| Activity | Henry Grant (1907–2004) was a British freelance photographer who was active around London from just after World War II, through the 1970s.
Grant developed his passion for photography before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1946 he opted out of his family’s textile business and took up photography for a living. He began by taking portraits of children, but soon started to work for a news agency on Fleet Street where he could pursue a career as a photojournalist. Grant’s wife, Rose, was working as a reporter for the communist newspaper the Daily Worker. Grant sometimes photographed the political events she was covering, and the couple collaborated on many projects. Much of his photography was engaged with social issues, and capturing everyday life.
In 1950, Grant wrote, ‘In taking photographs of people, I work on the principle that there must be an uninterrupted flow of movement – the camera can capture only a fraction of the flow but it must leave the rhythm of the movement undisturbed’. Grant had developed his style of photography by the 1950s. He was working extensively for Fleet Street and produced numerous features on London for publications such as the Times Weekly Review. He had a regular presence in What’s On In London under the byline ‘Familiar London seen afresh through the camera eye of Henry Grant’.
Rose Grant left the Daily Worker, and the couple began to realise further collaborative work, producing word and image stories for various publications.
Grant had a flair for photographing people at ease and natural, rather than posed and awkward. His style evoked the photographs of leading illustrated magazines such as Picture Post.
The Times Educational Supplement seized upon Grant’s talent. As a result Grant, together with his wife, began to specialise in educational photography, and much of their work was published in the supplement.
He retired professionally in 1980, but still took photographs. An exhibition, 'Promises Promises: Growing Up in the 1950s and 1960s: An exhibition based on Henry Grant's photographs,' was hosted at Cockpit Gallery Holborn, in 9 May - 14 Jun 1984. Grant retired in 1980 with an archive of around 80,000 black and white photographs of London. In 1986, the negatives and their copyright were bought by the Museum of London. |