Published by MACK in 2024, Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain gathers the work of 57 photographers active in the United Kingdom during two formative decades. Edited and researched by Joy Gregory with art historian Taous Dahmani as associate editor, it addresses a chapter of photographic history that has often received insufficient attention, while placing the work within Britain’s sociopolitical and cultural conditions.

The anthology is notable for the breadth of its practices. Documentary photography appears alongside conceptual work, photomontage, self-portraiture, staged imagery, and experiments that place photography in conversation with other media. Rather than reducing Black women’s photographic production to a single social or aesthetic category, the book considers the communities, collaborations, lived experiences, and artistic complexities that shaped it. The named photographers include Maxine Walker, Ingrid Pollard, Sutapa Biswas, Maud Sulter, Mitra Tabrizian, Poulomi Desai, and Eileen Perrier, among others.

Its historical account is built through more than images alone. Ephemera and archival material are set alongside historical essays and roundtable conversations, with first-hand reflections by figures including Pratibha Parmar, Roshini Kempadoo, and Symrath Patti, a foreword by Sonia Boyce, and a concluding art-historical essay by Dahmani. This combination gives the book the character of both an illustrated survey and a record of artists thinking through their own period and circumstances.

At 448 pages, Shining Lights offers collectors a substantial reference to an important network of practices, collaborations, and debates in British photography. Its value lies in the scope of its assembly and in the dialogue between photographic work, testimony, archival evidence, and criticism—making it a significant volume for anyone tracing the development of Black women’s photographic practices in Britain.