Fashion Shoot Brixton Market

Armet Francis is a photographer and publisher who has been devoted to the representation of the Black diaspora for more than 40 years. After leaving school at 14, he worked for an engineering firm in Bromley, before finding a job as an assistant in a West End photographic studio. He went on to forge a career as freelance photographer for fashion magazines and advertising campaigns.

Francis’ major works over the years have focused on the dispersal of people from Africa across the globe, specifically the Americas and the UK, which he calls The Black Triangle. An exhibition of the same name opened at The Photographers Gallery in London in 1983, making him the first Black photographer to have a solo exhibition there. Francis’ assignments have included work for The Times magazine, The Sunday Times Supplement, BBC and Channel 4 and he has exhibited worldwide.

Seeking to subvert commissions to his purpose, Armet Francis used fashion photography as a form of social documentary. In the place of the numerous images of white fashion models photographed in the developing world with Black people and their urban spaces as a backdrop, Francis depicted Black people as bold, glamourous protagonists within their own multicultural communities. Francis showcased Black British style in Brixton, a neighbourhood familiar to him, which had developed a large Black British community following post-war migration from the Caribbean.