Harry and Meghan photographer Misan Harriman slams Surrey shop over racist plantation image showing ‘broken black men’ – after football star says he was told THREE years ago it would be taken down

By Jo Tweedy For Mailonline

Updated: 07:08 EDT, 9 August 2023

One of the fashion industry’s top photographers – who’s a family friend of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – has revealed his shock at seeing a racist photo of a tobacco plantation being used to sell cigars in a Surrey high street shop. 

British Nigerian photographer Misan Harriman, 46, who is also Chair of London’s Southbank Centre, captured Lilibet’s first birthday at Frogmore for Meghan and Harry, shared footage of his visit to Farrants store in Cobham this week – saying he was stunned to see the large black-and-white photo showing ‘broken black men and their overseers’ that hangs behind the shop’s tills.  

Emblazoned with the words ‘We sell tobacco’, the heritage image shows white colonialists alongside black workers on a plantation. Customers visiting the popular Cobham store, which sells sweets, toys and magazines alongside tobacco products, face the photo at the point of sale.

After filming inside the store, Harriman, 46, spoke directly to the camera outside it, expressing his fury that a shop in 2023 could use an image of oppression to promote its products, calling it ‘triggering’ and ‘damaging to many people’. 

I just went to Cobham to get my kids some toys and went into a shop called @Farrants_Cobham

There is a MASSIVE picture that is pride of place at the point of payment. It is an image of black men, broken black men at a tobacco plantation with their overseers next to them?!?! I… pic.twitter.com/QZnrzJlCde

— Misan Harriman (@misanharriman) August 8, 2023

The video has been viewed more than 2 million times.  

On Twitter, England assistant football coach Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink responded to Harriman’s post, claiming he’d been previously told by the shop’s owner, David Worsfold, in 2020 that the image would be removed after he had complained about it. 

In a caption accompanying the video, Harriman wrote: ‘There is a MASSIVE picture that is pride of place at the point of payment. 

‘It is an image of black men, broken black men at a tobacco plantation with their overseers next to them?!?! I kid you not! This is in a family store, this imagery is massive triggering and racist. And there is no conceivable reason it should be there! 

‘I’m so thankful I wasn’t with my girls. How on earth could anyone have shopped there and found that image acceptable. This is exhausting and damaging to many people.’ 

Former Chelsea footballer and Dutch international Floyd-Hasselbaink responded on his Instagram account, saying: ‘Stories come and go. This needs some attention @farrants_cobham, I think it’s time you followed through on your word from 2020 and replaced this image.’

A representative for Farrants, which has traded on Cobham’s high street since 1896, told MailOnline the store wouldn’t be making a comment on the photograph. 

In September 2020, Harriman, who has two daughters with Camilla Holmstroem, became the first black male photographer to shoot a British Vogue cover in its then-105-year history.

The activist-themed cover featured England footballer Marcus Rashford and model Adwoa Aboah, with Mr Harriman working with a predominantly black team on set.

A year before, the Duchess of Sussex guest edited the September issue, which is traditionally the magazine’s most important of the year.

Photography is Harriman’s second career, after previously working in finance but he’s proved prolific since getting behind the lens. 

He’s photographed everyone from Demi Lovato and Ed Harris to Elton’s husband David Furnish. Elton and David are longtime friends of Harry and Meghan. 

A wedding guest at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s nuptials in 2018, Harriman captured a birthday portrait of the couple’s one-year-old daughter Lilibet’s birthday celebrations last year. 

The Southbank Chair released a series of three images taken at a ‘casual, intimate backyard picnic’ hosted by the Sussexes at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor on June 4th 2022, having been invited to attend the small gathering as one of just a handful of select guests, alongside his wife and their two daughters. 

Among the images shared by Harriman, was a ‘candid, spontaneous’ shot of Lilibet, which Harry and Meghan chose to share with the world to mark their daughter’s milestone birthday. 

As well as the sweet snap of the birthday girl, the Nigerian-born photographer also shared two other images from the party, including a black-and-white photo of proud mother Meghan holding her daughter in her arms while posing alongside Harriman’s wife Camilla and their two daughters. 

