The book Pictures on a Page by Sir Harold Evans is widely considered the definitive text on photojournalism, layout and picture editing.
Voted the all-time greatest British newspaper editor by British journalists in 2001, Evans made his name at the Northern Echo and at the Sunday Times, which he was editing when he wrote Pictures on a Page in 1978. What is less well known among photographers is that Pictures on a Page was just one in a series of five text books he wrote for working photographers, journalists and students. “Everything we knew… we knew it because of Harry,” said Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, in 2013.
When Graham Harrison, a member of The BPPA, met the 87-year old at the Media Space in May he found his interest in photography was as great as ever.
As is his recognition of the dangers that photographers encounter. In his forward to Five Thousand Days, published by the BPPA in 2004, Evans wrote that press photographers “cannot move in the shadows, as can the reporter. These digital days, getting a picture back to the newspaper is not the nightmare it used to be, while the risks in taking a picture at all have multiplied”.
A feature documentary about Evans’ investigative journalism, ’Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the last Nazi War Crime’, directed by Jaqui and David Morris makers of McCullin (2012), premieres in January.
You can read Graham Harrison’s article on Photo Histories.