DON MCPHEE (1946-2007)

“Don McPhee was a great newspaper photographer, with an incisive eye for the picture that summed up what he felt about an event or a story, and the drive and attention to detail to do this successfully every time. But he also possessed an extraordinary combination of characteristics - warmth, generosity, enthusiasm, intelligence, sensitivity, and a self-effacing and sharp humour - that enriched his work and endeared him to the subjects.”
Paul Herrmann, photographer and director of Redeye

McPhee spent 36 years at the Guardian in Manchester, his home city. His quiet skill was widely admired by professional colleagues. In his career he roamed the north, Britain and the world as a supreme news photographer; he knew what the story was and found the pictures to tell it. At home, he made some of the most expressive images of the age. In the thick of the 1984 miners’ strike, he photographed a miner wearing a toy policeman’s helmet, staring down the line of authority. But he also loved the eccentricities of everyday life and memorably produced a string of well-loved pictures, including a portrait of two farmers in gut-to-gut stance at a Yorkshire horse sale and another of two pensioner gents flat out on the beach at Blackpool in raincoats, shoes and flat caps.

“Don was the supreme news photographer. He was also, even if he would have spluttered if he had heard it said, a great artist. His shots of the Humber Bridge, the couple on the railway tracks at Hartlepool, and Slea Head in Ireland still take my breath away.”
David Ward

Click here to view the exhibition catalogue in pdf

Click here to see a gallery of images by Don McPhee