Roger Bamber retrospective

 

We went to Brighton museum to see a retrospective exhibition of photographs by Roger Bamber. He was a photo journalist who worked for the Sun and other newspapers. Perhaps his most famous photograph is that of Freddie Mercury punching the air at the Live Aid concert. 

He lived in Brighton for a number of years and a large number of his photographs were of Brighton and its surroundings, including its buses. One of the more famous has been used as the cover of a book about him: it shows a little boy laughing at a Punch and Judy show on an otherwise deserted Brighton beach. He also took a wonderful photograph of Brighton pavilion reflected in a pond: wonderful symmetry. But my favourite of the Brighton photos shows the burned West Pier with some of the superstructure sliding into the sea, like a real-life version of Dali's watched.

For his news photos, I thought the classic shot of cricket batsman Basil D'Oliveira mid-stroke shot from ground level and slightly behind the wicket (first slip?). But the two most poignant were one taken in the immediate aftermath of the IRA bombing of the Old Bailey showing a corpulent barrister, shirt town to reveal belly and chest, with bandaged forehead, being lead away between two police officers (apparently the barrister, who was only superficially injured, later contacted Roger to say it was the best portrait of him) and a shot of a woman police officer, attending the funeral of another who had been killed in a terrorist attack, with a single tear running down her cheek.

It was a lovely exhibition at a great museum.

15th August 2023

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God