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It gives a sense of a different time and a different place.” This approach also means that the archive can represent a particular generation of black queer people, socialising before the increased visibility and accessibility of black queer people enabled by 21st century creations of social apps like Grindr or events like UK Black Pride. “We also wanted people to dig around in photo albums to find those pictures. There’s something warm and nice about pictures that have been taken on old cameras,” says Marc. “First of all, we want to capture the look, feel and aesthetic of photographs taken before the digital age. The criteria for community submissions to the archive is that the photographs must have been taken before 2000 and not on a phone.
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It’s these dimensions of love, community and vibrancy that have been core to our efforts to reconstruct black queer Britain as it was. What I’ve always understood about Marc, both from his work as a HIV-prevention activist and his stories and photographs of affection and tenderness, is that he is motivated by the idea that black queer people are deserving of the pleasures that intimacy, romance, love, and – let’s not forget – good sex bring. Under the group sits the programme PrEPster, which Marc cofounded in 2015, which aims to educate and agitate for universal PrEP access – PrEP being an anti-retroviral drug used to prevent HIV infection.
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In fact, the amorous warmth and romance of the photograph of Marc and Brad is an apt visual footnote for Marc, who today is codirector of The Love Tank CIC, a nonprofit founded in 2018 to promote the health and sexual wellbeing of marginalised demographics. Often, we can build the clearest portraits of ourselves by remembering who we’ve loved and who we’ve known. There’s something quite beautiful about a history that is grounded in the senses, positioning the memory of touch, kisses, dances and laughter as central to the zeitgeist that the queer people of black Britain lived through. But these efforts must be complemented by projects that capture the textures and sensibilities of the black experience, the moments that aren’t necessarily viewed as of major historical significance, but still define our lifetimes. The work of young campaigners, such as the founder of The Black Curriculum, Lavinya Stennett, to teach black history in our schools and universities is radical considering the opposition from government ministers against so-called “ woke” overhauls of school curricula. Attempts to recover black British history often focus on the marginality of colonial history, major events and moments of race relations in our curriculums, hoping to bring them to the fore of our education. With 27 years between Marc and I, the archive aims to show young black queer people like me that our history in this country has been rich and lively. A digital community archive that lives on Instagram, it’s dedicated to honouring and remembering black queer life in Britain, namely its sociality, friendships, intimacies, parties and pleasures. It was this photograph that Marc and I used to premiere “ Black & Gay, Back In The Day” on 1 February, the first day of LGBT+ History Month.