Thurston Hopkins

Hopkins was born on 16 April 1913 in south London, son of Sybil (née Bateley) and Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884–1958), a bank cashier and prolific author of topographical works, ghost stories, and biographies of British writers Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling. The family lived in Sussex and Godfrey, who came to be known as Thurston, was educated at St Joseph's Salesian school at Burwash, near Kipling's home in East Sussex, and at Montpelier college, Brighton.

Hopkins studied under Morgan Rendle at Brighton College of Art in graphic art and taught himself photography,[1] his pictures being used for some of his father's books. He found employment with a publisher adding decorative frames to portraits of Edward VIII, which the King's abdication on 10 December 1936 brought to an abrupt end. With the shift to photography from illustration amongst newspaper publishers, he joined the PhotoPress Agency.[2] They lent him his first camera; a Goerz Anschutz which he found cumbersome. It was not until serving in the RAF Photographic Unit during the Second World War in Italy and the Middle East from 1940 that he acquired a more portable 35 mm format Leica which apart from occasional use of a Rolleiflex, he continued to prefer for the rest of his career.

After being demobilised, Hopkins hitchhiked around Europe for a while taking photographs. Back in England he worked for Camera Press,[2] the agency founded in London in 1947 by Tom Blau. Having seen issues of Picture Post at military posts everywhere during his service he developed a keen ambition to work for this.[1]

Founded in 1938 and funded by publisher Edward Hulton, the magazine's first editor was Hungarian émigré Stefan Lorant (1901–1997)[3] assisted by Tom Hopkinson (1905–1990), who took over as editor from 1940. The image-centric format, left-leaning and reasonably-priced publication was highly successful and circulation soon rose to over a million. Its photographers, including Bert Hardy, Kurt Hutton, Humphrey Spender, Leonard McCombe, John Chillingworth[4] and Bill Brandt, went out with the writers on stories together, working as colleagues, not competitors.[5] By producing a dummy issue composed entirely of his own features, Hopkins persuaded Picture Post to take him on as a freelancer, and from the mid-1950s as a staffer working exclusively for the magazine.[6][7]

One of his first essays was his popular 'Cats of London' (24 February 1951),[8] a series made whilst working as a freelancer on other stories during which he would find stray cats living in the many bomb sites and back alleys. His best known photograph drew on this talent with animals. Entitled La Dolce Vita, Knightsbridge, London, 1953 the picture shows a limousine owner-driver with a regal poodle sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat. Ripe for commercial exploitation, it became a best selling postcard, poster and calendar image.

In support of the Post's social consciousness, Hopkins produced stories on children playing on the city streets[9] in an effort to have the need for dedicated playgrounds recognised.

His 1956 story on the slums of Liverpool, however, was spiked when the municipal administrators protested to the magazine's proprietor Edward Hulton, over its negative portrayal of the city.

At Picture Post Hopkins met, and in 1955 married,[10] another photographer: Grace Robertson,[11] who worked under the byline Dick Muir to get work at Simon Guttman's Report agency in an era when women were at a disadvantage in the industry.[12]

With the closure of Picture Post in 1957, Hopkins conducted business as one of London's more successful advertising photographers from his studio in Chiswick[13] before taking up teaching at the Guildford School of Art, a major British course in photography under Ifor Thomas.[7] In his rural retirement Hopkins returned to his interest in painting.[14]

Hopkins worked well into his old age[15] and died a centenarian on 27 October 2014,[16][17][18][19] survived by wife Grace, his daughter, Joanna, his son, Robert, and a granddaughter, Cressida.[20]

Photographs by salaried staff of Picture Post were retained in copyright by the Hulton empire; and when the magazine closed, the archive was sold to the British Broadcasting Corporation, and then to Brian Deutsch. The collection, including all of Hopkins pictures he made for the Post, is now owned and managed by Getty Images.