Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

1974, Portbello Road, London. The stylish woman in the centre represents the growing confidence and verve of black fashion during the 1970s. - Photo by Charlie Phillips/www.nickyakehurst.com

Photographer Charlie 'Smokey' Phillips, at 61 years old, represents everything about the Caribbean community in the London district of Notting Hill, made distinct by immigrants who poured into England in the 'Windrush' wave of immigration to help rebuild that country after the end of World War Two.

Once ignored, Phillips' work is now gaining attention, thanks to increased interest and recognition of black-British heritage. His community, Notting Hill, once so accented, so recognisable as Caribbean, has given way to fashionable shops, bars and restaurants first attracted by its once 'edgy' reputation.

Notting Hill, the 1999 middle class romance film, set in the area, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, conspicuously has not one black character. The film, more than the annual carnival which attracts two million visitors each year, ushered in rapid gentrification, spiralling property prices and much of its working class and black residents, out.

NOTTING HILL OF TODAY

The Notting Hill of today is a very different Notting Hill in which the 11-year-old Kingston-born Phillips stumbled upon photography after he was given a Kodak camera pawned from a black American G.I. Over the years, and with his family bathroom as a darkroom, he used it, not so much for career aspirations but to simply document the growing Caribbean community around him - race riots, carnival and slum housing that, in part, gave way to a road redevelopment, the Westway Flyover.

"It wasn't until they caught up with me recently, they took me out of retirement and caught up with me that they realised that I had this archive of this area. It was just for my own personal interest.Throughout this time, I'd just document it from my own point of view and up till then we (the Caribbean community) hadn't documented our side of the story," Smokey told The Sunday Gleaner during an interview in a Notting Hill cafe back in July.

And it is because of his modest aspirations that his work - an everyday photographic documentation of the Caribbean community over several decades- has become so valuable.

But for years, his archives laid under his bed gathering dust. As Smokey bemoans, shots of Bob Marley and even those of Jimi Hendrix strolling down Notting Hill's famous Portobello Road with fellow guitarist Eric Clapton, days before Hendrix died are all gone, lost as he moved between squat housing.Added to this is the fact that his work had failed to attract interest from the photographic industry and the art scene.

Back then, there was no interest, he said. The lack of work led him to Italy where he worked for eight years as a paparazzi photographer and after that he ran Smokey's Joe's Diner in Wandsworth, South London from where he earned his nickname.

"This was why I feel very bitter about it because 30 years ago all the doors were shut, they said, 'I haven't got a name'. I won't say it's racism but you can figure it out for yourself. When we had the last exhibition we wrote to all the art critics and none turned up and we only got two reviews ... This is the first time that I've had my own exhibition but I've had all this for the last 30 years!" he said.

The exhibition, "Roots to Reckoning" together with a book of the same name, held at the Museum of London last year and shared with two other Jamaican-British photographers Armet Francis and Neil Kenlock, attracted over 150,000 visitors and revived his career. One visitor, Greek film student Nike Hatzidimou, was so impressed, that she decided to make a short film 'Rootical' about Phillips and his work, that won an award at last year's Portobello Film Festival, part of Notting Hill.

"Roots to Reckoning", may reach Jamaica as early as May, 2007, as sponsorship permitting. The Institute of Jamaica is currently negotiating to bring the exhibition here which, said Museum Director Wayne Modest, will coincide with the Institute's efforts to commemorate the bicentenary of the end of the slave trade, by depicting the influence of the Diaspora abroad.

"For us in Jamaica it will be a very powerful show, it will help us understand how families lived, as Stuart Hall said it in the "Belly of the Beast," or the motherland as some put it. Also for returning residents it will be a powerful show that will help them engage with their past," said Modest.

Modest hopes that the photographs can be added to the National Collection as recognition of the history of Jamaicans in the United Kingdom.