3rd & 5th February 2011
Brixton Market Arcade, London
Brixton Salon was a contemporary restaging of Harry Jacobs’ famous photographic studio. Throughout the 1950s, Harry Jacobs took a series of photographic portraits of newly arrived immigrants living in South London, capturing a unique moment in British history: the advent of multiculturalism.
X Presents… celebrated Jacobs’ importance to the history of South London, and Britain, by recreating a free photographic studio in the Brixton Market Arcade. Members of the local community were invited to be photographed for an online archive, to celebrate Jacobs’ claim as one of the great London chroniclers. Instead of simply perpetuating a complacent nostalgia for the past, the studio will have the potential to prompt a critical re-evaluation of historical narratives, in debate and conjunction with locals who may have grown up during the relevant era.
Brixton Salon was envisioned as a meeting point for conversations on art and the convergence of different ideas, positions and contexts. Alongside the studio, X Presents… curated an exhibition exploring neighbouring topics, such as the role of re-enactment performance in art, the rise of heritage cultures and the position of the artist when making socially informed community based artworks.
The X Presents… Brixton Salon online archive explores different ideas of public history, whereby people’s experiences and understanding of their personal, national and local pasts are central to the creation of different narratives. The photographs will be displayed at Brixton Library from Friday 11th – Monday 14th February. Following this exhibition at the library, the photographs will be donated to Lambeth Archives to create a permanent record of the event.
Website: http://brixtonphotobooth.tumblr.com/
Project Coordinator: Cara Nahaul