Graham Finlayson

Life and career

Finlayson started work at the Southampton Echo, but after national service he worked in Manchester, first for the Daily Mail and from 1959 for the Guardian.

Finlayson was generous in photographing the Hallé Orchestra.

Finlayson was able to photograph L. S. Lowry, usually uncooperative with the press, and had a particularly successful working relationship with the writer Arthur Hopcraft.

The Guardian did not restrict Finlayson to the Manchester area, instead sending him on assignments to such places as Ireland, Spain, Cyprus, Borneo, Nigeria and Indonesia.

In 1965 Finlayson left the Guardian and Manchester to freelance, basing himself in Hampshire. The timing was good, as the colour supplements of Britain's Sunday newspapers were starting up. He did well among them, and later successfully covered sports (in which he was not interested) for Sports Illustrated. He also covered architecture, industry, fashion, and travel.

Toward the end of a warm obituary for Finlayson, Bob Smithies wrote that he "suffered from melancholia [. . .] he was never sure of his worth, satisfied with his endeavours or convinced of his value to those who valued him"; after heart trouble in the early 1990s he gave up photography and moved with his wife to France. He died of cancer in 1999.

Even while Finlayson was still working as a photographer, his earlier work had become little remembered. Martin Harrison credits a 1983 exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery, British Photography 1955–65 (curated by Sue Davies), with saving his work (as well as that of John Bulmer and others) from obscurity; much later, Harrison would go on to show it in a 1998 exhibition titled The Young Meteors.

Solo exhibitions

Joint exhibitions

Collections

Publications