The Press Photo History Project

McCullin Directed by Jacqui Morris and David Morris – Curzon Cinema Soho London

This in from a researcher working on a book about news footage agencies wanting to check his copy re Andy Andrews at Planet.
Dear Will

Incidentally, Gaumont British News cameraman Ted Candy told me that he and Andrews were part of the news team ready to cover the airborne assault south of Paris in support of Patton in August 1944 but it was called off at the last moment. Candy suffered seven airborne cancellations before his boss, Castleton Knight, insisted he did not waste any more time by turning up for them. And so he ignored the mission on the 17th which turned out to be Arnhem…

Answers to will@pressphotohistory.com please
Topfoto in Edenbridge Kent currently own the photo archives of Planet News – more here: Searching For Planet News Photo Copyright

Updated: UK Picture Editors’ Guild 2012 Awards – Winning Photographers

“The highly-acclaimed Picture Editors’ Guild Awards, established as a premier annual event recognising and rewarding the talent and skill of Britain’s press photographers, is bigger and better for 2012.”
Alan Sparrow, UK Picture Editors’ Guild chairman, said: “The Awards have got better each year. I believe they are now the ultimate test and celebration of British press photography – the most dynamic and competitive media workplace in the world.”

The Guild’s awards ceremony will be held this evening at the HQ of the Honourable Artillery Company in London and will be hosted by TV star and fellow journalist Kate Silverton.
Full details on PhotoArchiveNews.com now

From our new contributing ‘staffer’ Mr Alan Coomes

Alan at the glazer – Photographer unknown at this time

Hi Will,
Please find as requested a brief summary of what departments jobs were in Central Press Photos in the mid 1960s

Hours 8.00am til 5.00pm or 10.00am til 7.0pm.( or whenever )

Messenger Boys… First job at 8.00am was to go to Westminster Press and collect the days national papers ,these were then check for previous days publications, then came the most important job of the day, this was taking a large silver teapot down to Micks Cafe in Fleet Street and getting it filled with tea and also ordering toast for the Darkroom and Bench staff. The rest of the day was mostly taking the photographs round the National and Provincial newspapers or delivering prints to COI over at Waterloo, other duties included collecting copies of the Evening Standard and Evening News from the paper seller outside Barclays Bank. Occasionally going out to collect films from one of the photographers this could include going down to the Oval Cricket Ground and collecting the glass 5×4 negs that were brought back for developing or collecting wire prints from Cable & Wireless at the Temple. The last job of the day was taking all the post to the Old Bailey sorting office, if there was Boxing or a late job you could still be delivering prints at Midnight.
The Bench….. This job included stamping and captioning all the prints and then getting them delivered to the newspapers by the messenger boys, also captioning yesterdays contacts and sending them to the Library for filing. Last job of the day was weighing and putting stamps on the post that went abroad.
The Sink… Making sure that the developers were heated and at the right temperature, then making copies of prints that arrived from abroad and then developing them ready for the darkroom to print, other jobs included making contacts of the previous days work,washing and drying all the prints and glazing single weight prints and private orders (see picture of glazer above )
The Darkroom… Mostly printing  24 10x8s  and 8x6s and 6x4s off negs, on rush jobs you had to make the first print called a spike as quick as possible so that the caption writer could see it and write the caption, other printing included stock prints 8x6s mainly of footballers or horse racing these were sent out to the Newspapers libraries for future use or large quantities of 8x6s were printed for COI, these were mainly rota jobs.Another job was printing wire prints from abroad mainly cricket from Australia, these were printed on an old 4 foot camera with bellows. If the photographer sent back a roll of film it was the Darkrooms job to develope it otherwise the photographers developed  it themselves.
Library… Filing all the previous days work and indexing each print with a number, also included taking taking orders for private firms and customers.

Will, hope this will help you,most probably missed loads out, maybe others may be able to fill in any gaps.
Regards,
Alan

• All comments and additional info to will@pressphotohistory.com
• And I am looking to credit the photographer for the above image so let me know if you know who took the shot. 

