What’s on in London: Photography at the V&A Museum.

“I’ve always believed in straight-up reportage. None of this new style of photography–stopping people on the street, asking them for permission and having them sign release forms.”

— Norman Anderson, a.k.a. Normski

Last October, I wrote about a festival I went to in honour of the Bloomsbury area of London–although the event I attended was a reading of poetry and prose, the weekend included all kinds of cultural happenings around Russell Square and ended with a community dinner that served Indian food to die for.

But I would’ve had little idea the festival was even taking place if it wasn’t for my Slovenian friend, Tanja, whom I met in Paris over two years ago. Last night, I had the chance to attend yet another event due to Tanja’s uncanny ability at keeping a finger on London’s cultural pulse.

Although I was looking forward to the event (and a chance to catch up with a good friend), I’m not sure I could have told you what exactly we were going to…all I knew was that two months earlier, she sent me a link to a talk called “In Focus: Normski in Conversation,” hosted at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“He’s a photographer,” she wrote, “And tickets are free.”

Good enough for me.

We arrived last night at the V&A’s Sackler Centre and realized the talk had a somewhat different focus than we imagined. We’d read “Normski” and envisioned a kind of wizened Polish photographer–I confessed I’d thought maybe he was a protege of Norm Chomsky (“You do know who he is, right?” Tanja asked.)

In reality, Normski (short for Norman Anderson) is British, black, and definitely not a linguist. He began making a name for himself in the 1980s, taking cover shots for groups like Run D.M.C., Public Enemy and a British rapper named MC Duke, but now describes himself as “a leading authority on urban and contemporary culture” in the UK.

The talk was to be in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibit, “Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography,” featuring the work of seventeen photographers, and was hosted by Jacqueline Springer, a former broadcast music journalist for the BBC and current lecturer at various universities around London. At one point in their conversation, she asked Normski why he shifted away from photography and got more involved with television presenting and the music industry.

“I couldn’t really afford photography, it’s a really expensive hobby,” Normski replied, “But I had no idea I’d be sat here when I took my first photograph.”

And whilst I didn’t find the interview as fascinating as I expected–whether I was too busy mentally packing for my trip to Croatia tomorrow or adding things to my to-do list for India, my mind kept straying–what I did enjoy about the talk was thinking about my first photograph and the first Canon SLR I bought with months and months of babysitting money. I thought about the first photography class I took at age 13 and the shoebox I still have back home stuffed to utter capacity with envelopes of negatives.

Indeed, as Tanja and I sat in a place called the Caffe Concerto across from Harrod’s afterwards, we agreed that was what we had enjoyed most about the talk. Not so much Normski’s vague pronouncements on culture and race, but simply hearing about how he got started in the first place. 

After all, as forward-thinking as we all tend to be, sometimes it’s fun to think back on that from which we’ve come.