Vanley Burke has been living and working in Birmingham since 1965. He started photographing the community around him in 1967 and has continued to the present day. He has also undertaken two self-financed visits to record people and events in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Born in Jamaica in 1951, Vanley Burke's interest in photography began when his mother sent him a camera from England for his 10th birthday. When he left Jamaica to come to England in 1965 his aunt asked if he was going to leave her something. At the time he had a portable radio and the camera. He left the radio.

In England Vanley began taking photographs of his friends and family but his photography soon began to develop as a means of looking at people and how they lived. He has often said that his goal has been to 'show his people to themselves'.

Vanley's first major exhibition Handsworth from the Inside was shown at the Ikon Gallery Birmingham, and the Commonwealth Institute, London in 1983. Since then Vanley has exhibited his work extensively, in addition to Light House, he has had solo exhibitions at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Black Arts Gallery in London, Cornerhouse in Manchester and Walsall Museum and Art Gallery,amongst others. He has also had solo exhibitions of his work in New York and Mali. In addition to his many exhibitions in traditional gallery settings, Vanley has also displayed work in locations more easily accessed by black audiences including pubs, clubs, community centres, churches schools and pool halls.

In 1990 Burke received a call from a friend in South Africa saying 'South Africa is going to be free and we need you here'. The self-funded visit that followed resulted in the exhibition No Time For Flowers, first shown at Walsall Museum and Art Gallery in 1991. Two years later in 1993 Autograph published a retrospective to accompany his exhibition The Journey, also shown at Walsall. Burke returned to South Africa in 1996 and was commissioned to photograph the veterans of the anti-Apartheid struggle.

Over thirty years after first having picked up his camera, Vanley Burke is still documenting the black community in the UK and has recently been working on a number of projects including an exhibition/publication project documenting the Asian community in Birmingham.

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