Max SteventonOuternet London will display photographs from Ian Watts’ archive of Notting Hill Carnival from August 27 to September 2 as part of an installation marking the event’s 60th anniversary.
The installation will use Outernet’s screens at The Now Building, with images spanning Watts’ documentation of Carnival from the 1970s to the present day.
The sequence begins with photographs from recent Carnivals before moving to black-and-white images from Watts’ first visits in the 1970s. It then covers photographs from the 1980s and 1990s, followed by images from 2000 to 2019 and more recent pictures.
Watts first attended Notting Hill Carnival in 1976 after buying a second-hand camera earlier that year. He has photographed every Carnival since then apart from one.
Ian Watts said: “The Outernet exhibition is the culmination of a long photographic journey. It is particularly meaningful to see photographs made with humble analogue cameras and film in the 1970s and 1980s displayed alongside my more recent digital images.
These photographs span generations of technology, but the people, energy, creativity and spirit of Carnival connect them all.”