He was left in the care of his grandparents at the age of three when his parents moved to London, England, where Francis joined them seven years later in 1955.
[10][11] Francis was one of three pioneering Jamaican-born photographers – the others being Charlie Phillips and Neil Kenlock – whose work was showcased in the 2005/2006 exhibition Roots to Reckoning at the Museum of London,[10][12] which in 2009 with the assistance of Art Fund acquired the "Roots to Reckoning archive", comprising 90 photographs of London's black community from the 1960s to the 1980s.
[1] Photographs by Francis featured prominently in Staying Power, the collaborative project mounted in 2015 by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the Black Cultural Archives.
[14][15][16] "The arresting first image in the V&A museum is Jamaican photographer Armet Francis's Self-portrait in Mirror (1964), a curiously intimate and honest image showing Armet setting up his shot directly in front of a mirror," noted the reviewer for Culture Whisper,[17] while Brennavan Sritharan commented in the British Journal of Photography: "Self-portraiture is something of a sub-theme, with Armet Francis' tender yet assertive self-portrait leading the exhibit.
"[18] In February 2022, Francis was named in CasildART's list of the top six Black British photographers, alongside Charlie Phillips, James Barnor, Neil Kenlock, Pogus Caesar and Vanley Burke.