Dudley is one of four metropolitan areas in the Black Country. It’s a small town and has a great college photography course and famous teacher with a high number going onto university to pursue photography around the country.
Our Photography Champion in Dudley is Anand Chhabra, who is founding a Dudley Photographers Network to create a greater sense of community and opportunity for returning graduates, and find ways of helping photographers address and action their needs. Anand is focused on building a community in more informal settings or community settings to address the needs and hopes photographers have to create work and forge links to the industry, galleries and how to make a career from photography. Collaborators in Dudley include Dudley College, and Dudley Archives.
About Anand Chhabra
Anand Chhabra is a founder, director and the incumbent Chair at Black Country Visual Arts and has been involved in the arts as a photographer for over 20 years. He began a full-time career as an artist beginning as Wolverhampton’s recipient of the ‘collide’ programme in 2005. Anand has been Director at Black Country Visual Arts since it was founded in 2014 has initiated all their projects single-handedly including finding partners, writing proposals and sourcing funding for their projects up to date which include Exodus: Movement of a People, Desi Pubs and Apna Heritage Archive (AHA). At the heart of Anand’s work is people and the stories that they share. in 2018, Anand received a British Council grant to conduct research around the family album and present on Punjabi migration in India with considerable success presenting at India’s major institutions Dr Bhau Daji Lad in Mumbai and Punjab Lalit Kala Akademie in Chandigarh. Anand continues to work on various photographic commissions and on exhibitions. In 2018, Anand was shortlisted for Magnum Foundation’s Photography in Collaboration: Migration and Religion and has been nominated for Prix Pictet 2019 for his work SUPNAA: Dreams of our Fathers. Recently, Anand worked with the National Portrait Gallery and created new portraits for Punjabi Migration in Wolverhampton which are now purchased and held in collections at the NPG in London since 2024.
