Photographer · Nigeria
Misan Harriman
Misan Harriman (born 1977) is a Nigerian-born British photographer and filmmaker. Self-taught, he became widely known in 2020 for his photographs of Black Lives Matter protests in London, and that September became the first Black man to photograph the cover of British Vogue in its more than a century of publication.
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A late start
Misan Harriman was born in Nigeria in 1977 and sent to boarding school in England, at Stubbington House and then Bradfield College. After school he worked in recruitment in the City of London, and in 2016 he founded a media company, What We Seee. Photography came late. He began taking pictures in 2017, around his fortieth birthday, and taught himself; within three years his pictures were on the cover of British Vogue.
Summer 2020
After the murder of George Floyd in the United States in May 2020, Black Lives Matter protests filled the streets of London, and Harriman photographed them. The picture that travelled furthest shows a young woman, Darcy Bourne, holding a handwritten sign that asks why ending racism is a debate. Harriman called it perhaps the most shared image he took during the protests; Bourne later said it had given her a platform to try to make a difference. In July his protest pictures were shown on the giant screens of Piccadilly Circus, and that autumn the photograph of Bourne was auctioned for the blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan.
The Vogue cover
The protest pictures brought Harriman to the attention of Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue and the first Black editor in its history. For the September 2020 issue, "Activism Now", Enninful asked him to photograph twenty activists, among them the model and campaigner Adwoa Aboah and the footballer Marcus Rashford, whose campaign had just made the British government change its policy on free school meals. The fold-out cover, in black and white, made Harriman the first Black man to photograph a cover of the magazine since it was founded in 1916.
How to look at his pictures
Harriman photographs people, not events. Even in a crowd of thousands, his best-known protest picture holds one face and one question; the anger of the march is there, but so is the young woman's composure. His best-known commissions are in black and white, which strips away the colours of placards and clothing and leaves expressions, gestures and light. The same approach runs from the protests to the Vogue cover, where twenty activists are presented with the seriousness usually reserved for official portraits. His subjects are often people with a cause, and he photographs them as if their faces were the argument.
Beyond the camera
In July 2021 he became chair of the Southbank Centre, the arts centre on the Thames in London. In May 2024 the National Portrait Gallery added to its permanent collection his black-and-white photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, taken at the One Young World summit in Manchester in September 2022. He also turned to film: The After (2023), his first film as a director, written with John Julius Schwabach and starring David Oyelowo as a grieving ride-share driver, won best live-action short at the HollyShorts Film Festival, was released on Netflix and was nominated for the Oscar for best live-action short film in 2024. He has also given a TED talk on his subject, The power of an image — and the mind behind it.
Where to see his work
His portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is in the National Portrait Gallery's collection in London. The September 2020 "Activism Now" issue of British Vogue holds his best-known commission, and The After is on Netflix. Most of his protest photography was first published on his own social media and in the press.
See also
James Barnor, who photographed Black Londoners for Drum in the 1960s; Khadija Saye; Zanele Muholi; our lists of Nigerian photographers and African photographers.
