“Identity, culture and extraordinary spirit”: Vic Moy takes her camera down the streets of Nottinghill Carnival

Photographer Vic Moy was raised in a belief system where children were seen but not heard: “So, part of my personal and creative journey has been about giving myself ongoing permission: to speak, feel, reflect, heal, and to grow,” she says. She looks forward to a future where "it's safe to feel, somewhere frostbite doesn’t exist.” It’s this optimism that washes over her lens, adding a soft and emotional cultural depth to her work.

Last year, Vic took to the vibrant streets of Nottinghill Carnival with her camera for the – she describes this body of work as “a story of resilience and one of joy”. In her second time documenting West London’s festivities, Vic spent time deep in cultural research before stepping out. Letting her work be informed by the the people around her, she delved deeper into the journey’s of elders in arriving to the UK, those who “gently shaped the waters of Black British history, leaving everlasting ripples across the UK’s cultural legacy and global history,” she says.

Vic’s research saturates her photography, as she focuses on the small moments. The viewer feels as though they are passing through, tailing her on this journey past feathers, flag capes, and dollar chains. Vic says: “I hoped to have captured even a small glimpse of the inner beauty of each person, each representing their island, identity, culture, and extraordinary spirit.”

As is evident, research is a huge pillar of the photographer’s process with time much time spent crafting the visuality. “Much of my visual inspiration comes from falling into daily research rabbit holes, archival projects, singular images, and revisiting powerful bodies across all mediums,” she says. Vic’s always careful to consider how best to angle her lens, not taking lightly the role she plays in representation, and a key thread that runs through her work is disability. Vic realised she was dyslexic after years of not having the language to articulate her inner world, growing “somewhat numb to the depths of my emotions,” she says.

Once she had reckoned with this discover and her committed herself to growth, her new language was further stretched out and expanded through her work with disability founded talent and production agency With Not For. Vic connected with its founders, Kelly and Emma, through shared values and shared outlook of the inaccessibility of life – a real and relatable experience. Touching on these ideas, and adding to her creative ecosystem, Vic’s work is further developed by influences of “Yeshua, visceral feeling, my mother, conversations, lived experience, music, and film.”

It’s these untold stories that are ripe for unravelling, by way of Vic’s trusty camera. “I think about something Andre D. Wagner once said: ‘I hope to be a steward of my own evolution.’ That idea has stayed with me and that’s the direction I have naturally been choosing,” Vic ends.