This website uses cookies to provide you with a good experience when you browse this site and to allow us to make website improvements. For more information about cookies, what they do and how to manage them, see our cookie policy.

Artist

Armet Francis

Armet
Black Church, 1980 © Armet Francis. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage

Armet Francis, born in 1945 in St Elizabeth, Jamaica, is a British photographer and publisher whose work documents and chronicles people of the African diaspora. Francis moved to London in 1955, age ten, part of the Windrush generation and began his career as a teenager, working in a commercial photographic studio. He went on not only to forge a career as a freelance photographer for fashion magazines and advertising campaigns, but to create his own pioneering documentary work.

Of his career Francis has said: "In 1969 I embarked on a lifetime project.... I was living and working in the first world, materially that is, but becoming more aware of inequalities to the third world, to be more specific the Black World. As a Black photographer I started to realise I had no social documentary images in my work.... I went back (to Jamaica) in 1969.... I had been away 14 years; it would take another 14 years to make sense of this project”. Following his participation in 1977 at ‘Festac '77’ in Lagos, Nigeria (the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture), he became devoted to photographing the people of the African diaspora.

In 1983 Armet Francis was the first Black photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in London, presenting ‘The Black Triangle’ a series that emerged from his investigation of the multi-dimensional experiences of Black people across the diaspora. In 1984 Francis published a book of the same title, ‘The Black Triangle’ and, four years later, published ‘Children of the Black Triangle’. He was a contributing photographer in the survey issue of Ten. 8 vol. 2, no. 3, 1992, entitled ‘Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 80s’.

In 1988 Francis was a co-founder of the Association of Black Photographers (now Autograph ABP). He was the official photographer for Africa '05, a major celebration of African arts held throughout 2005 in the UK. As part of this Francis was one of three Jamaican-born photographers – the others being Charlie Phillips and Neil Kenlock – whose work was showcased in the exhibition ‘Roots to Reckoning’ at the Museum of London. In 2009, with the assistance of Art Fund, the Museum of London acquired the ‘Roots to Reckoning archive’, comprising 90 photographs of London's Black community from the 1960s to the 1980s. Photographs by Francis also featured prominently in Staying Power, the collaborative project mounted in 2015 by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the Black Cultural Archives.

Armet Francis lives and works in London.