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World Service,02 Oct 2025,40 mins

The teen who captured era-defining portraits of reggae and punk

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Dennis Morris was nine years old when he took his first picture, after attending a photography club at his local church in East London. From that moment on, he was hooked. Dennis went everywhere with his camera, documenting everyday life in his Caribbean community in 1960s London—an enthusiasm that would earn him the nickname ‘Mad Dennis’. When he was 14, he read Bob Marley would be visiting London for his first UK tour and skipped school to try and meet him. The photos Dennis took of him as a teenager would go on to become some of the reggae star’s most well-known portraits, kickstarting a long career documenting music rebels and cultural icons of reggae, punk, and pop culture. In the late 1950s, Patricia Chin – aka Miss Pat – abandoned a career in nursing and, with her husband Vincent, started selling old jukebox records out of a grocery store. Their business moved to downtown Kingston and would grow into Randy’s Record Mart, Jamaica’s most famous record store. Upstairs, Vincent set up Studio 17 and worked with some of reggae’s biggest stars – Bob Marley and the Wailers, Lee ’Scratch’ Perry, Alton Ellis and John Holt. Now, her family runs VP Records, one of the world’s largest reggae and dancehall labels. This interview was first broadcast in 2021. (Photo: Dennis Morris standing in front of two of his iconic Bob Marley portraits from 1973. Credit: Isabelle Chalard)

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