Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain

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.

The historically marginalized lives of both ‘ordinary’ and prominent figures of African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and mixed heritage are seen through a prism of 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 and colonial 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.

Built upon Autograph's 2014 groundbreaking exhibition Black Chronicles II with new 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 other edited volumes.

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, the Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Val Wilmer, Michael Graham-Stewart, Edward Reeves, and others. 

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

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