This is a temporary website showcasing a small selection of Harry Jacobs studio portraits

In 2025 all 120,592 negatives will be scanned and added to a re-designed website.

The vast majority of these images have never been seen.

Harry Jacobs’ studio was situated in Landor Road, Brixton, London from 1959 to his retirement in December 1999. In those 40 years nothing in the studio changed; the famous background, lighting, camera, exposure, all remained untouched.
The people coming through the studio door were initially from the Windrush generation (1948-1971), then later from the West African diaspora. Their descendants returned to Harry’s studio until he closed the doors at the end of the millennium.

Harry Jacobs’ photographs document an important period in British history, the post WW2 era of migrants coming to work and help rebuild the country and the birth of Britain’s multicultural society.