A portfolio of photographs of 37 influential black Britons, including Naomi Campbell, Laura Mvula and Sir Lenny Henry, is to enter the national portrait collection.
The images, which have been given to the National Portrait Gallery by the artist and photographer Simon Frederick, formed part of a BBC Two documentary, Black is the New Black, which aired last year.
Phillip Prodger, the gallery’s head of photographs, said he was proud to welcome the works into the collection “where they will be seen, enjoyed and celebrated for generations to come”.
He added: “Photographing with sensitivity and insight, Simon Frederick has made extraordinary portraits of some of the most influential Britons of our time.”
The sitters were chosen for their achievements in politics, business, culture, religion and science. They include the artist Yinka Shonibare, the Guardian journalist Gary Younge, the actor Thandie Newton, the rapper Dizzee Rascal, the Sky at Night presenter Maggie Oderin-Pocock and the chief executive of Ofcom, Sharon White.
Over four episodes, Frederick filmed his subjects speaking about being black and British.
The writer Malorie Blackman, a former children’s laureate, recalled the response of her careers teacher when, as a teenager, she said she planned to go to university and become a teacher.
“And she looked at me and said: ‘Black people don’t become teachers.’ And she said: ‘Why don’t you become a secretary instead?’”
Frederick, the co-host and head judge for the Sky Arts series Master of Photography, took his documentary title from the fashion cliche. He explained to The Voice: “I thought I’d appropriate that phrase because, as a far as I am concerned as a black man who’s grown up in this country, we keep reinventing ourselves in everything we do.
“Black will always be the new black. That’s never going to change. We will always be the people doing the new things, inventing the new things, coming up with the new forms of music, new forms of style, new ways of speaking. We’ve had such a great impact of British culture that that name was apt.”
In return for a donation from Oath – the parent company of AOL and Yahoo – Frederick has given the portfolio of 39 portraits (from 37 sitters) to the National Portrait Gallery.
The gallery’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, said the portraits were striking and “powerfully reflect the diversity and variety of contemporary British achievement in public life. The National Portrait Gallery is delighted to receive Simon Frederick’s very generous gift of photographs.”
The portraits will be the subject of a major display at the gallery in November 2018.
Frederick said he remembered visiting the Trafalgar Square gallery with his mother as a child and seeing Benjamin Robert Haydon’s 1840 painting The Anti-Slavery Society Convention. He will discus the impact the painting had on him during a talk at the gallery on 24 August, to mark Slavery Remembrance Day.
The gallery said the Frederick portfolio would add to and update its Black Power series, which was acquired from Donald McLellan in 1998 and includes portraits of the civil servant Heather Rabbatts, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah and the artist Sonia Boyce.
The full list of Frederick’s sitters is: architect David Adjaye; scientist Maggie Aderin-Pockock; dancer Ashley Banjo; writer Malorie Blackman; designer Ozwald Boateng; musician Jazzie B; model Naomi Campbell; designer Charlie Casely-Hayford; director Noel Clarke; singer and presenter Alesha Dixon; ballet dancer Shevelle Dynott; SBTV owner Jamal Edwards; British Vogue editor Edward Enninful; writer and broadcaster Ekow Eshun; footballer Les Ferdinand; DJ Goldie; actor David Harewood; actor Sir Lenny Henry; producer Terry Jervis; singer Beverley Knight; heptathlete Denise Lewis; surgeon Christopher B Lynch; journalist Sir Trevor McDonald; trade unionist Lord Morris of Handsworth; musician Laura Mvula; DJ Trevor Nelson; actor Thandie Newton; rapper Dizzee Rascal; politician Baroness Scotland of Asthal; the archbishop of York, John Sentamu; artist Yinka Shonibare; singer Tinie Tempah; MP Chuka Umunna; civil servant Sharon White; comedian Gina Yashere; presenter Reggie Yates; and journalist Gary Younge.
