David Newell-Smith: ‘There is nothing I would rather do than take photographs’ | Art and design

David Newell-Smith: ‘There is nothing I would rather do than take photographs’ | Art and design

David Newell-Smith, who died last month at the age of 80, was part of an explosion of British photojournalistic talent in the early 1960s. Armed with revolutionary new lightweight 35mm cameras and an aesthetic influenced by the great French and American photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith, this generation also benefited from the new colour supplements that were to showcase their work.

David Newell-Smith.

The group included such luminaries as Don McCullin, who got his first break from the Observer, Tony Armstrong-Jones, Terence Donovan and David Bailey. Those photographers would find fame far outside the orbit of their calling, but others â€" Newell-Smith, Peter Keen and Stuart Heydinger (there were very few female practitioners in the business aside from the great Jane Bown) â€" dedicated themselves to the Observer and the art of newspaper photography.

Born in Kent in 1937, Newell-Smith learned the skills and developed his love of photography while on national service in the RAF. Afterwards he worked freelance and then, in 1964, with the help of the Vietnam war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths, joined the Observer staff. Over the following two decades, the paper and its magazine were graced by the extraordinary range of his work.

Newell-Smith’s staff job afforded him many opportunities to document the swinging 60s in Britain. He captured the febrile murk of the Cavern Club, the energy of Jagger and the Stones and the otherworldliness of Twiggy, of whom he said, after shooting her, “She’s a product of the photographer’s imagination. I’ve tried to suggest this by increasing the contrast to emphasise the lines of the composition, the oval shapes that blend into each other giving an overall abstract effect.”

Twiggy, December 1967. Photograph: David Newell-Smith for the Observer

As well as the glamour, he covered the grit. His stark, compassionate shoot in the Gorbals in Glasgow complemented the work of Penny Tweedie, who had documented the slum for the launch of the charity Shelter two years earlier. In 1967, he travelled to record the Six Day war in what was then Jordan, and among many other foreign trips, he covered the student riots in Paris in 1968, returning with an image of two demonstrators so chic and timeless that only last week, on seeing it for the first time, my 18-year-old asked if he could get a print for his wall.

Like all the best photographers, Newell-Smith felt ambivalent about some of the events he had to cover as part of his day job. In October 1966, he was hurriedly dispatched to Wales as news broke of the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the village of Aberfan: 116 children and 28 adults were killed. His response could have been that of any photographer covering last month’s Grenfell Tower tragedy: “To me, Aberfan typified one of the most upsetting things about being a newspaper photographer... I felt that it was such a private thing, that people should be left to suffer in peace and that we [the press photographers] shouldn’t be there... But there was something more to it than that, another very strong feeling. It summed up the whole reason for being a newspaper photographer. There was so much of meaning there to photograph.”

In an interview with the British Journal of Photography in March 1967 he said: “There’s a part of me that would like to go away and take photographs 24 hours a day, live and eat photography, work myself up into a lather and imagine I’m a sort of Van Gogh. But the other half says you’ve got to earn a living.”

However Newell-Smith’s pragmatism did not dilute his passion for and commitment to his calling. He produced outstanding work. A letter from the Observer’s picture editor Bryn Campbell early on Sunday 11 October 1964 said: “Before I leave the newsroom this morning, I want to congratulate you. Seldom if ever can any photographer have had so many pictures published through all the editions of one Sunday’s Observer. Never, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone achieved such a high standard over so wide a range of subjects â€" news, business, feature and sport, in a single issue of the paper, Thank you for working so willingly and so well.”

Although, like every other newspaper photographer since, he sometimes took issue with picture selection by the editor, his picture editor and designers, he understood the nature of the business. He found fulfilment through overcoming the daily challenges with his trusty Nikon F. “I get a lot of pleasure out of doing a job, no matter what it is. Simply from overcoming the technical difficulties.”

Aberfan disaster, 22 October 1966. Photograph: David Newell-Smith for the Observer

Newell-Smith’s association with the Observer ended in the late 70s, when he and his wife â€" the photographer Sonya Hirsch â€" opened the Tadema gallery in Islington, which specialised in 20th-century art and artefacts. They soon gained an international reputation for their expert eye. The couple continued to pursue their love of photography; their candid street scenes from the east end of London can be seen on Tadema’s street photography website.

Unlike some of his peers, Newell-Smith didn’t find fame in war or fashion photography. His legacy, the prints and negatives, are carefully stored in the GNM archive and his body of work is a testament to the art of the newspaper photographer.

In 1967 Newell-Smith expressed a sentiment that always held true for him: “There is nothing I would rather do than take photographs. I don’t know why exactly but to me it’s completely satisfying in every way.”

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