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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Children of the Manston US Air Force Servicemen Print Series, Richard Birch (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Turner Contemporary)
Description: We're back offline, and inside Banned., a new exhibition blending archive and present-day photography at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Curator Sabina Desir joins Anita, Mark, and Julie - three children of Black and Indigenous American airmen stationed at RAF Manston in the 1950s - to imprint their portraits of racial identity and ambiguity in Britain.
Between 1951 and 1958, 2500 US Air Force servicemen and women were stationed at RAF Manston, near Margate. 200 were African American, and others were from non-white Indigenous and ethnic groups. After finding a 1957 newspaper article in the East Kent Times which downplayed the level...