After "Home is Not a Place," Imogen Forster (September 2026)

After Home is Not a Place:

A Collaboration by Johny Pitts and Roger Robinson, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 2023 

1
A door, its official green
diluted to a smeary blue
by time and dis-appointment.
A handle, vertical, cold,
the negation of welcome.

‘Refugee and Migrant Justice
Please Pull to Enter ’

Please pull. It is against the law
to smoke. Please enter your details.
Enter the next paragraph, the next
page, the next door, the next justice.
Please pull.

Please close the door.
 
2
Snow, seven boys in a
huddle, laughing into
the photographer’s lens,
sleet-streaked, warm in their
black jackets, black gloves,
black hats, black hoods.

Which of them will
remember this: the snow,
the photographer, the wet flags
flying from windowsills,
the vague wintry trees?

 

Gallery notes: “In 2021, photographer Johny Pitts and poet Roger Robinson […] circumnavigated the British coast clockwise in search of Black history and communities. […] They encountered Black British culture overlooked in official narratives.”