Clovis Salmon obituary

The Guardian

6 days ago

'I've always believed in the power of stories to bring people together, to bridge divides, and to create unity – no matter our race or background,' said Clovis Salmon on accepting a lifetime achievement award at the National Diversity awards in Liverpool last year. Salmon, who has died aged 98, was regarded as the UK's first Black documentary film-maker, and chronicled life in his neighbourhood – Brixton, in south London – over several decades.
He is said to have taken 50,000ft of documentary footage of the community from the 1950s up to the present. Recorded at a time when many of the UK's established institutions, libraries, museums and archives, were not allocating space to the historical perspectives of marginalised communities, Salmon's films offer a valuable cultural history of the area as well as a unique viewpoint of Black London that was often missing from the mainstream narrative. His footage featured in notable documentaries for the BBC and the British Film Institute, with several reels now preserved at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton.
His lens recorded both the mundane and the monumental – from children in woollen bonnets playing hopscotch in the street to the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton riots. Sometimes grainy but distinctly mesmerising, the footage captures a neighbourhood in flux: how shops and businesses adapted to the area's growing Caribbean community; the bustle and charm of Brixton market in the 60s, complete with street pastors urging people to repent while they stocked up on saltfish; and the much later onset of gentrification.
In 2021, his documentaries were part of the Decolonising the Lens series at the Barbican arts centre in London, and in 2024 he was appointed OBE for his services to culture and the Black community.
Salmon, who was entirely self-taught, got into film-making by accident. A devout Christian, he started filming services in 1959 at his local church, the Glad Tidings Church on Somerleyton Road, Brixton, where he served as a deacon. Baptisms, christenings, weddings, funerals, Salmon would record the whole gamut of human experience (at first on a Chinon Master Super 8 video camera and later adapting to new technology), screening films to his congregation on a Eumig projector in the winter months.
Requests followed and, in time, he refined his hobby – his bicycle providing the perfect transport and vantage point from which to film his neighbourhood. As his skills developed, he took on the role of citizen journalist, adding social commentary and interviews, and providing the Black community with a much-needed voice.
Salmon was also known for his expertise as a bicycle engineer. He spent 54 years in the trade, and was described as 'the greatest wheel builder' by his friends at Brixton Cycles. According to Salmon, a wheel built by him could support the weight of three men. In 2022 Lambeth council installed a bicycle monument to 'Sam the Wheels' in the front garden of his home in Railton Road.
The youngest of 12 children, Salmon was born in Nain, in the rural parish of Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, to Emily (nee Watson), a seamstress, farmer and gardener, and Tom Salmon, a farmer. Six of his older siblings died at birth and his father died when he was very young. He attended Nain high school until the age of 16 – and would help his mother out on their smallholding, accompanying her to the local market.
Salmon credited his mother, a Sunday school teacher and astute businesswoman, with instilling in him his strong Christian faith and ambition. Before leaving Jamaica, he married his childhood sweetheart, Daisy, and she would later follow him to the UK.
Prompted by the dire economic situation in Jamaica, in 1954 Salmon answered the call for postwar labour in the UK. He crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Ascania and arrived in Plymouth on 28 November, joining his cousin and other family members in Brixton.
Like the majority of those from the Caribbean who travelled during that time, he was a citizen of the UK and Colonies, and held a British Commonwealth passport, but he remembered the 'mother country' being less than welcoming.
Although he had run his own bicycle repair shop in Nain, initially Salmon struggled to get work as a mechanic in the UK. He took a six-month apprenticeship at the Claud Butler company but work there dried up. After a short period on a building site, he was employed for a decade at Dayton Cycles and then the Holdsworth cycle company, the latter for 25 years.
At the time, the colour bar was pervasive; when he attended the local church, the English vicar took him aside and told him not to come back because his members would leave. Salmon's films document the church's important role for the Caribbean community, who built their own places of worship and social spaces after being excluded from English churches, pubs and clubs.
His film The Great Conflict of Somerleyton Road captured the 1977 demolition of the Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church despite that building's significance to the local community. The plot was transformed by Lambeth council into what locals now term the 'Barrier Block', Southwyck House, with many families also forced to sell their homes to make way for the development.
The 70s and early 80s were marked by a series of racist murders and high-profile miscarriages of justice, and tensions were high between the police and the community. In April 1981 Operation Swamp targeted Brixton, giving police unfettered 'stop and search' powers. Such provocative policing led to an uprising and the police lost control of the area over three days from 10 April.
Salmon stated in a 2008 interview: 'Black and white youths were fighting with the police and petrol bombs were being thrown everywhere. No one on Railton Road felt safe and my place was evacuated that Friday night when the riots kicked off.'
Despite the dangers, he travelled on his bicycle, his camera secreted in his jacket, documenting the aftermath of the riots and the community's views. His film captures the rubble-strewn streets and the burnt-out shell of the George pub, targeted by rioters after years of racial discrimination by the landlord. When he interviews a passerby, the anger is visceral: 'Jobs, money, National Front and all the rest, we'd just had enough, so we just explode.'
In 1980, after raising five children, Salmon and his first wife divorced. He married Erma Bailey in 1983; she died in 1997. In 2000, he married for a third time, to Delores.
Recently, he reflected on his life: 'I've worked tirelessly to film and document moments that others might have overlooked or forgotten … When I see how my work has inspired younger generations to take pride in their heritage, continue their fight for justice, and tell their own stories, it fills me with joy.'
He is survived by Delores, his children, Valerie, Trevor, Terry, Sharon and Sandra, and 10 grandchildren.
Clovis Constantine Salmon, documentary film-maker and bicycle engineer, born 13 April 1927; died 18 June 2025