Photographer Neil Kenlock: ‘I protected the Black Panthers with my camera’

Neil Kenlock, who was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, in 1950, moved to Britain in 1963 as part of the Windrush generation. 

As a teenager in London, he experienced racism for the first time. 

It would inform both his activism and his photography.

Kenlock’s pioneering work explored ideas around identity, representation and community, showcasing the cultural lives of black people in Britain. 

He worked for West Indian World, the first national newspaper created for and by black Britons, in the early 1970s, co-founded ROOT magazine, a glossy lifestyle publication aimed at black audiences, in 1979 and went on to launch commercial black music station Choice 96.9FM in 1990. 

As well as being at the vanguard of black British culture, he was on the front line of the political struggle as official photographer of the British Black Panthers.

His photographs chart the movement during a period of great social change, taking the campaign against racism and inequality onto the streets. The images showing how important the visual language of posters and banners was as a tool for political communication. 

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“We were campaigning against racism, and we were demanding that we have our full share, that we are part of this society,” Kenlock says. 

“It’s a hidden story, that’s why it’s important that these photographs exist. Without them, it would have been difficult to tell this story, especially to young people.

“The camera was there to protect and that’s what I was doing. I was protecting the Black Panthers.”

Neil Kenlock’s work features in the Beyond the Streets exhibition, showing at Saatchi Gallery, London until 5 May 2027

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