John Humphrey Spender

1910 - 2005

As a child, Humphrey Spender learnt photography from his older brother Michael, the photographer and mountaineer. He studied art history at Freiburg University for a year, where he spent time with his brother, Stephen and other literary figures, including Christopher Isherwood, and was exposed to avant-garde continental photography and film. He went on to set up a photography studio on the Strand and became known for his commercial photography, and in the mid-1930s he was recruited to work for the Daily Mirror under the nickname 'Lensman' and later for Picture Post. He became a member of the Mass Observation movement, taking pictures of daily life in working class communities, most notably in Bolton between 1937 and 1940. He became an official war photgrapher in World War 2, including working in Austia for the Royal Army Service Corps.In about 1955 Spender abandoned photography for painting and textile design, and taught at the Royal College of Art from 1953 until he retired in 1975. Much of his work in oil and watercolour is a catrefully designed and somewhat surreal vision of the East Anglian landscape and coast, perhaps remeniscent of the approach of another photographer-painter, Paul Nash.