Updated: This item has been found – Rex Features had a few.
‘Hi Will, I am looking for a transparency holder for an old Kodak film and transparency scanner RFS 2035. Got the negative holder but not the one for tranny. Any ideas?’

Please send any info to will@pressphotohistory.com

Updated 24 October 2012: Images and video from the memorial service to celebrate the life of Horst Faas, AP double Pulitzer prize winning photographer and photo editor at St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street in central London, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012. Here
Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 11.30am
The service is being organized by his daughter Clare, friends and colleagues with the generous support of the British Press Photographer’s Association (BPPA) and The UK Picture Editor’s Guild. Friends and colleagues are welcome to attend.

Enquiries: will@photoarchivenews.com
Horst Faas died in May this year aged 79
St Bride’s Church
Horst Faas Pulitzer prizes 1965 | 1972
Horts Faas in pictures via AP

Photo: Associated Press photographer Horst Faas is shown in this undated file photo in Ca Mau, Vietnam. The recent deaths of Faas, correspondent George Esper, writer Roy Essoyan and correspondent Malcolm Browne represent the slipping away of a generation of war reporters that brought the reality of the conflict to the living rooms of America in often horrifying close-up and inspired scores of combat journalists in their wake. (AP Photo/File)

This great photo just in from reader Alan Coomes … who is that just about to kiss at the back?! – scroll down for updates and comments on this image!
Dear Will,

Re the names in the Keystone photo, I for my sins used to be a photographic printer at Central Press Photos between 1965 and 1970 ..I noticed that Melaine Bryan named a few people ie Trevor Humphries and Roger Jackson,we at Central Press  also had two people with the same names and I just wondered if they were the same people,but our Trevor Humphries did not have white flowing locks..find enclosed a picture taken at Christmas 1966 at Central Press,our Trevor Humphries is at the front crouching and Roger Jackson is far right.

Regards,
Alan Coomes.

Updated: 21 November: John Sheppard writes:
Hello Will I can shed some light on the Central Press 1966 Christmas photo …….. The person 3rd from the left swigging a bottle of beer is me John ( Tom ) Sheppard .
I was a photographic technician there from 1960 until 1973. The person that Alan called Paul Carpenter is actually Geoffrey Carpenter.
The other people in the photgraph are ….. ” kissing ” back row left Luther Jackson, right Mike Conway, middle row from left Michael Basstoe, the girl I forget her name, John Sheppard, Michael Stephens, Geoffrey Carpenter, Clifford Kent, Roger Jackson, front kneeling Trevor Humphries.
Kind regards,
John Sheppard. – John is happy to be contacted via email: benishep@gmail.com

Update 5 Oct: Mike Conway writes: 

Hi Will,
I can solve the big  ’kissing’ question.   it was me (background right) hamming it up with a dark room lad called Luther Jackson who later when on to become a photographer on a p and o liner. leaning  on the dryer with the long coat is clifford kent,who runs a big photo outfit in australia.hiding behind the beer bottle is Michael Stephens (aka big steve) who later left cp to work for pa photos as photographer. he is now retired. extreme left is cp printer micky bastoe. the only female in the photo was the switchboard operator, but name escapes me. the head beneath mine is another darkroom person with the surname of carpenter (perhaps Paul). There were indeed to brian jones at cp at the time, one worked on the bench and the other in the darkroom.

best rgs  mike

Please send your info and memories to will@pressphotohistory.com and I will update the findings

Hi Will,

With reference to my phone-call I am doing a PhD on the Poole Photography Firm that operated in Waterford, Ireland from1884 to 1954.

I was aware that the firm supplied photographs to the Press Picture Agency in Westminster, London but have been unable to discover the extent of its involvement with the agency.  I noticed on your Photo Agency Directory that you listed both the Press Picture Agency and A.H. Poole.  I was wondering if you know how I could source some more information on both.

if you represent either of these collections please contact will@pressphotohistory.com  - thanks 

Here is the staff at Keystone Press Agency around 1981.

