My friend Jimmy Fox, who has died aged 86, had a long and influential career with Magnum Photos. He worked as an archivist, editor and curator with some of the 20th century’s greatest photographers, and his exceptional “eye” was recognised by the photo-journalist Cornell Capa (brother of the war photographer Robert Capa), who in 1966 asked him to create a professional photo library for Magnum in New York, the start of a distinguished association with the photographers’ collective lasting more than 30 years.
The youngest of five, Jimmy was born in Dikkebus, Belgium, to Jack Fox, a former British soldier who had stayed in the country after the end of the first world war, and was a gardener with the Imperial War Graves Commission, and his wife, Adrienne (nee Dumortier). They were part of a proud mixed Belgian-British community based in Ypres, where Jimmy attended the British Memorial school. The family’s evacuation by boat following the German invasion in May 1940, when Jimmy was four, was a traumatic experience that stayed with him for life.
