Anna Arnone
Anna Arnone, who was born in 1960 in Tynemouth to an Italian mother and Sicilian father, was brought up in the North East. Anna attended a grammar school in Blyth until she left for London at the age of 18 to pursue a BA Degree in Filmic and Photographic Arts at the, then, Polytechnic of Central London (now University of Westminster). During her degree, Anna developed her pursuit of long-term, in-depth, documentary photography by spending almost two years working in five English Public Schools (Worth, Harrow, Charterhouse, Dulwich and Marlborough). Photographs from this project were exhibited in a wide variety of venues, including in a documentary group show at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, very early on in her career as a documentary photojournalist.
After completing her degree in 1981, Anna started working on a documentary project in the autumn of that year which was to produce a unique archive of British Reggae Sound Systems. During the next four to five years, Anna worked almost exclusively with the Anglo-Jamaican community in London documenting the working lives of the DJs and Sound System ‘families’ like Fatman, Coxsone and Saxon Sound Systems. At this time, Anna also became a regular and well-known contributor to Black Echoes magazine, writing a series of articles known as ‘Sound Reasoning’. The photographs (and words) from Sound Reasoning became known worldwide, were exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad and helped to promote the interest in reggae music which later saw many musicians achieve commercial success in the wider music market.
By the mid 1980s, Anna was developing an interest in documenting some aspects of her own cultural background. She began documenting Italians in London, concentrating on activities around the Italian churches in Brixton and Clerkenwell, in London. Anna also started making regular trips to Italy around, this time to document religious festivals. Her aim was to try to explore an anachronistic aspect of modern day Italy, in that the lives of Italians of her own generation, whose parents had remained in Italy, were not as rooted in religious tradition and rules as their parents’ lives had been. In both the Italian documentary work shot in the UK and Italy, Anna included a large element of portraiture and, very quickly, sought to produce work that did reflect the changing face of the Italian community at home, in Italy, and abroad, within the expatriate Italian communities in England.
Anna also pursued a career as an editorial documentary and portrait photographer, producing commissioned work for a wide range of organisations, including Lambeth and Hackney Councils, Island Records and a range of publications such as City Limits and Spare Rib. At the same time as pursuing her documentary and editorial work, Anna also found time to assist other photographers (most notably documentary photographer Paul Trevor, whom she describes as ‘photography master and mentor’, and Ed Barber, a talented commercial photographer), teach, lecture, conduct workshops on her documentary work and do youth work in a wide variety of settings.
During the late 1980s, Anna was one of the first practitioners to do work exploring the problems faced by people with HIV and AIDS by contributing to ‘Bodies of Experience’, a Camerawork sponsored touring exhibition. That work helped to break down the barriers in society faced by people HIV and AIDS and provided much needed information about the illness. Anna then worked for two years, on a part-time basis, in HMP Brixton’s hospital wing, teaching prisoners art and basic literacy and numeracy. Anna even managed to persuade the prison’s authority at the time to let her run some daylight classroom photography sessions.
Anna continued her assisting, documentary, editorial and teaching work during the early 1990s and a monograph of her documentary work, ‘Ortona Ritratti’ (Ortona Portraits), was published at this time. Unfortunately, Anna was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME) and, because of this, she had to stop working as a photographer. Learning to cope with and achieve some recovery from her illness (Anna has achieved a good recovery by very careful management of her lifestyle and by cutting down on her activities) was a long and difficult road. Also suffering from housing problems, Anna developed an interest in law, which led to her studying for an LLB part-time. Graduating with an upper second in 2000, Anna, having decided to become a barrister, then completed the Bar Vocation Course and was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Anna has just completed the first six months of her pupillage and now hopes to complete the remaining part of her training to be able to practice or gain employment as a barrister.
Anna says: ‘Every step I have taken since leaving my parents’ home - as a woman, as someone from an ethnic minority background, then as someone with a difficult and misunderstood illness, and now as an older person from a working class background trying to make a career in law – has involved some sort of struggle and challenge to society’s pre-conceptions. I hope to go on doing that both in law, by working to promote the rights of people who get a rough deal out of society, and, hopefully, in photography, by doing more documentary work in the future. My illness could have been a setback but it has taught me a lot about what is important in life. I now have not only a clearer view of what I want to achieve in life but also a realisation of the value and importance of what I have already achieved, both for myself and for others.’
Italians
from: Photography
The changing face of Italian society and of the Italian community in the UK, mid 1980s, initially developed around Brixton and Clerkenwell in London.