Harry Hammond, who died on February 4 aged 88, was one of Britain's leading showbusiness photographers in the post-war years, and was later acclaimed as the father of pop photography.
His archive – including shots of virtually every American musician who crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s, as well as the home-grown stars of the era – was significant enough to be purchased by the Victoria & Albert Museum in the 1980s and is to be the subject of an exhibition there later this year.
Harold Richard Hammond was born in the East End of London on July 18 1920. At the age of 14 he took up a four-year apprenticeship in advertising, fashion and press photography at the London Art Service in Fleet Street, where he had his first encounter with celebrity: "A dapper stranger in a sharp suit sauntered into the studio and said, 'The model agency sent me to do the Brylcreem advertisement'. We took a few head shots of him to match the art department's layout, which were in due course used in the national press. He agreed to the usual model fee of one guinea, and I asked his name for our files. 'Flynn', he said jauntily, tapping the ash from his cigarette. 'Errol Flynn'."
In 1938 Hammond joined the Bassano studio, where he shot portraits of society figures such as the Duchesses of Norfolk and Devonshire, as well as of leading figures in the arts, including HG Wells and Noël Coward. Debutantes also provided steady work, though the fashions of the time were not always appropriate for the refined standards of society photography: "Sometimes I had to cover their more generous endowments with a fine white chiffon in keeping with those respectable days," Hammond said.
At the outbreak of war he joined the RAF as a photographer, serving in the North African campaign. The contrast with his previous work could hardly have been more marked: "During the early days of the war," he recalled, "we used hand cameras, hanging them out over the side of the aeroplane for reconnaissance." During the same period, at a base near Cairo, he met his future wife Margaret, then working as a physical training instructor in the WAAF.
On his return to Britain after the war Hammond made the decision to go freelance. Without the security of a studio behind him, he was sensitive to shifts in public taste. "The demand was moving away from the aristocracy in favour of showbiz and music people," he explained; and he was increasingly attracted to the jazz musicians and bandleaders providing the entertainment for the society parties and fashion shows that he covered. They in turn took him to Tin Pan Alley, the informal name given to Denmark Street in London's West End, where the British music industry was based.
He focused primarily on the British dance-band world, dominated by the bands of Geraldo, Ted Heath and Ambrose, but also shot visiting American stars, including Frank Sinatra (who sold so few tickets that Hammond was forced to usher those who did attend into the front rows), Judy Garland and Billie Holiday. He was the only photographer to take pictures of Holiday's sole British concert at the Royal Albert Hall – she lamented to him: "Man, there's no money in jazz."
His work appeared in the music papers of the time, primarily Melody Maker and Jazz Journal. But when the Musical Express was relaunched in 1952 as the New Musical Express, he became associated primarily with that publication. The arrival of rock and roll in 1955 was embraced more fully by the NME than by its rivals, and Hammond was one of the few established names in the industry to take this new music seriously, and to accord its stars the respect and attention to detail that he had learned in his pre-war days.
The list of those he photographed over the next 10 years, on stage and in television studios, includes the cream of American rockers – Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers – as well as the initial British response to this revolution: Lonnie Donegan, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury and Adam Faith.
"I always tried to catch the star looking their best or most glamorous," he once explained. "That's how picture editors liked their photographs to be in those days." For those he photographed, it was largely this attitude that made Hammond such a reassuring figure. "Today's paparazzi seem intent to present their subjects in the worst possible light," Cliff Richard commented in 2008. "In the days of Harry Hammond, photographers only wanted to show the best of you. I guess that's why it was always such a pleasure to have Harry around."
Hammond's reputation went before him: a photo session with him came to be seen as a mark of success, a recognition that the subject had made the grade. "It was great," remembered Alvin Stardust. "We knew who Harry was because he'd taken the pictures of the people we grew up listening to."
Initially, he had the field virtually to himself. "For some years, I seemed to be the only photographer to take an interest in this scene," he reflected. And certainly he was the only one who could combine enthusiasm for his subject with such a position of authority and experience. In the early 1960s he was still working, by now taking pictures of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But things were changing: "I'd seen it all: jazz, swing, pop, R&B, bossa nova, doo-wop and, finally, Britain's acceptance of rock and roll. With the arrival of the Beatles, and finding that there were now at least 20 photographers at every concert, I decided to slow down."
In retirement Hammond withdrew from front-line magazine work while maintaining his lifelong interest in photography on less pressured assignments. He also moved into management, drawing on his extensive contacts book to steer the careers of emerging young bands, including The Overlanders, whose cover of the Beatles' Michelle reached Number 1 in the charts. He spent his last years at Leamington Spa, and is survived by his wife and daughter.
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