Vanley Burke

Burke was a guest on BBC Radio 4's programme Desert Island Discs, first broadcast on 4 November 2018, when he was interviewed by Lauren Laverne and explained his motivation for documenting culture and history.

The British Library conducted an oral history interview (C459/217) with Vanley Burke in 2014 for its Oral History of British Photography collection.

"It's just about the ability to see something others may be unable to see, in terms of the value. Then show people. They need to see their contribution to this community. I mean, they have been contributing to this thing from the 50s and it's gone beyond, but there is no reference anywhere. It's about having themselves reflected, they are so desperate to see themselves. But this will be there, it isn't going anywhere...." Vanley Burke, September 2005.

Burke's work has also been used in documentaries (including Handsworth Songs, 1986), television programmes, books and on record sleeves such as UB40’s "Jeffrey Morgan". A biography A Retrospective, on the life and works of Vanley Burke, was published by Lawrence & Wishart, edited by Mark Sealy. In 1990 Burke received a call from a friend in South Africa saying: "South Africa is going to be free and we need you here." During two visits to South Africa, in 1990 then in 1996, Burke photographed the life of black South Africans just after Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the subsequent ANC celebrations hosted and attended by Mandela for the anti-Apartheid veterans.

From humble beginnings, Burke is often the subject matter of students dissertations and is considered the most renowned and prolific black photographer in the UK, acclaimed as the "Grandfather of Black British photography". Having won a Kodak Award as early as 1984, he has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Leicester University, UK, in 2007, and the Wolverhampton School of Art and Design presented with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Art in 2009 at their award ceremony. Professor Stuart Hall endorsed that "the personal, social and economic life of black people as they arrived, settled and became established in British society – is being constructed, given a certain meaning, significance, value, by Vanley Burke's camera eye, not merely 'captured'."

Burke's first notable exhibition, Handsworth from the Inside, was held at the Ikon Gallery Birmingham, and then the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1983. Since then his work has been exhibited extensively at venues including The Light House, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, The Black Arts Gallery in London, Cornerhouse in Manchester and Walsall Museum and Art Gallery, and he has held solo exhibitions abroad in New York City and Mali. In addition to many prestigious galleries and other traditional settings, Burke has purposely exhibited his work in locations more easily accessible to black audiences such as community centres, clubs, pubs, churches, pool halls and schools. He was a significant contributor of his imagery to the Birmingham photography magazine and collective, Ten.8.

Vanley seriously started photography around 1967, making a conscious decision to document the black community and lifestyle in England. His first studio was in Grove Lane, Handsworth, Birmingham.

Vanley Burke (born 1951) is a British Jamaican photographer and artist, who has been described as "the Godfather of Black British Photography", with his body of work "regarded as the greatest photographic record of African Caribbean people in post-war Britain".

Vanley Burke was born in St. Thomas, Jamaica, in 1951. For his 10th birthday he was sent a "Box Brownie" camera – a Kodak Brownie 127 – by his mother, who in the late 1950s had gone to live in England, while he remained with his aunt in St.Thomas. In 1965 at the age of 14 he went to join his parents in the UK, leaving his radio to his aunt as a parting gift but taking his camera with him.