It is tricky to pin down Ian Berry HonFRPS, the longest-serving member of Magnum.
So thinks John Cogan, author of the book Ian Berry: The Quiet Man of Magnum, a visual tribute to the photographer who at 90 sees his work as far from done.
“Ian Berry dislikes labels and categories,” writes Cogan of his friend and fellow RPS member. “He is not a war photographer, but has photographed war. He is not a specialist portrait photographer, but has photographed some of the most influential people of their day.
“Ian is not a specialist travel photographer, though he has travelled to many countries and his work has graced some of the most influential travel magazines such as Conde Nast Traveller and Geo. Could we say Ian is a photojournalist? Well, he’s a journalist and has photographed just about everything.”
Born in Lancashire in 1934, Berry made his reputation in South Africa working for the Daily Mail and later Drum magazine. He was the sole photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960 and his images were used during the trial to prove the victims’ innocence.
Two years later, he was invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson to join Magnum Photos, becoming a full member in 1967.
Moving to London and becoming a photographer for the Observer Magazine, he travelled the globe following – and sometimes setting – the news agenda. He has covered conflicts in Vietnam, Israel and Congo; famine in Ethiopia; and the Troubles in Northern Ireland; as well as charting political and social change in the former USSR and China.
In 2023 his long-term series Water, documenting humanity’s impact on the planet, was published as a book by GOST.
Here, Berry tells the story behind three images from his remarkable career.
1. (Pictured above) ‘Back-to-back houses built for colliery workers at a time when the mines were thriving and almost all the men in the village worked down the mines. Ashington, Northumberland, UK, 1974’ by Ian Berry HonFRPS/Magnum Photos
“After several years in South Africa and then Paris, I came back to live in England and wanted to photograph all aspects of English life while I could bring fresh eyes to the subject. The result was a book called The English published by Allen Lane and Penguin.
“This image shows back-to-back houses built for colliery workers at a time when the mines were thriving and almost all the men in the village worked down the mines.”
2. ‘Exhausted miners and workers, who have been digging for hours, are offered food by a member of the Salvation Army to sustain them. Aberfan, Glamorgan, Wales, UK, 1966’ by Ian Berry HonFRPS/Magnum Photos
“For 50 years up to 1966, millions of cubic metres of excavated mining debris from the National Coal Board’s Merthyr Vale Colliery were deposited on the side of Mynydd Merthyr, directly above the village of Aberfan.
“Early on the morning of Friday, 21 October 1966, after several days of heavy rain, a subsidence of about 3-6m occurred. At 9.15am more than 150,000m3 of water-saturated debris broke away and flowed down hill at high speed.
“The front part of the mass became liquefied and moved down the slope as a series of viscous surges – 120,000m3 of debris were deposited on the lower slopes of the mountain, but a mass of over 40,000m3 of debris smashed into the village in a slurry 12m deep.
“The slide destroyed a farm and 20 terraced houses along Moy Road and slammed into the northern side of the Pantglas Junior School and part of the separate senior school, demolishing most of the structures and filling the classrooms with thick mud and rubble up to 10m deep. The final death toll was 144. In addition to five of their teachers, 116 of the dead were children between the ages of seven and 10 – almost half of the pupils at the school.
“I was at home and heard of the tragedy on the news and set off straight away for Wales, arriving in the early afternoon on the same day. I worked through the night with the miners, police and villagers who were digging ceaselessly in the hope of finding survivors.
3. ‘Small boys at a demonstration in support of H-Block hunger strikers with coffins painted on the pavement. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1981’ by Ian Berry HonFRPS/Magnum Photos
“I went several times to Northern Ireland to photograph the Troubles. On this occasion it was for the funeral of Bobby Sands (Robert Gerard Sands), who was a member of the IRA and who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze.
“Afterwards, when I was wandering around, I came across drawings of coffins on a road and these three boys playing around, which was visually of more interest to me than the actual, typical paramilitary funeral. This and other images ran mostly in the European press.”
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