About Ian Murphy

The first picture I took was of the view looking up into a wintertime tree in Sussex, England, where we lived. The structured complexity of its leafless branches fascinated me. I was eight. Genes often play a role in our destiny. My parents were “Creatives” both had won scholarships to study art.

Before he died, my father told me he spent the Second World War years entombed in the cramped most secret place in Britain, the Map Room, under Whitehall, the Government’s Command Centre. The endurance, secrecy, loyalty, dedication, and capability of these chosen few has only recently been recognised with the opening of the Cabinet War Rooms Museum. Sadly he never talked about his experiences, not even to my mother, and yet he would have been in the presence, at one time or another, of all the World Leaders.

Working as a commercial artist mainly from home – he had a darkroom in his studio. He showed me how to develop the film and print the picture of the tree’s branches. It was the start of what has become a lifelong vocation. 

In those days, the education system regarded subjects like ‘Photography’ as suitable for a hobby but not serious study. However, our parents cared about my sisters’ and my education and chose well for us. At my senior school, Clayesmore in Dorset, England, I was actively encouraged and became instrumental in re-establishing the school darkroom. The space allocated could not have been better. It was in the basement near the heating boilers – a perfect solution to maintaining the magical 20°C for developing film. I spent many absorbing hours learning what would become the rudiments of my lifetime’s craft, including experiments in high speed photography. I had no flash and so used 3amp fuse wire between two mains terminals to get the effect. The light it created when blown by switching on the mains was sufficient to show and freeze-frame the crown when an object was dropped into a tray of milk.

Despite my as-then undiagnosed dyslexia, there were subjects on the formal curriculum that interested me but I wasn’t what you’d call academic. My core creativity was visual. I remember a few sunny afternoons staring out of the window of Mr Henbest’s geography class, wondering, amongst other things, if a giraffe would enjoy eating leaves off the row of lime trees opposite, and trying to visualise how high up its 18 feet stretched neck would reach. 

In the end, I did finally pass my exams but then came the question of what to do with my life. My favourite curriculum subjects had been biology and chemistry. The school career advisor thought I might like to be a biochemist, so arranged a visit to a laboratory in Birmingham. It was an awful place: Dickensian, gloomy, with roof windows that had hadn’t been cleaned for years evidenced by the black underside of the moss growing on them. The Bunsen burners might have been used by Michael Faraday. The scientists I met there were fat bald men who had given up on the joy of life for a salary cheque. I was 17. It was 1966. 

After the visit, I decided to have a few hours off before catching the train back to school. I went to a city centre cinema. Antonioni’s film “Blow Up” was playing. It changed my life. I had always greatly enjoyed photography but taking wedding pictures for a living was not my idea of a future. Antonioni showed me that photography could be a life’s path. The Rolls Royce convertible driven by David Hemmings, the actor playing the photographer and lead in the film, gave me the idea that a living could be made from this profession. Also, his life style was irresistibly sexy with a frisson of danger thrown in – all very appealing. So thank you, thank you, Maestro Antonioni.

With my career now firmly set in my own mind, I applied to the School of Photography, Regent Street, London, where the first degree course in photography had been established. I was interviewed by the legendary photographic historian Margaret Harker. My learning there has served me well. When the world changed in the late 1990’s from the chemistry of celluloid or analog photography to digital, it was so pleasing to find that the histograms and methodology of describing colour remained the same. All those hours plotting the graphs of processed colour film had not been in vain.

I was so lucky to be in the right place at the right time in a profession that was riding on the wave of the then new technology of inexpensive colour printing. Up until the 1970’s, newspapers were printed in black and white but the printing industry moved on as colour scanners and colour litho printing became viable. In particular, the Sunday papers began including a colour supplement. As ever, technology drove cultural change. With the colour print industry booming, every subject needed to be photographed in colour. 

Only recently out of college, my first job was with the Telegraph Magazine, a story I presented to them being accepted, and I getting the prestigious front cover. Those were great days to be a photographer, not least because the technology was not that sophisticated and the colour supplements had to be printed weeks before publication. This meant that the subject matter had to be of ongoing interest rather than merely news-for-a-day. This fitted my preferred ways of working perfectly.

There has almost certainly never been a profession in history that has offered such geographic and social mobility as being a photographer in the late 20th century. The internet had not been invented and communication to all corners of the world was – at best – by telex, telephone and letter. Boards of directors considered the corporate annual report their connection to their shareholders, and I worked for some of the largest companies in the world photographing their acquisitions, assets and financially exciting innovations. I was particularly pleased when Tiny Rowland, its chief executive, told me that the LONRHO Annual Report had received a prestigious award, given that I had taken 80% of the pictures. 

The work involved lots of travel, nearly always First Class as – possibly surprisingly – it was cheaper because of the weight of the equipment that, as a photographer, I had to lug around. One week I would be in Siberia taking pictures of a furniture factory, the next in Malaysia taking pictures of a rubber processing plant. As there was no internet (and indeed no digital reproduction), pictures of a very high standard were required for corporate annual reports and the easiest way to get them was to send me. The cost to the client could be eye-watering. Shell Transport and Trading once commissioned me to take a picture of a new drilling bit that could change direction when drilling. The offshore oil rig was in the Middle East. I landed on the platform, asked to see this new drill bit