Photographer Tony Leigh takes to our profile spotlight this month. Tony has a unique photography background amongst our members and the pictures he has chosen to illustrate his story are socially distinctive and packed with memories.
Tony is one of our few photographers who has made his living from photography. Whilst he has worked for a variety of companies, in a variety of roles, requiring product and landscape photography, the highlight of his CV came with his first job. After leaving the Guildford School of Art, where he studied photography, Tony took up a role with EMI Records as an in-house phographer. He was straight into the whirl of 60’s pop music, mixing with the stars of the day at receptions and recording sessions. His work was based around a small studio and darkroom in EMI House along with a workspace in the Abbey Road studios. Right from day 1 in his new job, Tony was photographing stars such as The Beach Boys, Cliff Richard, The Supremes, The Rolling Stones and their contemporaries.
Central to the industry driving the pop revolution was the music media of the day. Tony’s pictures made regular appearances in the NME, Record Mirror, Melody Maker and Disc. Thousands of us were devouring Tony’s work in the 60s to stay abreast of news in the pop world.
For readers who were photographers at the same time as Tony, his favoured equipment was a Hasselblad 500C, 120 roll film, Nikon 35mm with a lens from fish eye to 1000mmand a Zenza Bronica.
Even after his ‘pop career’ had ended, Tony still worked as a photographer in road safety, transport and agriculture.
Nowadays, Tony’s passion is for landscape photography using, with some reluctance, digital cameras. Film photography is in his blood still.
For 60’s pop fans, the pictures attached show: The Shadows, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Tony Hicks of the Hollies with his guitar, Sonny Curtis of the Crickets and Heinz of The Tornados casually holding his jacket and Cliff Richard.
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All photographs copyright Tony Leigh
