Rommi Smith is the inaugural writer-in-residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. This poem is a script of a series of redactions of a single Windrush article: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/23/immigration-windrush-west-indians-jamaica-britain

Verbatim script written by Rommi Smith based on redactions of a single Guardian article published on the 23rd June 1948.

The poetic script is set to music by musician, composer, arranger and producer Christella Litras. The script is performed by the actor Lladel Bryant, with a contribution from Clinton Cameron, himself part of what is termed “the Windrush generation.”

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Why 492 West Indians Came To Britain - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras with Lladel Bryant

Rommi Smith is the inaugural writer-in-residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. Her poem is inspired by the photograph which accompanies this tracklisting, taken by Roger Bamber (1385887). The poem meditates on the unsung Black workers who built British industries, doing what Stuart Hall et al termed "shit work" in order to build Britain's post-war reputation. 

Written by Rommi Smith.

This piece is performed by Christella Litras, Lladel Bryant and Rommi Smith.

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Sonnet for The Man Whose Name I Cannot Trace - Rommi Smith, Christella Litras & Lladel Bryant

Rommi Smith is the inaugural writer-in-residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. With a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries, in this poem, Rommi reflects on the story of the dressmaker, Evelyn Wauchape, known as a "Windrush Stowaway." This poem is inspired by the image (1400211).

https://historycalroots.com/what-became-of-the-windrush-stowaway-evelyn-wauchope/

https://www.gold.ac.uk/static/windrush/Windrush_Land_Card-Passenger_1026.pdf

Written by Rommi Smith

Read by Rommi Smith. Music composed, arranged and performed by Christella Litras.

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Thread - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras

Rommi Smith is the inaugural writer-in-residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. With a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries, Rommi took a short selection as the muse for writing new poetry. 

Inspired by images: 1025657, 0925378 & 1460566,
this poem (a ghazal) and its performance considers the imagined voice of Eileen Johnson, a white mother of two mixed-heritage children. Johnson travelled with her husband and the children's father on board the Empire Windrush. 

This image disrupts commonplace narratives about the Empire Windrush, evidencing that women, children and mixed-heritage families travelled on board the ship.

Written and performed by Rommi Smith
Music composed, arranged and performed by Christella Litras.
Track recorded, mixed and produced by Christella Litras.

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Ghazal 1948: Eileen Johnson, aged 24 - Rommi Smith, Christella Litras & Lladel Bryant

Rommi Smith is the Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. With a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries, in this poem, Rommi reflects on the life of Judy Johnson, the Caribbean blues singer. Johnson is described as “wowing audiences” at the A&A club in Soho - and yet her legacy is obscured by the loss of artefacts concerning her, which would evidence what happened to her, after her nineteen fifties heyday. 

The poem centres on the fact that, other than the image of Johnson held in the TopFoto collection, the only other known surviving image of Johnson is in Ida Kar’s portrait of the raconteur and sometime writer, Terry Taylor. In Kar’s photo Johnson, symbolically, features as a half-shadow figure – her back facing the camera. Rommi meditates on how misogynoir, in the West, all too often places Black women in shadow.

Written by Rommi Smith

Performed by Rommi Smith & Christella Litras.

Set to music by musician, composer, arranger and producer Christella Litras. 

Track recorded, mixed and produced by Christella Litras.

Inspired by image: 1465063

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

The Ballad of Judy Johnson's Blues - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras

Rommi Smith is the Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. She has a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries. 

These verbatim poems were crafted from an early residency interview with TopFoto Founder Alan Smith and Flora Smith and John Balean, TopFoto’s Managing Partner and Operations Partner, respectively. Interview discussion focused on the origins of the archive, photographer John Topham (whose work is foundational to the TopFoto archive), the archive’s content and its cultural significance. 

Text performed by Rommi Smith 

Text inspired by image: 6027.

Written by Rommi Smith

Music performed by musician, composer, arranger and producer Christella Litras. 

Track recorded, mixed and produced by Christella Litras.

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Verbatim Poems About The Archive - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras

Rommi Smith is the Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at TopFoto - one of the world’s leading photographic archives. With a passionate interest in the archive’s photos documenting Black British life across the last two centuries, Rommi was inspired by this photo of Doreen and Herbert Zayne, who travelled with their children Vanessa and David on the Empire Windrush, on the 23rd June 1948. Through her research, Rommi was able to make contact with members of Herbert and Doreen Zayne’s family and introduce them to this photograph of their relative. Conversations with family members have informed the detail of this monologue and Rommi is grateful to family members for their time in talking with her.

Written by Rommi Smith

Performed by Lladel Bryant.

Music performed by musician, composer, arranger and producer Christella Litras. 

Track recorded, mixed and produced by Christella Litras.

Rommi’s short residency and this project is made possible via the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, awarded to TopFoto from the Cultural Recovery Fund.

Mr Herbert Zayne Is Writing A Letter Home - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras with Lladel Bryant

The verbatim poem entitled Back Focus is part of a series of verbatim poems crafted by Rommi Smith from an interview with members of the TopFoto team on 21st February 2021. Back Focus is a poem that reflects on a 1936 image taken by John Topham (photographer and founder of the TopFoto archive), of a man of African heritage standing next to a Bedford van in East London. Poem crafted and performed by Rommi Smith, music composed and performed by Christella Litras. Track recorded and produced by Christella Litras.

Verbatim Poem: Back Focus - Rommi Smith & Christella Litras

TopFoto is one of the world's great independent photographic archives.

The story so far
Founded in 1927 by influential English freelance photographer John Topham, working from 1927-1975 and published in Illustrated, Daily Mirror, PicturePost, Life magazine, Farmers Weekly, TopFoto (originally Topham Picture Library) has been built up by two generations of the Smith family into what it is today: an expanding, independent picture agency of fascinating range and depth so you can license great images.

The heart of the TopFoto archive is made up of millions of original negatives and hardcopy prints from a number of thriving 20th Century historic British press agencies from the glory days of Fleet Street (c.1905-1969), collected and acquired by the Smiths during the 1970s and 1980s, together with original engravings from the early 1800s and glass plate negatives from the early 1900s.

We own some uniquely important photographer collections including over 3,000 negatives and prints taken by the late filmmaker Ken Russell (1950s), and the archive of key Illustrated and PicturePost photographer George Douglas known as “Speedy George” (1940s-1950s) and definitive English documentary photographer John Topham (1927-1975).

TopFoto has been involved in  4 EU part-funded projects primarily as a content partner to Europeana, and in 2020/2021 was awarded a grant by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, from the Cultural Recovery Fund, to support the internationally signficant archive.

In 2021, as part of our Lottery funded project, we appointed our inaugural Writer-in-Residence, Rommi Smith to work with historic photographs of inspiration from the archive.

Worldwide 
Based in the UK, we work with over 50 global partners, representing some of the finest photography collections in the world.

We were founder members of BAPLA which is the UK trade association for picture libraries and agencies and are represented at CEPIC , the Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage which attracts the world's picture industry at the annual CEPIC congress. We are also a proud founder member of PhotoConsortium , a network of photographic archives, including public institutions and private agencies, collectors and private content holders from all over Europe.

Exhibition organisers, fashion houses, book publishers, TV producers, filmmakers, infrastructure project managers, museums, news organisations, magazines…. every day, worldwide, busy account holders download and license what they need, or send our research team to fast-search the archive.

From cruise ships to the space programme, there is virtually no kind of project or customer we haven’t supplied since that original expansion in the 1970s when the Smiths heard, over the phone line, a joyful news editor calling out: “hold the press, Topham have got it”.

TopFoto

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