On a summer’s day a handful of young people stand on London’s Westminster Bridge, under the shadow of Big Ben. Posing in the middle ground, they give the photographer and filmmaker Misan Harriman’s smooth black-and-white composition a fluid, almost musical energy. The figures, holding aloft a cardboard sign saying “Black Trans Lives Matter”, are among the subjects of what might be Harriman’s most significant body of work to date: The Purpose of Light, which goes on view today as a permanent installation at the central London gallery Hope 93.
The project brings together pictures that Harriman—who made his name photographing covers for Vogue UK—took at protests over the last seven years. It debuted in a solo exhibition at Hope 93 last summer; now, it has returned with new work as a long-term fixture, supported by private collectors who have agreed to display works they own permanently in the gallery’s lower floor.
Glossy, high-contrast photographs fill four sides of Hope 93’s cavernous basement. Through them, “you can go on a journey seeing what I have been able to bear witness to,” Harriman tells The Art Newspaper. It includes images from protests in the UK, US, and South Africa, including demonstrations in response to the deaths of George Floyd in 2020 and Renee Good in 2026, as well as “March for Congo” and Gaza protests in 2024.
Misan Harriman’s permanent exhibition at Hope 93
Courtesy of the artist
Yet, as Harriman puts it, “this exhibition isn’t about one cause”, and he does not necessarily endorse every opinion his subjects might hold (“I’ve photographed people who don’t see me as a human being as a Black man”, he recalls). Rather, it’s about the social impulse to protest during “a time of upheaval”—and about “a community of people who may not realise it but are in solidarity with each other,” he says. “When people come to see the show, they pour their hearts out, realising that they are a much bigger group of folks who want to have a world that is a bit kinder, a bit gentler.”
That desire struck a chord with the public: Hope 93’s founder Aki Abiola estimates thousands of people visited the original show, which was extended twice due to sustained interest before it finally closed in January. “I came every time I needed these photos, like a mental support”, writes one visitor, Andrea, in a testimonials’ book. “People felt like it was a sanctuary and they came back multiple times,” says Abiola. “This time it’s a bit more overwhelming and intense.” They have packed more than 100 photos into three rooms, hung from floor to ceiling, against a black-washed backdrop.
“How brave are artists being?”
Harriman has drawn on a practice built over years of working for glossy magazines, using the same techniques and equipment—the use of natural light, for example, and digital Leicas—to capture ordinary people on the streets of London. His work is inspired by the cinema: “I was giving talks about the lighting in Barry Lyndon as a kid in boarding school”, he says. Around 30 years later, in 2023, his directorial debut The After was nominated for the Best Short Film Oscar. His still photos have a cinematic feel, capturing figures in postures that suggest movement and narrative urgency.
These projects have also drawn on his interest in fast-paced documentary photography, and his experience of working in unpredictable circumstances. He says that even with celebrities, he dislikes working in a studio, preferring dynamic, real-life settings. “The lens is a muscle you have to use at will,” he adds. “You have to know when you have it… you can’t second guess your shots.”
Citing Gaza and the rising backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the US, he poses the rhetorical question, “how brave are artists being? How willing are they to put their heads above the parapet when they are worried about the business side? At a time of rising intolerance, Harriman, who is also the chairman of the Southbank Centre in London, says the art world “inevitably reflects the wind of change”.
Quoting Nina Simone, Harriman says he feels he has a duty as an artist “to reflect the times”, while “everything else is just entertainment”. As a member of the UK’s arts establishment, he feels he has “a duty not to ignore that new generation of voices that are shaped by the horror”.
Harriman is “proud” to have found a permanent, institutional venue at Hope 93: “Aki [Abiola] and I are children of empire, and we want a space for people to unpack the ills of the past so our children can inherit a better world.” That coheres with Abiola’s vision for the gallery he founded in 2024, which he named after the presidential campaign his father ran in Nigeria in 1993 before, he says, “he was imprisoned for five years by the military dictatorship and died under very mysterious circumstances on the eve of his release.”
After 20 years as an investment banker, Abiola is on a mission to help under-represented artists “be seen” through small-scale commercial exhibitions. Harriman’s work he says, is “an embodiment of the gallery”, focusing on the commonality, rather than the particularity, of injustice.
