The photographer Sefton Samuels, who has died aged 93, was a consummate chronicler of life in the north of England. Variously described as the photographic equivalent of Ken Loach and the painter LS Lowry’s favourite photographer, over six decades he captured the great, the good, the gloom and the grit in the north-west.
Although Samuels was known for his portraits of the reclusive Lowry, the footballer George Best, the playwright Alan Bennett and the singer Morrissey, his poignant observations of the realities of everyday life reveal his humanist approach. He believed that “photojournalism is the most significant way to use a camera”, and his blend of portraiture, street and documentary photography echoes the great Picture Post practitioners such as Bill Brandt.
Samuels was not one for photo essays, and his best shots stand alone as single images: grimy children playing on the streets of Moss Side, or leaping onto mattresses in Kirkby, coalminers in St Helens, bingo players in Rawtenstall, and the changing face of Manchester at the Caribbean carnival.
He was an amateur photographer until his mid-30s, earning a living in the textile industry until, in 1968, two encounters propelled him into a full-time career. He possessed the qualities that every successful photographer needs: a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and dogged determination. While strolling down Bridge Street, Manchester, in May 1968, Samuels spotted Best, the Manchester United superstar, leaning against the door of his fashion boutique, basking in the spring sunshine and the glory of winning the European Cup just two days earlier. Samuels approached and asked whether he could take a few photos, and George was only too happy to oblige: “I took what I thought were snaps, but they proved to be quite iconic.”
Ever since his student days, when he used to take his lunch at Salford Art Gallery, Samuels had admired Lowry. He was determined to take the great painter’s portrait. In September 1968, after years of writing and sending prints of his work to Lowry, with no response, Samuels travelled to Mottram-in-Longdendale, the village where Lowry lived, and tracked down his cleaner, Bessie Swindells. They hit it off, both having worked in the mills, and she agreed to help.
When they finally met a few days later, Lowry immediately warmed to Samuels, delighting in the fact that he was an amateur who held down a proper job in the textile industry. The photographer asked the painter what he liked doing best. Lowry replied, “I’ll show you, lad,” and slouched down in his favourite armchair with his feet on the mantelpiece and began to doze off. Samuels recalled that it was probably his favourite photograph. When he later returned to the painter’s home with some complimentary prints, Lowry said: “These are the best portraits I’ve ever had taken, lad.”
Samuels’ work has been exhibited widely, including in Nine Photographers at Manchester Building and Design Centre in 1963, which included work by Shirley Baker, Ray Green and Neil Libbert; Sod Carnaby Street at Proud Galleries, London in 2007; and When Football Was Football at the National Football Museum in Manchester in 2021. His images are held in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A. In 2011, his book Northerners: Portrait of a No-Nonsense People was published, and he received the Royal Academy of Arts Eyewitness award for his street photography.
The younger child of Max Samuels, a butcher and grocer, and Leah (nee Acker), Sefton was born in Manchester and grew up in Didsbury. At the age of 15 he borrowed a small folding plate camera from his sister, June, and started taking pictures at school. He was hooked. To practise his newfound passion, he would cycle to his beloved Manchester City’s ground at Maine Road, pay two pence to leave his bike in someone’s garden, then pay sixpence to get into the match, sneaking his camera in.
While at Manchester grammar school, Samuels joined as many photographic societies as he could, but a career in photography was expensive and uncertain, and looked out of reach. In 1947, he enrolled in a textile course at Salford College of Technology, then attended Huddersfield Tech, where he trained as a chartered textile technologist. While there Samuels achieved athletic distinction, winning the 120 yards hurdles in 1952, beating Derek Ibbotson – who later held the world mile record and won 5,000-metre Olympic bronze in 1956. For his first job, Samuels moved to Bradford, where he managed a weaving mill, but photography still had its hooks in him.
In August 1956, he travelled to London to see the groundbreaking Family of Man exhibition, which explored and depicted the universality of everyday human experience, and included works by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and August Sander. Inspired, Samuels threw himself into what he called “the realism school of social documentary”.
In November that year, he attempted to photograph the fascist leader Oswald Mosley and his followers at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Although he had been warned against photographing the crowd, he could not resist and a scuffle with Mosley’s “stewards” led to the police moving in and shutting the meeting down.
He documented the hard lives of his fellow Mancunians and their release at football matches and wrestling bouts, and in the jazz clubs he loved. He was an accomplished semi-professional jazz drummer himself, and his intimacy with the scene helped him to capture intense and dynamic performances.
In 1960, he won the Manchester Evening News amateur photography competition and the following year he moved back to his home city, where for a while he led a “dilettante, artistic life”. He began to earn money working as a freelancer for newspapers.
At the end of the 1960s, work in the textile industry was disappearing and his success enabled him to become a professional photographer. He worked for Granada TV, taking pictures behind the scenes on Coronation Street, then became the BBC’s man in the north.
In 1976, he launched the Sefton Photo Library, which specialised in images of the north-west and Yorkshire. The library grew and at its peak it corralled the work of about 200 photographers, but the business was not for him, and he sold it on in the 1990s. He returned to doing what he loved best – documenting the world and one particular corner of it.
He is survived by his third wife, Ann (nee Chalkin, whom he married in 1995), two sons, Mark and Tim, from his first marriage, in 1969, to Helen Baruck, who died in 1983, and two grandchildren.
• Sefton Samuel Samuels, photographer, born 27 January 1931; died 26 July 2024
