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His photographs of Muhammad Ali and Jimi Hendrix sold around the world. Cartier-Bresson was a fan, while Fellini liked him so much he put him in a film. Yet in the UK, Phillip’s work was ignored for decades
Charlie Phillips never planned to become a photographer. His childhood dream was to be an opera singer, or a naval architect. But then a camera fell into his lap. It was 1958. The 14-year-old had arrived from Jamaica two years earlier and was living in Notting Hill, west London, at that time the first port of call for many Caribbean immigrants. The area was also a destination for African American soldiers stationed at nearby military bases, who didn’t feel so welcome in central London’s white venues.
“On Saturdays, if you had a basement flat, you’d move the furniture to one side and make a party,” says Phillips. “And these GIs used to bring their rhythm-and-blues records and cigarettes. They’d come to have a good time and, you know, dance … and the young Afro-Caribbean women would come to meet them.” Phillips’s family often befriended these GIs. “One of them got legless one night and couldn’t get back to his base, so he had to borrow 15 shillings from my dad. He left behind a Kodak Retinette camera, but he never came back to pick it up. So I kept it.” Continue reading...