| Individual or organisational biography | Colin Jones (1936-2021), self-taught photographer and photojournalist, was born in 1936 in Poplar, London’s East End, into a working class family. His forebears were leather tanners and Thames lightermen. His father was a printer by trade and served as a soldier in the Burma campaign in the early 1940s. Jones and his mother were evacuated from London three times throughout the war, including on one occasion to Essex. By the age of 16, Jones had moved schools thirteen times. He experienced severe dyslexia and struggled to read and write. Jones has described how his years in classroom learning were at times difficult and discouraging.
Jones was athletic and took up boxing whilst at St. Mary’s College in Sidcup. At the age of 16, at what would be his last school, Jones was talent-spotted by a dance teacher from the Festival Ballet (known today as the English National Ballet). He accepted the opportunity to take ballet lessons despite having little interest in becoming a dancer. Jones later successfully auditioned for a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School, which he deferred due to being called to national service. Between leaving school and joining the army, Jones worked as an apple-picker in Kent. Whilst in the army, Jones would eventually serve as acting sergeant in the Queen’s Royal Regiment. Jones has recounted his experiences of bullying in the army on account of being presumed gay; he took up boxing again to defend himself. Upon his return from service, Jones worked briefly on the same farm in Kent before rejoining the world of dance at the Royal Opera House.
Between 1958 and 1959, Jones joined a nine-month world tour with the Touring Royal Ballet as part of the corps de ballet. Whilst on tour in Japan running an errand for Margot Fonteyn, Jones purchased his first camera: a Leica 3C Rangefinder. Photographers were often around the dance company to document its touring performances, and Jones observed their techniques and processes. He was particularly influenced by the work of Michael Peto, a Hungarian-born photojournalist who photographed for The Observer. Under Peto’s mentorship, Jones learned how to print his own images whilst capturing the candid and labourious backstage lives of Royal Ballet dancers. During this period, he photographed and shared the stage with renowned dancers and choreographers, including Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Lynn Seymour, Ninette de Valois and Kenneth MacMillan. Jones became close with a few of them through the early 1960s, whilst photographing the Kirov Ballet Company; he befriended Nureyev and also shared a four-year marriage with Seymour.
In 1961, Jones toured northern Britain with the ballet, driving from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Sunderland. Jones was drawn to the landscapes they passed through, particularly scenes of coal searchers and spoil tips. On one occasion, Jones skipped a class prior to a performance in order to spend the day taking photos. He processed the negatives himself and, following Peto’s recommendation, took the prints to The Observer newspaper for consideration.
In 1962, Jones accepted a six-month contract with The Observer, leaving the world of professional dance to focus his career fully on photography. Whilst photographing for The Observer, Jones worked alongside then-emerging photojournalists Philip Jones Griffiths, Ian Berry and Don McCullin. Photographers could propose projects of their own and over the next few years, Jones’ would take himself back to northern Britain for self-directed projects. Jones sought to document the working lives of northern Britain who, at the time, were facing widespread post-war industrial decline and a second wave of slum clearance plans. His subjects during this period included shipbuilders in the Northwest and Dundee, dockers in Liverpool, as well as coal searchers and miners in Sunderland and South Wales.
Jones continued working from The Observer’s historic Fleet Street offices for several years, under the editorship of Harold Evans, before going freelance. As with his dance career, Jones’ photography took him across England and around the world. In 1963, he covered the Civil Rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, where he created portraits of civil rights activist and minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as white supremacist Theophilus Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor. In 1964, he traveled to Leningrad (known today as Saint Petersburg) to document one of the Soviet Union’s major urban centres. In 1966, he photographed The Who at the start of their careers; Jones captured candid images of young Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon, both on- and off-stage. He photographed a young Mick Jagger a year later.
In 1969, Jones was sent to Vietnam to photograph prior to a potential second Tet Offensive. Aware of increasing media censorship, Jones asked the assigning editor if he could travel from Vietnam to the Philippines. He had been to the Philippines before as a dancer, but wanted to return on this occasion as a photographer, to document crime and corruption. Jones recalls attending a lunch party at the home of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who were in power at the time. At the party, Jones noticed smoke across Manila Bay, arising from downtown, and asked Imelda Marcos where the smoke was coming from. According to Jones, Imelda Marcos responded by saying they were “burning parts of the ghetto.” The next morning, Jones made an agreement with his driver that he be dropped off in proximity to the site of burning, where Jones witnessed the site firsthand. Jones notes how deeply affecting this moment was, both politically and psychologically.
1973 saw Jones embark on what is widely regarded as his most controversial project, which he also considers to be the highlight of his career. Jones was commissioned by The Sunday Times Magazine to produce a photographic series to illustrate a front cover article titled, “On the Edge of the Ghetto.” In Jones’ own words, he was asked by the magazine staff to “go out and find out who is doing all the muggings.” Jones first sought out subjects in Brixton, but this initial attempt proved unsuccessful. He found his way instead to the Islington-based Harambee community housing project for young Black people. The project was developed and run by Caribbean migrant Herman Edwards, known affectionately as ‘Brother Herman’, who came to trust Jones enough to allow him to take photos in the house. What was for Jones initially a newspaper brief became a three-year long project, which he supported with his personal funds, as well as grants from the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Arts Council of Great Britain (today the Arts Council of England). In 1977, the series was exhibited at the Photographer’s Gallery in London under the controversial title, ‘The Black House’. The title created a false association with the Black House of Michael de Freitas (also known as ‘Michael X’), playing on the negative media sensation that surrounded de Freitas at the time. Edwards was initially resistant to the title, but Jones claims he convinced Edwards otherwise, asking, “Why not? The President of the United States can live in the White House. Why can’t you live in the Black House?” The exhibition toured Britain until it was vandalised in Leicester.
Jones continued traveling international’s for photography assignments throughout the 70s and 80s. In 1975 and again in 1978, Jones photographed the Rastafarian communities in Jamaica, during a period of political unrest. In 1980, he documented indigenous groups in the New Hebrides and Zaire. In 1981, he photographed Tom Waits. From the early 80s into the mid-90s, Jones fulfilled commissions in San Blas Islands, Ireland during The Troubles, Xi’an, Ladakh and Bunker Hill in Kansas.
In the 1990s, Jones returned to the world of dance, this time wholly in his role as photographer. He photographed the Northern Theatre Ballet Company (today known as the Northern Ballet) and accepted a commission from The Sunday Times to follow the English National Ballet on tour through Hong Kong and Australia. In producing these works, Jones used the same equipment (Leica 3C or Nikon F with 35mm lens) and techniques that he had developed in the 1960s. Jones’ dance photography accompanies his earlier photographs of working communities in northern Britain in his 2002 publication Grafters.
In 1988, Jones was profiled alongside photographers Don McCullin and Terence Donovan in Martin Harrison’s Young Meteors, a publication on British photographic talent. In addition to his work produced for newspapers, Jones’ photography has been published in LIFE and National Geographic. Jones has exhibited across England and internationally. His photographs have been collected by the Arts Council of England and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The latter collected his works for their 2015 exhibition Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s-1990s, developed in collaboration with the Black Cultural Archives. |
| Custodial History | The prints were created for an exhibition held at London College of Communication in 2007 and afterwards deposited by the exhibition curator in the University Archives and Special Collections Centre. They were formally donated to UAL by Colin Jones in 2020. |