He is the same trusted family friend who took the black-and-white images that the couple used to announce the news that they were pregnant with a second child back in February 2021.

Harriman also had a hand in helping another member of the royal family announce some special news back in 2019, when Princess Beatrice enlisted him to take an engagement portrait of her and her now-husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, which they released to the world when they announced their betrothal. 

Nathaniel Bailey fell into photography through his love of the darkroom. Invited in by two technicians at just 15 years old, he soon became immersed in the process of bringing an image to life. “It was a place of peace where I could go and hide if I needed to,” he tells us. Some eight years later, he documents behind-the-scenes projects with artists and creates series that can act as a portal into a generation’s way of life. He also dedicates his time to his ongoing project Parish Walls, where he captures the people and way of life in Jamaica’s parishes with an authentic and candid feel. With every look at the series it becomes clear that his photographs are but a glimpse into the conversations happening between him and his subjects.

Nathaniel grew up in the small west London town of Perivale, where he was raised by his Jamaican family. On his regular visits to Jamaica, he takes photos and brings them back to the darkroom in London before returning the prints back to the people on the island. “Parish Walls was initially me trying to open the door to a side of Jamaica that is rarely seen, but it soon became very personal, developing my own connection to the island my family hail from. It informs my identity as a Black man in Britain today,” he tells us. Exploring the parishes on foot, simply walking around the quiet countryside, his process is quite easy-going with authenticity at the heart. “You have to trust the process of documentation. You can’t force the work being created, because it will always reflect on your final portraits, and mine have to be authentic because I want their Jamaican pride to shine,” he adds.

‘Do you know who this is?’: Famous photographer goes VIRAL after stopping Australia cricket star and glamorous girlfriend in New York for an impromptu photoshoot… but had no idea of his real identity

• A famous photographer snapped an Aussie star without knowing his identity
• Marcus Stoinis and his partner were stopped by David Guerrero in New York 
• Cricket fans flooded his Twitter to tell him he had photographed an athlete 

By Ollie Lewis For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 05:33 EDT, 9 August 2023 | Updated: 07:50 EDT, 9 August 2023

A photographer has gone viral among cricket fans after providing a free photoshoot for a ‘beautiful Australian couple’ in New York, not knowing that he was taking pictures of cricket star Marcus Stoinis. 

David Guerrero, who has 1.1 million followers on Instagram, has built a following on the social platform for approaching people on the street and asking to take their pictures.

His subjects typically turn out to be regular citizens, but that was not the case on one of his recent posts, captioned: ‘Street photography with this beautiful Australian couple’.

‘Hey, excuse me guys, sorry to bother you,’ Guerrero began as he approached Stoinis and his partner.

‘My name is David, I’m a photographer. You guys look lovely, I was going to see if I could get you a free photo?’

His offer was rejected by Stoinis and his partner, Sarah Czarnuch, before he showed examples of his work, which convinced them to go ahead with the shoot. 

The pair posed for a number of pictures and Stoinis was in a jovial mood as he pouted and strutted down Prince St in SoHo. 

Fans quickly took to social media to make Guerrero aware that he had photographed an Australian cricketer. 

‘Dude not aware he’s photographing royalty,’ Aussie actor and cricket fan Adam Zwar posted.

‘A very famous Australian cricketer, wow, he’s so humble down to the earth. Respect!’ one fan wrote.

Another fan posted: ‘THAT’S MARCUS STOINIS. He plays for Australia.. that’s crazy.’

Realising he had unknowingly photographed a famous sportsman, Guerrero posted on Twitter: ‘This is why I enjoy what I do, you never know who you’ll come across’.

Stoinis is currently holidaying in New York after joining the new Major League Cricket tournament. He plays for the San Francisco Unicorns.  

The ravages of COVID-19 have been followed by the ravages of the post-pandemic tourism boom. If you’ve been reading recent coverage of aggressive travel and its discontents, you may well assume that it’s too late to have a genuine experience of, say, the great cities of Europe. Paris, Vienna, Barcelona: none are as they used to be, we’re told, and the same may even be true of the Eternal City. Lovers of such places were complaining about tourists decades and decades ago, of course, but how far back in time would one have to travel in order to take in the glories of a Rome that hadn’t yet fallen to the invading T-shirt-and-flip-flopped hordes?

