Artist Talk: Charlie Phillips

Join Charlie Phillips and Paul Goodwin in conversation, chaired by Isaac Huxtable, to celebrate Charlie’s long-awaited retrospective publication, A Grassroots Legacy – 1962–2010.

This is a rare opportunity to hear directly from pioneering photographer Charlie Phillips about his work documenting the West Indian community in London, across the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The book brings together Phillips’ era-defining street photography, from musicians, street life, parties and families to British Caribbean funerals and cultural traditions. His photographs capture a changing London and Britain, offering an intimate record of the people, communities and places around him. Together, the conversation will explore Charlie’s approach to documenting community, culture and everyday life, and the lasting importance of this work.

Biographies

Charlie Phillips

Ronald 'Charlie' Phillips was born in 1944 in Kingston, Jamaica, arrived in the UK to join with his parents in 1955, and settled in London's Notting Hill. A gift of a Kodak Brownie camera from an African-American serviceman began Phillips' love of photography. Phillips has become one of Britain's most acclaimed 'accidental' photographers, documenting Notting Hill's West Indian community throughout the 1960's, 70's and 80's. His unique photographs capture the shifting cultural landscape of Notting Hill, including racial integration and the birth of carnival, poor socio-economic conditions, musical entertainment, 'black' funerals and political activism.

Phillips' photographic collection provides an intimate insight into an integral part of black Britain. His work has been exhibited at galleries across the world, including the Tate Britain, the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of the City of New York. In 2015, the importance of his work and the need for it to be shared was recognised through a grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In recent years Phillips has been given many important accolades celebrating his contributions to British art and culture including: an OBE in 2022 for his services to British photography; a Windrush Award in March 2026; and an Honorary Doctorate by The University of Sussex in Brighton. He has been described by Time Out as 'the greatest London photographer you've never heard of' and by historian Prof Simon Schama as 'one of Britain's greatest photo portraitists'

Paul Goodwin

Paul Goodwin is a curator, researcher and educator based in London. He teaches at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London where he is Director of the Research Centre on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and Professor of Contemporary Art.

Isaac Huxtable

Isaac Huxtable is a Yorkshire-born, London-based writer and curator. He works across photography with a central focus on the construction of race in modern and contemporary images. Isaac is currently an Assistant Curator in Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, followed by roles at the British Journal of Photography, the Photographers' Gallery, and the art agency Artiq. His words have featured in the British Journal of Photography, Elephant Magazine, Galerie Peter Sillem, The Photographers' Gallery, V&A, and South London Gallery. He is particularly interested in documentary practices, speculation, and critical theory.