Twenty years, one question: What does it mean to be Black and European?

Twenty years of photography: Johny Pitts’ ‘Black Bricolage’ exhibition in Paris captures the everyday lives of Black Europeans rarely seen in headlines. | Contesto: cronaca

Punti chiave

• Twenty years, one question: What does it mean to be Black and European?

Contesto

For two decades, British photographer Johny Pitts has crisscrossed Europe with a camera and a single, persistent question: what does it mean to be Black and European? The answer now fills a room at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Titled “Black Bricolage,” the exhibition assembles photographs, notebooks, and documents gathered from cities across the continent – Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Marseille, and Brussels. It focuses on ordinary lives, the kind that rarely make the front page, offering a visual record of communities often overlooked in mainstream narratives. Pitts began his journey in the early 2000s, driven by a desire to document the diversity of Black experiences in Europe. Over the years, he has captured moments of daily life: a barber shop in Lisbon, a family gathering in Berlin, a street scene in Marseille. The collection is not a polished portrait but a patchwork – a bricolage, as the title suggests – of fragments that together form a broader picture. The exhibition includes handwritten notes, maps, and ephemera that Pitts collected along the way, adding layers of context to the images. The significance of “Black Bricolage” lies in its quiet defiance of stereotypes. Pitts avoids sensationalism or political slogans, instead presenting the mundane and the intimate. His subjects are not posing for history; they are simply living. In doing so, the work challenges the idea that Black Europeans are a monolithic group or a recent phenomenon. It reveals a presence that is both longstanding and deeply woven into the fabric of European cities, yet often rendered invisible in official records and media coverage. The exhibition arrives at a time when debates about race, identity, and belonging are intensifying across Europe. From France’s universalist ideals to Germany’s grappling with its colonial past, the question of who is considered European remains contested. Pitts’ work does not offer easy answers, but it provides a visual archive that insists on the complexity of Black European identities. It also highlights the role of photography in documenting communities that might otherwise be forgotten. “Black Bricolage” has drawn attention not only...

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Categoria: cronaca