Reportage for Picture Post in the 1950s was at the heart of the career of Thurston Hopkins, who has died aged 101. His long professional life also included book illustration, commercial photography and teaching before painting finally took over.
The hallmarks of Hopkinss style as a photographer mirrored those of the news magazine: a strong story, told in as many shades of black and white as possible. His signature features began with The Cats of London (1951) and closed with Life in Liverpool (1956), which was spiked by Picture Posts owner, Edward Hulton, in deference to Liverpools leaders who protested at the depiction of poverty, misery and deprivation in their citys slums. (This tendency to kill challenging stories was to cost one editor my father, Tom Hopkinson his job when, in 1950, he refused to pull a feature on the Korean war by the photographer Bert Hardy and the writer James Cameron.)
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