Photographer  David Levenson has sent this in…
This is a scan of the print that was on the staff notice board in the last days of Keystone being a proper Press Agency, after Colour Library International had bought the company. It was taken at the leaving party for photographer Garry Weaser ( no. 3 ). He was off to join The Guardian.
We called it the “Curse of the Black Spot” picture, because every time someone in the photo left, we put a black spot on their forehead….so as you can see, most were quickly made redundant….
The man who losthis head totally ( no. 1) was Picture Editor, Bill Huggins. We used his head from this shot to make his leaving card, when he went to AP.

Next to him are the two ladies from the Library, and below them ( no. 7 ) Sandra, who helped on the Picture Desk. Next to her (no. 6) is Picture Editor Arthur Marsh, a lovely man and a great editor, who if you returned from a news story with more than two rolls of film, would look you up and down, and say ” What’s this? You shot a whole bloody feature story?.

At the back ( no. 2 ) is Graham Turner – now a Guardian photographer, then ( no. 3) Garry Weaser, then Siobhan from the library, and  (no. 4) is Simon Dack, now Chief Photographer at the Brighton Argus, ( no.5  ) is Jeff Blackler, Features Editor, who went to Rex Features. Behind him is Chris Aldred.

(no. 8) is photographer Ian Tyas, (no. 9) is Jim Holliday the Darkroom manager, and in front of him is Sue Cox, who ran the Accounts

(no 10) is the owner Bertram Garai – who a couple of years back I saw driving a mobility scooter down the centre line of Woking High Street, dapper as ever in a white linen suit and fedora!…
They are all standing around Arthurs desk in Despatch, in the good old days when distributing an image meant quickly knocking off a dozen 10 x 8″ black and white prints, whilst Arthur typed a caption, that was then xerox copied, and glued to each print
They where then given to messengers, to be hand delivered to all the Fleet Street picture desks.
This is where things slowed down a bit, because Bertram being a bit of a cheapskate, only employed pensioners as messengers. I kid you not, there was not one of them under seventy….and their idea of rushing a print out to the papers, was stopping for a quick woodbine under Holborn Viaduct on the way… I am amazed that Keystone ever managed to get any news pictures published at all!

Updated: from Melanie Bryan Freelance Picture Editor. ‘To fill in a couple more gaps, to the left of Ernie Smith is Paul “Wookie” Jarrett, formerly of PA and The Daily Telegraph, and now of the WPA.  Directly to the right of Trevor Humphries (he of the flowing white locks) is Roger Jackson, who finished his working years as a supervisor at AP London and is hopefully now enjoying a happy retirement. Good luck finding out who the others are!’

Updated: this in from Leon Meyer:

Hi Will,

Interesting to see the group photo from Keystone circa 1981. What memories it brings back for me (30 years ago, eek!!)
However, It was just before I joined so I can only recall Siobhan Murphy, and the lady second from left was I think EIieen who used to do the filing and marking up of prints.
I joined Keystone as a picture researcher in 1983, recruited (age 23) from an ad in the Holborn Job Centre. Keystone were in Bath House on Holborn Viaduct, a horrible concrete building now thankfully demolished.
A year later Bill Huggins called me up for a vacancy in the photo library at AP. Without recounting my whole CV, Keystone was the beginnings of a career of some 22 years in the picture archives with the latter stretch of 11 years at the Hulton Deutch/Hulton Picture Company/Hulton-Getty, where of course the B&W archives of Keystone London, Central Press and Fox Photos ended up.

 if you want to ad info to this image please email Will@pressphotohistory.com 

This just in from a PPHP reader :

Hi, Will. I just wondered if you knew dates (birth/death) for [photographer] Drees who worked for the Evening Standard. His heyday seems to have been the 1950s/60s.
If you have any details on this photographer please email will@pressphotohistory.com and we will put you in touch.