Sean Plunkett took this picture at a hotdog stand at Hull Fair in the early 1970s when he was studying photography at Ealing College in London. It is part of a series of portraits he made of the city in which he grew up that came to light last year when he sent them to a publisher, Café Royal Books. After college, Plunkett had worked in mines in Australia and, for most of his life, as a builder in the UK. None of his pictures had ever been published. A book of his Hull pictures is now out, and another, from a trip he made to Sicily 50 years ago, is planned. Sadly, Plunkett died in the spring, aged 75, of motor neurone disease.
Speaking last week, his son, Leo, also a photographer and film-maker, explained how the pictures had been unknown to the family until Sean started making prints of them a few years ago. “It was funny,” he says, “I’d go to the print lab that I also use, and the people there would see my name and say: ‘Are you any relation to Sean Plunkett?’ They had been printing his pictures and they thought they were incredible.”
