Blogs

This talk explores how Black presence has been represented in Korean and Japanese photographic cultures from the mid-twentieth century onward. The Korean War and the Second World War brought large numbers of U.S. military personnel - including Black American soldiers - into both countries. Their arrival shaped not only social interactions on the ground but also the ways Blackness was visually framed and understood in East Asia, particularly in relation to mixed-race children born to Asian mothers and Black GIs.

Photographers in Korea and Japan turned their cameras toward the daily lives of these Black military communities, producing images that intersected with broader shifts in geopolitics and cultural perception. At the same time, international photography competitions that flourished in the 1960s introduced African subjects to East Asian audiences. One striking example is a widely circulated Japanese photography magazine that featured on its cover an arresting portrait of a Mucubal woman from Angola - submitted by a Portuguese amateur photographer. This visual influx unfolded alongside the significant deployment of Black American soldiers to the Vietnam War.

Taken together, these postwar photographic encounters reveal how portrayals of Black culture in Asia were entangled with the legacies of colonialism and the pressures of the Cold War. These forces both enabled and constrained possibilities for Afro-Asian solidarity, leaving a complex visual record that continues to shape contemporary understandings of race, identity, and transnational encounter in the region.

We also invite you to explore the rest of this year’s series which includes exciting research from leading thinkers Anne Strachan Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Zahid R. Chaudhary and Tiffany Fairey. Explore season two, view recordings, and register for all events here.

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler. Our collective investigates photography’s assumed democratic credentials as an art form and a medium of mass communication. We believe a historical perspective on the complex relationship between photography and democracy is critical to understanding how the medium and related visual technologies can address the social and political issues of our time.

By/For: Photography & Democracy: War, Movement, and the Camera: Black Lives in Korean and Japanese Photography
Friday, 2 October 2026 at 13.00 (Eastern Time) / 1800 (BST).
Dr Jeehey Kim (Associate Professor of Art History, University of Arizona)
Learn more and register here.

In August 1976, workers at the Grunwick Film Processing Factories in the London Borough of Brent went on strike due to unfair working conditions. A month later, on the 1st of October 1976, 400 people marched from Cobbold Road to Chapter Road in support of the Grunwick Strike. This mass act of solidarity signalled that the strike was beginning to become a monumental movement in Trade Union and Labour History. The picketing was so significant that by the end of October 1976, the police attempted to limit the picketers to only six at the factory gates.

Join our Special Collections team online as we take a deep dive into the Grunwick Strike archival material held in the Trades Union Congress Library Collections at London Metropolitan University.

The team will each present ONE selected item from the collections and explain their reasons for choosing it. Materials include photographs, posters, press cuttings, and strike bulletins that tell the stories of picketing, police violence, and community solidarity. These primary sources show the united strength of the South Asian and Black workforce, and what it meant to walk out of your job and stand up for your rights in such a visible and dangerous way.

The Grunwick Strike: Solidarity in the Archives
Thursday, 1 October 2026, 1300-1400
Online
See more and register here

Anne Strathie will give a talk about Bath’s own polar explorer, including images of examples from BRLSI’s Franklin Expedition artefacts. They and other objects are now held world-wide, in polar regions, museums, archives, private collections and public spaces. They reflect the contributions to our knowledge of polar expeditions, not only of world-famous explorers, but also of women, whaling captains, scientists, artists, photographers and other less familiar figures.

Anne Strathie has also written three biographies of members of Captain Scott’s Terra Nova Antarctic expedition. She had travelled widely for research and speaking engagements, including in Britain, the polar regions, and countries including New Zealand, Australia, North America, Japan and Norway. Originally from Scotland, Anne now lives in Gloucestershire, in the same home town of polar scientist-explorer, Dr Edward Wilson.

Anne‘s latest book, A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects: from Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age, spans a period which is the bedrock of our multi-disciplinary knowledge of the polar regions.

A history of polar exploration in 50 objects
Anne Strathie
9 April 2026, hybrid
Bath, BRLSI, Queens Square
https://www.brlsi.org/whatson/a-history-of-polar-exploration-in-50-objects/

Images: (top) de Gerlache and Weddell seal stereoview; (right): HG Ponting and A S Newman.

I have been invited to give a talk to the Marsh Forum which is made up of local history groups in Nottingham and the county. My talk 'Pioneers of Photography' uses much of the research carried out by Pauline and Bernard Heathcote, of course, and features Bromley House quite prominently. The talk is at Nottingham Central Library, Carrington Street, Nottingham on 18 October at 10.30. Admission is free but seats need to be booked. nottinghamcitylibraries.co.uk/pioneers-of-photography/