Dennis Morris

Dennis Morris was 11 when one of his images was printed on the front page of the Daily Mirror but he first made an impact with his photography when he started to photogragh Bob Marley.  From this time he was then spotted by Johnny Rotten a big Reggae fan and went on to photograph the Sex Pistols, Marianne Faithful and Oasis to name a few.

Although his photography of the music scene is fantastic and captures some really brilliant moments that the music industry has ever seen, the work I love most is his work from his collections "Growing up Black and the Jamaican Street Scene.  Having travelled all over the caribbean I have seen the local villages and the people and the most amazing images that can be captured.  Unfortunately as a tourist Jamaica is not an easy place to capture these type of images so he was in a good position to enable him to shoot some amazing photographs.

An early image of Bob Marley in Leeds 1974.  When I went to see Dennis Morris he told of when he used to play football with Bob Marley.  This image shows a good tonal range throughout the image and I love the deep in thought pose which I would imagine is a natural pose.



This early image from his collection "Growing up Black" shows how much pride people took in there appearance.  As you can see people often lived in one room sometimes with washing hanging yet such pride was taken in appearance and the way people dressed.

The above image of Keishas Beauty Salon is a typical business in Jamaica and this is how people live and Dennis Morris has captured the way of life brilliantly in all of his photography around the streets of Jamaica.

I have really come to like street photography and this image of a typical crowd in Jamaica captures the true nature of what living in Jamaica is like.