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Celebrate the publication of a landmark new book, edited by Renée Mussai, that transforms our understanding of race and visual culture in Victorian Britain
Autograph
Rivington Place
London EC2A 3BA, UK
Tickets for this event will open on 27 June. You can register with Eventbrite to receive a reminder when tickets are available.
The Black Chronicles book will be available to purchase at the event, discounted by £8 (the ticket price)
Join us as we mark the launch of Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain. This new publication brings together over ten years of curatorial research championed by Autograph, featuring the most comprehensive collection of 19th-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era, including some of the earliest known images of photographed Black people in Britain.
The evening will include a panel discussion exploring the visual politics of race and representation in 19th-century Britain. Chaired by Tamar Garb, speakers will include Renée Mussai, Heather Agyepong and Lola Jaye.
Edited by Renée Mussai and published by Thames & Hudson in partnership with Autograph, Black Chronicles reimagines the presence and visibility of African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and mixed-heritage individuals in the photographic record of Victorian Britain. Many of the images – from studio portraits to cartes de visite – are published here for the first time, following their discovery in archives including the Hulton Archive at Getty Images, the Royal Collection and the National Portrait Gallery.
There will be a drinks reception after the talk and an opportunity to purchase the book.
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Edited by Renée Mussai
£50 / 304 pages / 394 Illustrations
A collection of extraordinary 19th-century portraits that radically shifts our understanding of the presence and identities of the Black figures in Victorian Britain.
Expanding Autograph's groundbreaking series of eponymous exhibitions (2014 - 18) with in-depth new research, Black Chronicles opens up photographic archives to probe and enrich photography’s complex cultural histories and subjectivities, offering essential insight into the visual politics of race, representation and difference in the Victorian era by addressing this crucial missing chapter.
Edited by Renée Mussai, these striking studio portraits – brought together here following ten years of curatorial research championed by Autograph – constitute the most comprehensive collection of 19th-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era, including some of the earliest known images of photographed Black people in Britain.
With more than 300 visual documents, the historically often marginalized lives of both ‘ordinary’ and prominent figures of African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and mixed heritage are seen through a prism of curatorial advocacy and experimental scholarly assemblage. Black Chronicles features high quality reproductions of original plate negatives, vintage cartes de visite and cabinet cards, many of which were buried deep in various private and public image repertoires for decades, including Getty Images’ remarkable London Stereoscopic Company collection at the Hulton Archive, National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Collection and several others. These striking photographs are linked with imperial narratives through newly commissioned essays, lecture transcripts, in-conversation text interventions and critical reflections by Caroline Bressey, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, M. Neelika Jayawardane, Lola Jaye, Renée Mussai, Mark Sealy and Val Wilmer.
Contributors
Edited and with texts by Renée Mussai
Texts by Caroline Bressey, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, M. Neelika Jayawardane, Lola Jaye, Renée Mussai, Mark Sealy and Val Wilmer.
Images / Illustrations from the collections of Autograph, Getty Images’ Hulton Archive, National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Collection, Paul Frecker’s Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Val Wilmer, Michael Graham-Stewart, Edward Reeves, and others.
Heather Agyepong is British Ghanaian award winning artist and an Olivier nominated actress based in London.
Her art practice is concerned with mental health, invisibility and radical truth telling. Her work is performance and lens based centred on catharsis. Her work is part of numerous collections including the National Portrait Gallery, The Walther Collection and New Orleans Museum of Art.
Tamar Garb is Durning Lawrence Professor in History of Art at University College London.
Her research has focused on questions of gender and sexuality in European art as well as on post-apartheid culture, contemporary art, and the history of lens-based practices in Africa. Key publications include Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin de Siècle France, (1996) and The Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France, 18145-1914. (2007). She has written recently on ASIKO and experimental art pedagogies in Africa as well as on artists/photographers from Paul Weinberg to William Kentridge.
Her curatorial projects include: Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography (V&A, 2011); Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive (Walther Collection, 2015) William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland: A Conversation in Letters and Lines (Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016) Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt (Walther Collection, 2023) and Portia Zvavahera ‘Zvakazarurwa’ Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2024-2025.
Lola Jaye is a critically acclaimed author & psychotherapist who has penned seven novels and a self-help book.
She was born and raised in London, England and has lived in Nigeria and the United States. Lola has a keen interest in Black history and bringing untold stories to life and has also appeared on television discussing mental health matters, in her role as a psychotherapist.
She has written for CNN, HuffPost and the BBC. ‘The Attic Child,’ (Macmillan) released in 2022 was inspired by a photograph of a little boy named Ndugu M'Hali and has since been nominated for The Jhalak Prize and shortlisted for The Diverse Book Awards. Her latest novel, ‘The Manual for Good Wives,’ (Macmillan) has just been released in hardback and will be out in paperback, September 2025.
Renée Mussai is an independent curator, writer, and scholar of visual culture.
Former senior curator and head of curatorial & collections at Autograph, as well as artistic director / chief curator at The Walther Collection, she currently acts as senior research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg, visiting lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and University of the Arts London, guest curator at the Barnes Foundation, and Chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s advisory council.
Mussai’s research-led curatorial work routinely centers Black feminist / afro-diasporic practices of photography and lens-based media. She has organised numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions internationally, including most recently Mickalene Thomas: All About Love (2024/25), and her publications include several edited volumes and award-winning artist monographs, such as Lina Iris Viktor: Dark Matter— Some Are Born to Endless Night (2021) and Zanele Muholi: Hail, the Dark Lioness (2018, Vol I and 2024, Vol II).
Her next book is the sole-authored Eyes that Commit – A Visual Gathering (forthcoming, 2026).
We look forward to welcoming you to Autograph. For more details about visiting, have a look at our Visit Us page, it has information about getting to the gallery, safety and accessibility.
Autograph welcomes people with all types of disabilities.
Autograph's events are popular. We highly recommend booking in advance.
Our building and entrance is step free. A wheelchair accessible lift goes to all floors.
The talk will take place in Gallery 1 and the Studio on the ground floor.
The panel discussion portion of this event will be seated.
The book will be available to purchase on the night with contactless payment.
The ticket price for this event is £8. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. If this ticket price is unaffordable for you please get in touch with Harriet at harriet@autograph-abp.co.uk about free ticketing options.
Autograph's events are popular, and often sell out. We recommend booking a ticket in advance. If you need to cancel your ticket for any reason, you can receive a refund up to 24 hours before the start of the event. You do not need to bring your paper ticket to the event.
Banner image and page spreads: from Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain. Co-published 2025 by Thames & Hudson, London and Autograph, London. Edited by Renée Mussai.
About the Speakers: 1) Heather Agyepong by Ejatu Shaw © Ejatu Shaw. 2) 3) Renée Mussai. Photograph by Christa Holka.
Your Visit: Autograph, London. Photograph by Kate Elliott
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
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