I went to meet Max Farrar with Ulrika (Flink) today, she is interested in his photographs of the carnival and curating a show around this and I thought it would be interesting to see his work and hear about his experience of Chapeltown and the carnival, which he began documenting in the early 70s.
Max talked about photographs as part of the collective memory, he showed us lots of photos of the carnival as well as peoples weddings, other family celebrations and photos of peoples families taken in their homes. Max Farrar said he has been like a community photographer and lots of people have asked him to take photos of him. As a professor or sociology, and his energetic way, Max Farrar has an interesting commentary on Chapeltown and his own work. He is a font of knowledge on the carnival committee, how it came about and who has been instrumental in the community over the years such as Arthur France and Garnet Dore so I have lots of leads to follow up from this meeting.
From Max we learnt about Peepal Tree Press, a local publishers who I must find out more about. We talk about the national carnival centre in Luton – where I’m from and how it is mapping carnival histories. We talked about where carnival originates from – the 19th century transgression of society when colonialists houses were burnt down. Carnival as inversion of norms and how at Leeds carnival on the Monday mornings after the weekend of partying, young people would still be out in their party clothes and the oldies would come out in their pyjamas. Play and jeu vert…
It was interesting to listen to Max talk about his experiences of Chapeltown in the 70s as a white guy living in the area. He said the first protest he was witness to was in 1971, he heard it from his window and went down, he went to the meeting room with the group but wouldn’t have dared take any photos as black people were very wary of white people at that time. One thing I realise from working in Chapeltown, which I did know already, however in a more theoretical way, is how recent the history of division between races is and how different it would have been to grow up 20 years earlier.
Max suggested we should get in contact with Leroy, a black photographer who also took lots of photos of the carnival so Ulrika is going to try and find him.
We discuss the Leeds art scene and why the Chapeltown art scene seems so separate to this, do black artists from the area choose not to engage with it or do they not feel welcome or invited. Perhaps the is an ‘invisible barrier of space’. Maybe for some it is a choice to work within the community that their creativity developed in.
Overall a very interesting discussion to think about.
