.
Johny Pitts was selected as the inaugural recipient of the fellowship from almost 400 applicants. Over the past eleven months, the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship has enabled the artist to research and develop a new series titled Home is Not a Place that documents Black British culture, people, and geographies journeying along the Thames and circumnavigating the British coast. Following the tradition of British documentary photography, Pitts is exploring the notion of home, particularly from the lens of Black communities, where there is a sense that home is where your community is and considering that black landscapes and geographies are ephemeral; ‘my photographic practice involves trying to celebrate Black spaces, capture them while they’re still here and give them a home. If not in a literal sense in a figurative sense, for me home is somewhere that you take with you.’
Home is Not a Place premiered as a solo show at Graves Gallery, Museums Sheffield in autumn 2022, and toured to Stills, Edinburgh in spring 2023, and will open at The Photographer’s Gallery this summer.
The Photographer’s Gallery
16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
23 June – 24 September 2023
Stills Edinburgh
23 Cockburn St, Edinburgh EH1 1BP
9 March – 10 June 2023
Graves Gallery, Sheffield Museums
Surrey St, Sheffield, S1 1XZ
11 August 2022 – 24 December 2022
Originally commissioned through the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship, supported by The Ampersand Foundation and Photoworks.
![](https://photoworks.org.uk/app/uploads/2022/06/AmpersandStrip-1-1200x237.png)