Gerry Cranham, who has died aged 94, was a pioneer of modern sports photography and one of its leading exponents. He was as adept at seeing the beauty in an anonymous fell runner jumping a drystone wall in Cumbria as capturing the greats of the 1960s and 70s, such as Muhammad Ali, Olga Korbut, Billie-Jean King, Lester Piggott, Bobby Moore and Arnold Palmer. He was an innovator whose work transcended the sports pages by revealing, through his composition and framing, human endeavour, and the poetry of motion.
His talent could not be contained by the back pages. His first page-one picture in the Observer came in 1962, depicting well-to-do diners in the middle of a velodrome in Antwerp, as cyclists hurtle by. He produced magazine features and was published in Sports Illustrated, the Times and many others. His work was recognised in 1971 with a solo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was only the second time a photographer had been honoured that way: the first was Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Cranham was an early adopter of colour film (he was one of only three photographers to shoot colour at the 1966 World Cup final), and he experimented with zoom burst techniques, underwater photography and new technology to make his images stand out. But these practices, all of which are now considered the norm, served only to embellish his innate ability.
His passion for his craft and his desire to break new ground was not without its perils. In January 1964, as he lay in the dirt behind the goal at White Hart Lane being pelted with peanuts by supporters, he had a right to feel despondent. He had just returned from the US; the Observer had not published his photos from JFK’s funeral, and he was racked with self-doubt.
Operating the new long cable which he had bought back from America, and which allowed him to trigger the camera’s shutter remotely, he captured the Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper John Hollowbread jumping to keep warm during an FA Cup tie against Chelsea. Published in the Observer the following day (and later acquired by the V&A), it was Cranham’s favourite photograph: a match-report illustration that showed neither ball nor bulging net, just a solitary silhouette suspended in fog. He was reinvigorated.
Later that year, he chose to use a new waterproof camera to document an Olympic hopeful, the swimmer Bobby McGregor, training in Glasgow. As a former athlete Cranham thought he possessed strong lungs, so he put weights in his pockets and jumped in the deep end. After a while McGregor’s father, thinking the photographer was drowning, panicked, and pulled him out by the hair, but Cranham had already got the shot, and the image of McGregor’s feet is sublime.
Born in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, Gerry was one of three children of George Cranham, an upholsterer, and Elizabeth (nee James). He went to Salesian college in Farnborough, where he excelled at athletics, but left aged 15 to become an apprentice draughtsman at Miles Aircraft.
In his spare time, he concentrated on middle-distance running and, after being crowned the English Southern Counties junior half-mile champion, was chosen to run a leg with the Olympic torch in the “Relay for Peace” in 1948. That year he joined the British Army’s Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and continued to compete, winning the Inter-Services half-mile race, until, in 1953, a foot injury cut short his running career.
When demobbed he took a job as a draughtsman and, in the evenings, became a coach at Herne Hill Harriers athletics club. In 1957, way ahead of his time, he decided to use technology to enhance performance: he bought his first camera to analyse and correct his pupils’ running styles. The runners bought his pictures and his photographic career had begun. “It started everything off,” he said, “within two years I was totally occupied with a newfound profession.”
Cranham set up a darkroom at home and learned his trade through trial and error. Within a year Athletics Weekly and the South London Press were publishing his track photography. Encouraged by his wife, Nancy (nee Payn), whom he had married in 1952, he gave up his job and, in 1959, became a full-time photographer. As a freelancer he struggled to gain access to major events, but this was a blessing in disguise. Shooting from the crowd or from unusual places taught him the value of the periphery: the spectators, the architecture, the landscape and the mud.
He was accepted into the Fox Photos agency and, in 1961, had his first pictures published in both the Observer and Sports Illustrated. Cranham developed close working relationships with their writers Hugh McIlvanney and John Lovesey respectively, which led to some of Cranham’s most famous images: those of Muhammad Ali. In London in 1963, before the then Cassius Clay’s clash with Henry Cooper, the boxer held up one hand and screamed, “five, five, five”, indicating the round he was going to knock out Cooper. Cranham got the shot and Clay kept his promise, stopping his man in the fifth.
Cranham photographed Ali in Ghana and Las Vegas and they struck up a friendship. Summoned by Ali to tea in London, the Greatest would ask Gerry how to hold his cup correctly.
Continually searching for new angles, Cranham was the first photographer to place a remote camera under the jumps at Cheltenham racecourse: “I had to do it discreetly, hide the camera and collect it later. They would have kicked me off the course if they saw me.” But Cranham’s need to stay one step ahead of the competition was not just professional pride, it was necessity: “I had to do something different because I had five kids to feed at home.”
He was in demand, and he worked tirelessly, taking on advertising work and travelling the globe to cover tennis tournaments, World Cups, motor racing, horse racing and Olympic Games. But despite the recognition, he would modestly do the rounds of Fleet Street every Sunday, hawking his work from the previous day.
In 1977 he was named Sports Photographer of the Year and, from the 80s, he focused on his other great passion: horseracing, breeding and all things equine. He contributed photographs to several books on the sport of kings and, in 2008, he received the lifetime achievement award for his services to racing photography at the Horserace Writers and Photographers Derby awards.
Having hung up his cameras in 2013, he had his trailblazing work recognised at the 2019 exhibition Simply the Best in the Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, and in 2021 a collection of his work, This Sporting Life, was published.
He is survived by Nancy, their children, Nigel, Yvonne, Paul, Valerie and Mark, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
• Gerry (Gerald Ernest Henry) Cranham, photographer, born 1 February 1929; died 20 October 2023
