Exhibition, The Photographers’ Gallery London, 23rd June 2023 – 24th September 2023
Johny Pitts – Home is Not a Place

Header image and all photos below Home is Not a Place © Johny Pitts

 Johny Pitts is an award winning photographer whose work spans portraits of working class Sheffield (2016) to Afropean: Travels in Black Europe (2020). His style is documentary meets drama, his compositions always complimentary to his subjects. Pitt’s touring exhibition Home is Not a Place is currently on display at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, having previously been shown in his hometown of Sheffield at the Graves Gallery, and at the Stills Gallery in Edinburgh.

Excerpt from the press release here:

‘The Photographers’ Gallery presents Home is Not a Place by photographer and writer Johny Pitts, a reflection on Black British culture, people and geographies, exploring the notion of home.

“My photographic practice involves trying to celebrate Black spaces, capture them while they’re still here and give them a home. If not in a literal sense, in a figurative sense, for me home is somewhere that you take with you” – Johny Pitts.

What is Black Britain? In 2021, photographer and writer, Johny Pitts, and poet Roger Robinson travelled around the British coast in search of an answer to this question. Their collaboration, Home is Not a Place, will be on display at The Photographers’ Gallery this June (to September).

Travelling in a red Mini Cooper, Pitts and Robinson’s circumnavigation encompassed the coastal, urban, rural and suburban, via the places in-between. Following the coast clockwise, together they set out to document and respond to the many manifestations of Black British culture, and to present an alternative to official and media narratives.

A bespoke ‘welcome table’ in the gallery will be a focal point for visitors to flick through Pitts’ family photo album, chat and exchange ideas. The welcome table, designed by the artist’s sister, Chantal Pitts, is inspired by American writer James Baldwin’s unpublished novel of the same name. The title of the show is also drawn from a Baldwin quote “perhaps home is not a place, but simply an irrevocable condition”. Pirate radio playlists and furniture from Pitts’ 1980s youth recreate the atmosphere, in which Pitts describes ‘a Black or working-class community could feel at home’. Many of his family contributed to this room set – everyone is welcome to take a seat and feel at home’.

An accompanying book Home is Not a Place, which combines Pitts’ photographs with poems by Roger Robinson, is published by Harper Collins.

Johny Pitts – Home is Not a Place runs from 23rd June – 24th September 2023.

All images and exhibition details are reproduced under permissions from The Photographers’ Gallery and are copyrighted Home is Not a Place © Johny Pitts.

You can find further details including opening times, ticket prices and concessions, and other exhibitions on their website.

The Photographers’ Gallery, 16 – 18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW (nearest tube Oxford Circus)

Intro by Siobhan

Published 19th July 2023