When I meet a new group of people on one of my photo workshops, I sometimes start by asking if they have any favourite photographers. Depending on the nature of the workshop, people sometimes mention one or two names I’m familiar with, but often they come out with names I’ve never heard of, usually people they follow on Instagram who have a large social media following but aren’t necessarily what I would call ’Big Names’ in photography.
When I say ‘big names’, I’m thinking of those people who have been influential in the history of photography or have otherwise left a mark on our collective vision and understanding of the world through their work. Each photographic genre contains many such names and depending on your interest you may be more familiar with some than with others. I could reel off a long list of my own favourite photographers, across various genres whose work inspires me but it would probably be easier just to say ‘Magnum’ or ‘National Geographic’.
There are however those photographers whose names and work are largely unrecognised by anyone not closely involved in, or with an interest in photography. Photographers who in the course of their daily lives record the world and global events simply as part of their job, people who inform us about the wider world and show us things beyond the confines of our own experience. I’m referring of course to press photographers.
There are many hugely talented press photographers working around the world who produce stunning work on an almost daily basis, men and women who often put their own safety, even their own lives at risk, simply to report global events and in so doing shape our understanding of the world. I have no doubt that the world’s greatest press photographers belong to that group of men and women whose work has been influential in the history of photography.
It was one such photographer in particular to whom I owe my own passion for photography: John Downing, the former Chief Photographer of the Daily Express, whose book Legacy was published in Autumn 2019 by Bluecoat Press.
When I was a kid, growing up in the 70’s my best friend at school was John Downing’s son. When I went to visit him at his house, John would often be there and I loved spending time with him and listening to the stories he told. His seemed to be a life of passion, adventure and danger, fused with a deep understanding of the world and events that were happening across the globe, especially conflicts - John covered a lot of conflicts in his long career, indeed I seem to remember him often being referred to as a “war photographer”. He was what I thought of as the “cool dad” among those parents I knew from my peer group. He was always friendly, welcoming and very generous with his time, with a great sense of humour a good taste in music.
When he wasn’t at home with his family, he was usually on assignment across the other side of the world, often working in extremely difficult or dangerous circumstances, photographing in war zones, or documenting other significant news stories, typically involving tragedy or human suffering. He covered most major wars, including Vietnam, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Rhodesia, Beirut, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Croatia, and over a dozen visits to Bosnia. During one of several trips to Afghanistan, he spent nearly six weeks with the Mujahideen during the Soviet/Afghan war in the 1980’s. He was beaten and imprisoned by Idi Amin’s soldiers in Uganda. He was inside the Grand hotel in Brighton in 1984 when the IRA exploded a bomb in an attempt to kill the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
I remember him showing me some of his work and explaining it to me when I was in my early teens. There was one photograph in particular that stayed with me. It wasn’t anything particularly harrowing or distressing but it was still a powerful image. It was of a simple peasant village somewhere in Southeast Asia. There was a large banner advert for some typically iconic Western consumer product displayed above the ramshackle huts and John explained the juxtaposition of the poverty of the villagers with the aspirational lifestyle promised by the product being advertised. The nature of that narrative, indeed the notion that there is narrative within an image at all had a tremendous impact on me at that time and is still something I aspire to within my own work wherever possible.
John was a master of using natural light and his photography made me think about light in a different way. It made me realise how much impact light can have on an image, how it can dictate the mood and overall feel of a shot. More significantly though, John’s work showed me how important an image can be in representing people and informing viewers. His work introduced me to the idea of thinking critically about visual communication, but above all it helped frame my understanding of a complicated world in ways that other media often can’t.
In 1990 he was one of the first journalists to visit the site of the nuclear power station disaster in Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine. Despite reassurances from the authorities that he wasn’t at risk, he was exposed to high levels of radiation and although no direct link can be proven, there is a high probability that his recent diagnosis with terminal lung cancer was a direct result of that visit. In his dedication to his work, to report on significant global events and their impact on people’s lives, he risked his own.
It is with great sadness that I learned that he passed away on the morning of 8th April 2020.