Afropean: A Journal brings together Johny Pitts’s photographs, notebooks and ephemera from twenty years of observing Black life in Europe, between 2004 and 2024. Self-funded Interrail journeys took him through cities including Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Kyiv, Rome and Lisbon. The geographical range is matched by a period of political upheaval, from the aftermath of the Iraq War to the financial crisis, Brexit and the rise of right-wing populism.
The mixture of materials is essential to the book’s approach. A photograph records an encounter, while a notebook or piece of printed matter preserves another aspect of the journey. Together they make room for the photographer’s experience as well as the communities he encounters. The cover itself brings fragments of photographs, handwriting and printed imagery into a composite surface, preparing the reader for a journal assembled from different kinds of observation. Across the project, Black European culture emerges through particular lives and places.
Pitts’s work extends across photography, writing and broadcasting. He founded afropean.com and wrote Afropean: Notes from Black Europe; his collaboration with poet Roger Robinson, Home is not a Place, addresses Black Britain through photographs and poems. This MÖREL volume gives the European project a distinct photographic form. Published in 2024, it contains 300 pages at 241 × 184 mm, in an edition of 1,500 copies. It received a special mention at the 2025 Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Award.
For collectors, the book offers a substantial visual counterpart to Pitts’s writing and a record of sustained, self-directed travel. Its combination of photographs with working materials invites comparison with travel diaries, documentary archives and books about diaspora. The interest lies in how a long period of looking is gathered into one object, allowing individual encounters to remain specific while contributing to a wider account of belonging in Europe.
