A Photographic Life - 51: Plus Colin Jones

A Photographic Life

In episode 51 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the recent World Press Photo controversy, the importance of remaining human as a photographer, the cyclical nature of photography and the importance of not being defined by a style. Plus this week photographer Colin Jones takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ You can find out details about Colin's current exhibition The George Orwell of Photography here www.lucy-bell.com/exhibition/colin-jones Born in London in 1936, Colin Jones' creative life followed an unorthodox trajectory: From a working-class childhood in the East End of London to dancing in the English Royal Ballet and marrying the great ballerina Lynn Seymour. Jones bought his first camera whilst on tour in Japan, running an errand for the prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. Jones admired the available-light backstage photography of Michael Peto, a Hungarian émigré, who agreed to mentor him. In 1962 Jones started working as a full-time photographer for The Observer newspaper, and never looked back. Commissioned assignments took him to New York City in 1962; the Liverpool docks in 1963; the race riots in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, where he made portraits of both 'Bull' Connor, and Dr Martin Luther King in 1963; and to Leningrad, USSR in 1964. Jones is one of the most celebrated and prolific photographers of post-war Britain and has documented facets of social history over the years as diverse as the vanishing industrial working lives of the North East published in his book Grafters, delinquent Afro-Caribbean youth in London published in his book The Black House, and the high-octane hedonism of Swinging London with his famous pictures of The Who early in their career published in the book Maximum Who. Jones now lives in South West London. www.colinjonesphotography.co.uk Special thanks to Lucy Bell. You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 on Player FM https://player.fm/series/a-photographic-life and Podbean www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/i6uqx-6d9ad/A-Photographic-Life-Podcast Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Professional Photography at the University of Gloucestershire, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. He is currently work on his next documentary film project Woke Up This Morning: The Rock n' Roll Thunder of Ray Lowry. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay has been screened across the UK and the US in 2018 and will be screened in the US and Canada in 2019. © Grant Scott 2019