Jamal Shreim

Jamal Shreim is a British-Jordanian photographer and filmmaker represented by British Culture Archive. Raised in Essex, he later spent nine years living and working in Rio de Janeiro, where he began his career in television production. He has since worked as a producer-director, camera operator and edit producer on documentary, music, arts and factual programmes.

In 2016, Shreim photographed Notting Hill Carnival, fifty years after the first outdoor event organised by community activist Rhaune Laslett in 1966. The Carnival developed from Caribbean cultural organising and community activism in post-war London, with foundations that include Claudia Jones’s indoor Caribbean Carnival of 1959. It has since become one of Britain’s most significant public celebrations of Caribbean culture.

The photographs combine close portraits with wider views of the procession and surrounding streets, including people watching from upstairs windows and police officers standing among revellers. Rather than presenting Carnival only as spectacle, the series pays equal attention to those taking part, those working and those watching.