J’Ouvert

Every year on the August bank holiday weekend one of the biggest carnival’s in the world begins as the streets of Notting Hill and the surrounding area is closed to traffic and opens up to a parade of loud music, exotic food and all sorts of other things that part people like to put in their mouths.

Originating from Caribbean emancipation traditions rooted in the 1881 Canboulay Riots in Trinidad, where freed people used paint, mud, and oil to disguise themselves from colonial authorities, J’Ouvert marks the opening of the carnival. It begins at 6am with paint fight through the streets around Ladbroke Grove station and lasts for a couple of hours, by which time anyone within 50 metres will have more than a speck of stray paint somewhere on their body or clothing.

I went there with a black backdrop and a camera in 2023 to take photos of the early birds who had made the effort to get down there at the crack of dawn to throw paint at each other.