Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain

These striking studio portraits, curated and brought together following ten years of 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 Black people photographed in Britain.

The historically marginalized lives of both ordinary and prominent Black 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 plate negatives, cartes de visite and cabinet cards, many of which were buried deep in various private and public archives including the Hulton Archive’s remarkable London Stereoscopic Company collection, unseen for decades. These photographs are linked with imperial and colonial narratives through newly commissioned essays and rare lecture transcripts, in-conversation and text interventions by Caroline Bressey, Henry Louis Gates Jr, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Neelika Jayawardane, Lola Jaye, and Renée Mussai, and an afterword by Mark Sealy.

Built upon groundbreaking, in-depth new research, Black Chronicles opens up photographic archives to expand and enrich photography’s complex cultural histories and subjectivities, offering an essential insight into the visual politics of race, representation and difference in the Victorian era by addressing this crucial missing chapter.

Published by Thames & Hudson in partnership with Autograph.

Contributors

Edited and with texts by Renée Mussai
Renée Mussai is an independent curator, writer, and scholar of visual culture. Formerly senior curator and head of collection at Autograph, she is currently senior research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London and Sotheby’s Insitute of Art, guest curator at the Barnes Foundation, and chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s advisory council. Her publications include the sole-authored Eyes That Commit: A Visual Gathering (forthcoming) and several award-winning artist monographs and edited volumes.

Foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Texts by Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Lola Jaye, Neelika Jayawardane, Renée Mussai, Mark Sealy, and Val Wilmer.

Co-published 2025 by Thames & Hudson, London and Autograph, London
Edited and with texts by Renée Mussai
304 pages
394 illustrations
Hardcover, 25.4 x 30.48 cm
ISBN-10: 0500026610
ISBN-13: 9780500026618

Release date 29 April 2025. Pre-orders will ship the week of 29 April from Autograph's gallery in London, UK. 

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