One would have to travel back about 150 years, at least according to the pictorial evidence provided in the video above from Youtuber Jarid Boosters, who appears to have a strong interest in historical photography.

His most popular videos include gatherings-up of pictures of old Los Angeles, of the lost architecture of the German Empire, of nineteenth-century Iran. In this new episode, he presents the earliest known photographs taken in Rome, which date from the early eighteen-forties to the early eighteen-seventies. Most were taken by an early Italian adopter of photography named Gioacchino Altobelli.

Soon after picking up a camera in the eighteen-thirties, Altobelli dedicated his career to “photographing some of the most ancient and most infamous sites throughout Rome,” says Boosters. “From 1841 through 1871, Altobelli, along with a team of other photographers, including Richard Jones, took it upon themselves to document the most famous and ancient city of Rome as completely as possible.” Their subjects included the still-recognizable likes of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s tomb, naturally, as well as the Arch of Drusus, the Temple of Venus and Roma, and the Porto di Ripetta. Having been demolished by the early twentieth century, the Porto di Ripetta stands out as one of the features that sets the Rome of Altobelli’s day apart from the Rome of today — well, that and the absence of selfie-takers.

Related content:

Rome Comes to Life in Photochrom Color Photos Taken in 1890: The Colosseum, Trevi Fountain & More

New Digital Archive Puts Online 4,000 Historic Images of Rome: The Eternal City from the 16th to 20th Centuries

Some of the Oldest Photos You Will Ever See: Discover Photographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Other Mediterranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the Photographs of John Thomson, the First Western Photographer to Travel Widely Through China (1870s)

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments

High-Resolution Walking Tours of Italy’s Most Historic Places: The Colosseum, Pompeii, St. Peter’s Basilica & More

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

A Perth photographer is helping women challenge ideas of “self-loathing”.

Fremantle-based photographer Jasmine Skye was a nurse for 16 years before she picked up the lens and began her own business.

“I found my way into newborn family maternity photoshoots because I was a paediatric nurse,” she said.

“I was very natural handling the babies and wanted to teach myself how to take photos.”

Skye found herself in a place of “burnout and stress” while she was on maternity leave but in 2016 an underwater photography competition caught her eye.

“I was like ‘oh that would be amazing with a pregnant woman’,” she said.

“And I asked my friend, who was pregnant at the time, if she would be willing to let me practice on her and I was totally hooked from there on in.”

Last year the Perth mum embarked on a journey to photograph more than 60 women, including herself, to feature in a coffee table book and debut at the 38-year-old’s first solo exhibition.

The opening night for the exhibition, Underneath, will be at the Fremantle Naval Store on August 18.

Skye’s subjects spanned dozens of women with different personal stories and triumphs, including Olympic swimmers, trauma survivors and those who had had fertility or pregnancy issues.

“It is by far the hardest project I have ever done,” Skye said.

“There is so much more self-loathing going on beneath the surface than you realise.”

The Fremantle photographer said her subjects were able to be vulnerable and “embrace their own unique beauty”.

“The undercurrent of the whole project is growth because everything you’re insecure about in the water is generally what you’re insecure about on land,” she said.

“It really brings it to the surface — you kind of lose control or have to let go.”

Sarah, one of the women photographed, said the photo shoot was physically tough.

“I had concerned myself so much with how I’d look and did not consider how hard it would be to stay underwater,” she said.

“I was left awestruck at most of the gallery .. the body I have spent the last 30 years criticising and tormenting myself over was stunning and strong.”

In the book, she delves into how motherhood changed her into a stronger and “unapologetic” version of herself.

“I spend so much time in mum mode — practical clothes, no make-up, hat on hair that should’ve been washed the day before,” Sarah said.

“This was for me.”

Underneath will officially launch at next week’s exhibition.

Tickets can be purchased online.