The Black House

Artist: Colin Jones 
Author: Mike Phillips (intro.) 
Publisher: Prestel 
Date: 2006 
Condition: The first edition hardback, complete with original unclipped printed dust wrapper, some very light shelf marking to the wrapper edges but otherwise excellent. Internally this copy is very clean, tidy and apparently little-used. 

A very scarce but important book, this volume documents what began as an assignment for The Sunday Times in 1973. Jones was commissioned to visit and photograph a residential hostel in Islington, North London, 'a halfway house for vulnerable young people'. The home, called Harambee (Swahili for 'pulling together'), was run by Herman Edwards and Jones gradually built up a level of trust to be allowed in and to photograph the residents. 

The young men and women who lived there were very distrustful of authority but Jones gradually built up a level of trust and acceptance with them and over the next three years was able to visit and photograph them, creating a valuable record of the young Black experience in London at the time. The project was closed later in the decade, but this series of photographs have been recognised as an exceptional record of a distinct group of people at a time when their circumstances were very deprived.

Jones was an important figure from a generation of outstanding British photographers. Born in Poplar to a working-class family, he trained as a ballet dancer and performed with the Royal Ballet, but left when he realised his life would take other paths. He began work as a photographer and produced a large body of superb images over a long career, often covering working lives. Hence his lauded images of the backstage world of the ballet contrasts with the lives of miners in the north-east and Liverpool dockers. He photographed Martin Luther King in Alabama and was also responsible for the early and memorable images of The Who (the Union Jack jacket!).

His work is held in several important photographic collections, including the V&A, Tate Gallery, Arts Council, National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery of Art, Washington