This week we discovered ‘The Windrush Stories’ e-book, a project led by photographic arts charity Autograph APB and The Real Selfie Project.
A compelling collection of photobooth ‘selfies’ and first-hand stories from members of the Windrush generation living in the London Borough of Hackney.
Hackney is home to thousands of the Windrush generation who travelled to the UK between 1948 and 1971 to help rebuild the country after WW2.
For the borough’s annual celebration of Windrush Day on 22 June 2019, a rare analogue photobooth from the 1970s was installed at Stoke Newington Town Hall.
The Real Selfie Project was set up in 2017 by photographer Rafael Hortala-Vallve and filmmaker Nick Francis to capture portraits and collect personal stories of people living in Hackney.
“I came to England when I was 20 years old, as an aspiring young man from Grenada. I came here for a better standard of living.” - Bishop Elon Charles
In 2017 the Windrush scandal revealed that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens, many of whom were from the ‘Windrush’ generation, had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights.
In 2018 Hackney made a public commitment to the local Windrush community as the first UK council to pass a motion pledging support to the Windrush generation.
Based in Hackney, Autograph was founded in 1988 to support black photographic practices and to enable the public to explore identity, representation, human rights and social justice.