Pogus Caesar Documenting Black British history with photography

On 9 September, 1985, Handsworth rioted. The Birmingham district was the center of a disruption resulting in 35 injuries and two deaths. The riot reportedly began with the arrest of a man near the Acapulco Cafe and a police raid on a nearby pub. Tension between the West Midlands Police and locals had been on the rise for some time; Black and Asian communities faced high unemployment rates, racist police policy and low standards of living. Hundreds of people attacked police and property, cars were set alight and upturned, fire bombs were set off. By the night of the 9th, more than 1,500 police officers were deployed. Two brothers— Kassamali Moledina, 38, and Amirali Moledina, 44—burned to death in their post office. The riots continued for two days.

Pogus Caesar was there. Born in St Kitts and raised in Birmingham, the photographer—equipped with 36 rolls of film—had no intention beyond documentation. “My plan was to capture the rawness and emotion, to document what became one of the most devastating events to occur in post-war British history,” he explains. Caesar’s images of the riots have since become iconic representations of the conflict, yet he didn’t release them until 20 years later. “The [images] have developed into something the public resonates with; I have no control over how they do,” he says.

“[The Handsworth riots] taught me to be fearless in those types of situations, because of the importance in photographing pivotal moments in history.” Following Handsworth, Caesar has made a career documenting Black British history, through both highs and lows; he has crafted portraits of Black British giants such as Benjamin Zephaniah, as well as more conceptual, often street-based observations—always on film.   

“Documenting the Handsworth riots was painful,” the artist recalls. “I didn’t show the images for over 20 years, because there was a lot of processing on my part of what really occurred. Everyone I spoke to had an alternative narrative regarding what caused the uprising. My memory of being in the eye of this inner-city volcano still lingers and is colored by fear, anger, pain and sorrow, all mixed with an adrenaline-fuelled search for some type of truth,” he says. This search for “some type” of truth—the camera grasping that which he alone cannot—became the impetus for much of Caesar’s practice.

Alongside his documentarian eye, Caesar’s conceptual one keeps the work varied, yet bound under a shared philosophy of “creating art out of a fragmented idea,” the camera allowing for a definiteness. He avoids too much focus on genre: “It is about the creative process: looking beyond the image, scanning for additional visual clues, researching history and believing you can create… for example, the series ‘US of A’ is a process of re-photographing images, digitally manipulating them and adding extra materials to craft a new narrative,” he explains. “US of A” covers America’s  war on drugs and the targeting of Black communities by the US administration, one of Caesar’s main concerns. Over the years his focus on Black life took him beyond the UK and into an international context. “Decades later, and billions drained from the US economy, the war on drugs is still a political boxing match. ‘US of A’ serves as a timely reminder and conceptual record of my experiences in America.”

Memory keeps coming back in Caesar’s work; photography can be used to entrench, manipulate, divert, sway, even create it. The photographer is as important as the photograph. What memories are they crafting for you, and to what purpose? This feeds into Caesar’s continuous focus on the importance of Black image-makers and storytellers, the impact of events such as Handsworth being documented by a Black local. For Caesar, photography is always collaborative: as storyteller, he’s present in the image. When discussing his philosophy for taking portraits, this principle rings clear: “During the portrait process, there are five lenses involved: one camera, the subject’s eyes, and my own, looking through the viewfinder.”

Following the fallout from Handsworth, Caesar traveled, documenting everything and anything. “I realized how 36 small moments could convey so much information,” he says. The confines of film photography remain a key element in Caesar’s work, as well as a concern for subject representation. “I began to consider the relationship between the subjects and speculation. Whether in South America or South Africa, my wanderings opened my lens into what I thought was obvious, before realizing how ill-informed I was,” he says. The work inverts the classic lone ranger street photography cliché, the photographer aware of his own biases. “Traversing through these towns and cities, I am still investigating and learning my role as a documentor of people’s lives,” he adds. “These experiences are all about forcing me to discover the power of the camera.”

Caesar, as always, is thinking about memory here. How does the agency of the photographer steal intention, narrative, reality? How, and why, does the photographer craft a moment to memory? “I believe it is important to portray subjects with respect and dignity,” he says. “It’s also important to pursue practice with utter commitment, documenting the ordinary and the extraordinary. Every photograph is a second of your life, a historical diary providing context to your personal journey.”