The British Press Photographers’ Association was formed in 1984 by a small group of Fleet Street photographers to showcase the work that they were so passionate about. Over the next few years the Association grew staging a series of hugely influential exhibitions and publishing three volumes of  “Assignments” – collections of each year’s best work.

In 2003 we adopted a ‘mission statement’:

To promote and inspire the highest ethical, technical and creative standards from within the profession and raise awareness and appreciation of our industry outside it.

Later in the same year we staged an exhibition at a central London gallery called UNSEEN to showcase the large number of amazing photographs that, for a wide variety of reasons, never saw the light of day and were never published. We followed that up in 2005 with the seminal ‘Five Thousand Days’ – a book that sold well over 10,000 copies and showed press photography of the highest quality. Since then we have published more books, had several web based projects and supported the Press Photographer’s Year competition for several years.

In 2006 we became one of the ‘Gatekeepers’ for the United Kingdom Press Card Authority. As part of the UKPCA we have the ability to assess and potentially approve photographers as holders of the UK Press Card. We are also a member body of the British Photographic Council and have worked very closely with other organisations representing photographers and journalists to help to shape our industry and its practices.

In 2011 we made a voluntary submission to the Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Ethics and Standards of The Press when it became clear that news photographers were being singled out for criticism from many of the celebrity witnesses without any satisfactory replies. We made an appearance at the Inquiry in February 2012 after which Lord Justice Leveson made it clear that he saw The BPPA and our members as part of the solution rather than the problem.

Starting in 2016 we started to put on a series of Assignments exhibitions to, once again, showcase our members work. We have now staged four editions of Assignments and the fifth will go on the walls of a London gallery in May 2023. During the COVID-19 lockdowns we saw a need for an annual competition to recognise UK Press Photographers and their contribution to news coverage and so in press photographer of the year we held our first Press Photographer of The Year competition on line and every member of the association was able to take part in the voting in a number of categories as well as an overall winner. The second edition was for photographs taken in 2021and this is now becoming an annual fixture of the association’s programme. We continue to look for new projects and ways to cary out our role of promoting and inspiring and, prior to COVID, we had started on a series of workshops for working photographers to come together and reinforce their skills and knowledge and we will resume those in the near future.

During the Coronavirus pandemic we worked closely with the Premier League to help independent freelance photographers and small agencies get some of the severely limited number of positions at Premier League football matches during the restrictions to access to grounds.

In 2022 we started our Associate Membership Scheme to allow those who are working towards a career in our industry to get help and support from those of us who have been lucky enough to work as press photographers over a number of years.

The BPPA continues to make its voice heard on a range of issues that face our profession including our ongoing work around copyright, orphan works legislation and the way that press photographers interact with law enforcement.