News Built for Victorian celebrities The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1865 to collect portraits of famous British men and women. It has a collection of more than 200,000 artworks from the 16th century onwards. Steve Cook has had a varied career. Now some of his pictures are in the National Portrait Gallery. Laraine Clay reports. are given National exposure STEVE Cook has worked in many fields, from comics to advertising, fashion to lecturing but taking photos has always been an enduring passion. And this has enabled him to capture many decades of a changing world, work that has now been recognised by the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery, in Trafalgar Square, has acquired four of his photos to add to its collection of more than 200,000 portraits spanning the 16th to the 21st centuries. The four they have chosen are all black and white and taken in the 1980s and ‘90s but they are just a tiny part of his own collection taken from the 1970s onwards. Now 56 and living in Langdon Park, he started taking photos as a ten-year-old when he won a plastic camera at a talent show. Since then it has been an important part of his life, through his many different jobs which have given him the opportunity to use his camera. “I could never quite decide whether I wanted to be an artist, a designer or a photographer, but I’ve somehow managed all three, and each has informed the other,” he told the gallery in an interview. Speaking to East End Life, he said: “Photography is the thing I have always done, even while I was working in other jobs.” Steve has mostly worked in black and white and, although he has toyed with digital photography, he has started using analogue cameras again. “There’s something reassuring about the click of an old shutter,” he laughed. Steve started working as a stylist in a photographic studio, fol lowed by work at an advertising agency and at the same time taking photos of clientele at some of London’s most prestigious restaurants. The eighties saw him East End Kids – Beckton, London, 1987 photographing such celebrities as Andy Warhol, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Ultravox and Freddie Mercury. At the same time he was working in comics, with Marvel for five years – famous for Spiderman and The Hulk – followed by 13 years with the influential British firm, 2000 AD. He has also designed album sleeves for William Orbit (whose photo is one of the four selected by the gallery) and Asian Dub Foundation. Steve now works for Vertigo There’s something reassuring about the click of an old shutter.” Steve Cook and DC Comics – of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman fame – as well as lecturing at the London College of Fashion where he is Practitioner in Residence. It was only recently that he returned to his collection of www.npg.org.uk negatives and thought he had some that could be of a wider interest – and they were. The gallery has paid for the four pictures it chose to be printed by the renowned Robin Bell. Described as being one of the Done by hand The gallery has paid for its pictures to be printed by Robin Bell –who still specialises in hand processing prints. world’s finest black and white photographic printers, he is one of the few remaining professionals who specialise in hand processing prints. Sadly for the rest of us, Steve’s photos are not actually on display but locked away out of view. But he is hoping to fill some of the gaps on the gallery’s walls in the future. “I went on the gallery website and noticed that some people were missing, for example Madonna,” he said. He has always been intrigued by the superstar and told the gallery: “A strange twist of fate placed us in an empty train carriage to Tunbridge Wells a few years ago and we had a pretty deep conversation about life, the universe and everything as the lush, green English countryside rolled past the window. “At that point she wasn’t the pop star, but the children’s author and that is how I’d like to photograph her.” You can see Steve’s photos at www.steven-cook.com 20 – 26 APRIL 2015 N E W S FROM TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL AND YOUR COMMUNITY 11
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