Behind the lens

Adrian Boot is a British music photographer who first went to Jamaica to teach physics in the early 1970s and became one of the best-known documentarians of reggae. Working for NME, Melody Maker and later Island Records, he became an official photographer of Bob Marley, and co-authored (with Chris Salewicz) the authorized photo biography 'Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom' and 'Reggae Explosion: The Story of Jamaican Music'.

Beth Lesser is a Canadian photographer and writer who, with David Kingston, documented the birth and rise of Jamaican dancehall through the 1980s. The couple published the fanzine (later magazine) Reggae Quarterly from 1982 to 1988 after starting out with Augustus Pablo's Rockers International. Lesser authored books including 'King Jammy's', 'Dancehall: The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture' and a biography of Sugar Minott and Youth Promotion, and her photo archive is a key visual record of the era.

Wayne Tippetts is a British social-documentary photographer who, from 1986, documented sound system and dancehall culture in Jamaica and London over roughly 17 years. His 'Inna Dancehall Style' project spotlighting Dancehall Queens and dancehall patrons was first published in The Guardian in 1993, and three of his Jamaican dancehall images were acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2015.

David Corio (born 1960, London) is a British music photographer who, from 1978, shot for NME, The Face and Black Echoes and became one of the foremost documentarians of Black music, favouring black-and-white portraiture. He photographed reggae and dancehall in London and Jamaica across a quarter century, including a celebrated 1993 shoot at Arrows recording studio in Kingston, collected in 'Reggae in London 1980-2004' and 'The Black Chord'.

Lee Jaffe (born 1950) is an American artist, photographer and musician who lived with Bob Marley in Jamaica in the 1970s, playing harmonica with the Wailers and serving as a tour photographer. He produced Peter Tosh's debut album 'Legalize It' (1976) and shot its celebrated cover photograph. His Marley-era images are widely published.

Self-taught Jamaican photographer, born in Kingston in 1969 and died of cancer on 31 December 2014, aged 45. He was called "the eye of Jamaica", and the description holds: through the 2000s he did more than anyone to fix how dancehall and Kingston street life looked to the rest of the world. In October 1999 he launched the Afflicted Yard website with Ainsley Weir, using early internet livestreaming and his own photography to show Kingston without the tourist-board filter — sound systems, street dances, and ordinary life in communities that Jamaican and foreign media alike photographed from a distance, if at all. In 2004 he launched the magazine FIRST with Ross Sheil. He photographed Sizzla, Anthony B and Lee "Scratch" Perry among many others, and his pictures ran in The New York Times, Vibe, The Guardian, Vanity Fair and Vogue and for the BBC. He worked with Terry Lynn on Kingstonlogic 2.0 and directed the video for "System", collaborated with Josef Bogdanovich on Kingston Signals, and mentored the photographer Marlon Reid. "He destroyed stereotypes and replaced them with stronger images of reality," Russell Hergert wrote after his death. "I tell you, he was unmatched.".

The website Peter Dean Rickards launched in October 1999 with Ainsley Weir, recorded elsewhere as Ainsworth Weir, a discrepancy this archive has not resolved — and one of the first places Kingston photographed itself for an internet audience. Afflicted Yard used early livestreaming and Rickards' photography to show sound systems, street dances and everyday life in communities the tourist industry preferred to crop out. It predates the camera-phone era entirely: in 1999 the idea that a Jamaican street dance could be watched online, from Kingston, by anyone, was not obvious. The print companion FIRST followed in 2004, made with Ross Sheil. The site's work is scattered now and the domain has passed out of the project's hands, which makes it a preservation priority rather than a settled record.

Brooklyn-born, Waterhouse-raised multimedia artist and archivist whose exhibitions, including 'No Gyal Can Test' (2020) and 'Soundclash', reassembled photographs and video passed down from the Ouch Crew community that raised him to build a visual record of 1990s-2000s Kingston dancehall style and street-party culture.

Jamaican music video director and filmmaker who broke through directing an early T.O.K. video and Beenie Man's VP Records-backed 'Dude,' then gained international attention for Damian Marley's 2005 video 'Welcome to Jamrock.' He co-founded Jamaica's first cable station, Music Plus, served as creative consultant to Jamaica News Network and Reggae Entertainment Television, and in 2007 founded his own production company, The Guru Films.

The Guru Films is the Jamaican production company founded in 2007 by music video director Ras Kassa, building on his earlier breakthrough videos for T.O.K., Beenie Man and Damian Marley to take on wider film, documentary and commercial commissions.