A very happy memory and an emotional one too.” The emotions of these photographs are especially touching when they depict those we have lost. We also played silly games in the sand and I was on the losing side with tug-of-war. The caption alongside the submission reads, “We played black dance music on a ghetto blaster. In another photograph from 1985 submitted by Vernal Scott, black gay men are pictured in blue, white and orange swim shorts frolicking in a field in Littlehampton. In the comments of a photograph depicting members of the Black Gay Group at an intimate social in the early 1980s, elder black queer women excitedly identify themselves and their girlfriends. These are photographs of love, comradeship and happiness.
#BLACK GAY BAR LONDON ARCHIVE#
Since its launch, our archive has been a site for storytelling and collective memories. There was something really important about having that cut-off point just before the millennium.” “I wanted to capture the people who I grew up with, the people who were my elders and mentors, and those who are no longer with us.
![black gay bar london black gay bar london](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/330000/images/_332812_compton300.jpg)
It gives a sense of a different time and a different place.” This approach also means that the archive can represent a particular generation of black queer people, socialising before the increased visibility and accessibility of black queer people enabled by 21st century creations of social apps like Grindr or events like UK Black Pride. “We also wanted people to dig around in photo albums to find those pictures. There’s something warm and nice about pictures that have been taken on old cameras,” says Marc. “First of all, we want to capture the look, feel and aesthetic of photographs taken before the digital age.
![black gay bar london black gay bar london](https://attitude.co.uk/media/images/2016/06/heaven.jpg)
The criteria for community submissions to the archive is that the photographs must have been taken before 2000 and not on a phone. It’s these dimensions of love, community and vibrancy that have been core to our efforts to reconstruct black queer Britain as it was. What I’ve always understood about Marc, both from his work as a HIV-prevention activist and his stories and photographs of affection and tenderness, is that he is motivated by the idea that black queer people are deserving of the pleasures that intimacy, romance, love, and – let’s not forget – good sex bring. Under the group sits the programme PrEPster, which Marc cofounded in 2015, which aims to educate and agitate for universal PrEP access – PrEP being an anti-retroviral drug used to prevent HIV infection. In fact, the amorous warmth and romance of the photograph of Marc and Brad is an apt visual footnote for Marc, who today is codirector of The Love Tank CIC, a nonprofit founded in 2018 to promote the health and sexual wellbeing of marginalised demographics. Often, we can build the clearest portraits of ourselves by remembering who we’ve loved and who we’ve known. There’s something quite beautiful about a history that is grounded in the senses, positioning the memory of touch, kisses, dances and laughter as central to the zeitgeist that the queer people of black Britain lived through. But these efforts must be complemented by projects that capture the textures and sensibilities of the black experience, the moments that aren’t necessarily viewed as of major historical significance, but still define our lifetimes. The work of young campaigners, such as the founder of The Black Curriculum, Lavinya Stennett, to teach black history in our schools and universities is radical considering the opposition from government ministers against so-called “ woke” overhauls of school curricula. Attempts to recover black British history often focus on the marginality of colonial history, major events and moments of race relations in our curriculums, hoping to bring them to the fore of our education. With 27 years between Marc and I, the archive aims to show young black queer people like me that our history in this country has been rich and lively. A digital community archive that lives on Instagram, it’s dedicated to honouring and remembering black queer life in Britain, namely its sociality, friendships, intimacies, parties and pleasures. It was this photograph that Marc and I used to premiere “ Black & Gay, Back In The Day” on 1 February, the first day of LGBT+ History Month.