Tuesday 17 January 2023

 This was a shared evening with Old Coulsdon with over 70 people present.

Phil led us through his life as a photographer and he began his presentation by talking about his birth in England, in Dorset and his education at Berkshire College of Art and Design before he moved on to his first photographic job with the Wokingham Times.

 He wanted to work and live in New York and on a stakeout in England he got an introduction to a celebrity news agency Splash News was offered a job and moved to Los Angeles. As a celebrity photographer he was lucky enough to shoot people like Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Reeve while he was also covering news stories. His news pictures were published in English papers like the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph and in Paris Match.

 Then suddenly on September 11 he was asked to go immediately to the Trade Centre. The aeroplane terrorist attack. His first thought was to find a vantage point, not close to the towers because he was to take photos of the height of the towers. Phil's description of his photography of this outrage was quietly dramatic. The rumble as the towers came down, being grabbed by a policeman and told to sprint, the black sky and utter weirdness of the scene. Should he take pictures of distressed people without asking? Yes, that's why he was there. He ran for shelter into a music shop while outside was a parallel universe with paper 'raining' from the sky with people walking towards him out of a cloud of dust.

 In 2015 he donated all his work from the event to the 9/11 museum.

 Phil went on to give us a view of his work that followed, more celebrity photography plus full length street pictures making sure that you are not looking down onto the subject. Then a show of his work during the Covid pandemic showing what life was really like on the streets of NY and telling some of the stories of the people who are homeless.

In fact, he said, that Covid lockdown period was his busiest ever!

 He summed up by running through his life from Dorset through celebrity photography, selling prints and publishing his first book, doing what he wanted to do!

 An entertaining and instructive evening. Lots of excellent information from the question time.

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