The Birmingham-based documentary photographer, graphic designer and jazz researcher, Brian J Homer died on 10 July aged 79 years, after a short and sudden illness. Brian's work was always political (with a small p). With a large archive of work from the 1970s to the present he told Paul Hill for a piece in Amateur Photographer magazine "there was a social purpose to the documentation, but people are now fascinated by how places and people looked half a century ago". His work was prescient and remains relevant today.
Brian co-founded and worked on Grapevine and Broadside Magazines in Birmingham between 1971 to 1979. Grapevine reached a peak of 3000 sales and ran from 1971 to 1975. In 1975 he edited Brum Book a guide book to Birmingham before co-founding another magazine similar to Grapevine - Broadside - which ran from 1976 to 1979. Brian was part of the original Handsworth Self Portrait project with Derek Bishton and John Reardon in 1979, with whom he also co-founded Ten8 magazine which launched in 1978. Ten.8 provided a forum for West Midlands-based photographers to come together and share images and ideas. It was described by the Jamaican scholar Professor Stuart Hall as “the journal which has most systematically explored the relationship between how we represent the world photographically, the knowledge which these images produce and their implications for power and politics”. It was the subject of a special display at the Photographers' Gallery between 2024-2025.
Alongside his own documentary photography which documented Birmingham and elsewhere internationally from the 1970s these included the Grunwick dispute march in Birmingham in 1978 and Rock Against Racism march in London in 1978. He was commissioned by Peter James of the Library of Birmingham in 2013 to produce 1000 portraits which were shown on a large screen in the library.
His archive is housed in the Art, Design and Media archive at Birmingham City University. It comprises of a full set of Grapevine and Broadside Magazines together with a copy of Brum Book. Brian co-founded, with Trevor Fisher, Grapevine a what's on and news magazine based in Birmingham. Run mainly by volunteers who did everything from writing, design and layout to distribution. The archive for Handsworth Self Portrait was accepted in to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 2024. It includes notebooks, organisation and financial information, publicity posters, press cuttings, the original negatives and a very full set of more than 200 matched scans and prints.
From 1978 to 2015 Brain ran a design agency and was an active photographer documenting the jazz scene. He was a member of the Jazz Research Cluster at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and was collaborating with Dr Pedro Cravinho on Everyday Jazz Life a project exploring jazz musicians lives. His work featured in numerous publications including Café Royal's Saltley 1978-79 and Everyday Jazz Lives (with Pedro Cravinho) and his own photozine Birmingham 2025.
See: Brian's website: https://www.brianhomer.com/
Ten8 magazine history from Derek Bishton: https://derekbishton.com/other-stuff/legacy-ten8/
Handsworth Self Portrait: https://handsworthselfportrait.co.uk/
BCU Archive: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/arts/art-and-design-archive/collections/brian-homer-collection
Images: (top) Brian shown centre, bearded, at the Gruncwick dispute in 1978 taken by Derek Bishton with Brian's camera; (left, top), the first issue of Ten8 magazine created by Brian Homer and Derek Bishton; (right) portrait from Handsworth Self Portrait; (left, below) Everyday Jazz Lives.
