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David Steen (born 16 February 1936) is a highly acclaimed, award-winning British photographer. His subjects have included showbusiness stars, sport icons and politicians.

Early life

David Steen was born in St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London, one of two children (His sister Sheila was born in 1932). Much of his childhood was spent in the air-raid shelters of London and, as a result, he was poorly schooled. On the occasions that the Germans were not bombing, Steen hated school, suffered from dyslexia in an age when the learning disability was yet to be recognised, and was caned for delivering what his teachers regarded as poor compositions. After failing his 11-plus he was sent to a technical college where he learnt plumbing, carpentry and brick-laying. His main achievement in his schooling years was to win the Islington Schoolboys’ Boxing Championship (1950).

His father Edward (Ted) was a meat porter in Smithfield meat market, getting on his bike and leaving home at 4am. His mother Mary was a seamstress who worked during the War for the post office. The family lived in a council flat in Clerkenwell, ten minutes from Fleet Street. Most of his friends took jobs in the print rooms as it was the nearest industry. Steen says, “Clerkenwell is an old part of London with great character and full of great characters. I love it and still do.”

Early career

Steen recalls: “One day a woman called Paddy Brosnan went to Smithfields to buy some meat. My dad asked Paddy if there was a job for me. She was the secretary to Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post. She said I could work for her as an office boy. On 1 April 1951, at the age of 15, I started work. Picture Post carried staff writers and about eight staff photographers. I walked around the office delivering post and doing odd errands for the staff. One day I was in the photographers' rest room, where they had their lockers, when the picture editor Harry Deverson, came in. He said to one photographer, 'Come and talk to me about a job in Switzerland,' and to another photographer, 'Talk to me about a job in Tokyo'. I had rarely left Clerkenwell, certainly never been abroad. My ears started buzzing, and it was at that precise moment I decided that this photography game was for me. I soon started assisting the photographers."

One of those photographers, Bert Hardy, took Steen under his wing. Hardy taught him not just about taking photos but also the importance of punctuality, being smart, wearing clean shoes and, above all, the love of the job. Between the ages of 15 and 18, when Steen’s friends were going out to pubs and parties, he was out and about, with a borrowed camera taking pictures around London by day and by night.

On sunny days mothers would leave their babies in prams outside their homes and, to earn extra money, Steen would borrow a camera, photograph the babies, and have the pictures printed at a chemist shop. He would pay a shilling a print and then knock at the door of the mother and sell her a photo of her baby for two shillings.

At the age of 17, he was doing small assignments, and at 18 he undertook his first foreign assignment, travelling to Paris to photograph Otto Preminger. "I stayed at the Georges VI hotel, dined at Maxim’s, and went to the Crazy Horse nightclub. This was the beginning of a great adventure that would last for decades."

In June 1954, he began National Service, spending the first few months in Germany as an Army photographer. He was then despatched to Egypt where he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. "My mum and dad were very proud." From his base in Ismialia, Egypt, he was sent by the War Office to cover many stories in the Middle East; Cyprus, Libya, Aden and Somalia. By the time he was demobbed (in June 1956) Steen had accomplished an immense amount of travel and photography.

He returned to Picture Post, but a year later the magazine ceased publication but soon he was offered a job as a photographer on Britain’s first newspaper for women, Women's Sunday Mirror. The publication was started by the legendary Hugh Cudlipp,who gave Steen an assignment to photograph a woman delivering her own baby under hypnosis. "The pictures were amazing; the mother and her husband and me with a Roliflex in a small bedroom in north London. I entered a sequence of nine photos in the Encylopaedia Brittanica Press Photographs of the Year Awards. I won first prize. I was 21, the youngest photographer to win."

The 60s

He joined the Daily Mail as a feature photographer for one year. He then joined Queen magazine, which was more the sort of the photography he enjoyed: three or four pages to a story. "I needed to get out on my own, so I started to freelance for The Sunday Times colour magazine, the Telegraph magazine, Observer and foreign titles like Paris Match, Stern, Epoca and People. I was then getting big assignments around the world. The 60s were extraordinarily exciting." He photographed Twiggy.

Trained on the maxim "every picture tells a story" he focused on film stars, actors, criminals, politicians, prime ministers and countless men, women and children going about their everyday lives.

Heroes and Villains

Steen’s book, Heroes and Villains, was published in May 2005, by Genesis Publications. It contains 100 photographs of famous and infamous men who were photographed by Steen over the years and was also the subject of an exhibition. The Spectator said of the book, "This isn’t a pantheon of heroes, but it is a celebration of manly beauty that you don’t need to be a beauty to make a beautiful picture. But it is also, to anyone who was alive in Britain in 1963, intensely evocative of that lost world. Steen is a pro — technically accomplished and unpretentious.There aren’t really any heroes in this book: Steen is palpably too perceptive and level-headed for hero-worship.But there are 100 fine photographs, intensely redolent of the period that produced them, and still looking good some 40 years on."

Book

Heroes+Villains (Genesis Publications, 2005)

References

1. ^ "David Steen Prints". Collectorsprints.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
2. Heroes+Villains (Genesis Publications, 2005)
3. Art Photography. "Twiggy interview for Twiggy: A Life in Photographs at the NPG". Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
4. "Browse Books: Photographer - David Steen". Genesis Publications. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
5. "David Steen - Exhibitions". Photography-now.com. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
6. "News Archive 2004 - The Daily Telegraph Devotes Nearly Half A Page To Genesis Exhibition - 10 May 2004". Genesis Publications. 2004-05-10. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
7. The Spectator 4.6.05

External links

• Official website
• David Steen at IMDb

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• Articles with bare URLs for citations from June 2012
• 1936 births
• English photographers
• English photojournalists
• Living people