Camera Press

Camera Press is a photographic picture agency founded in London in 1947 by Jewish Hungarian Tom Blau, a portrait photographer of major contemporary political figures, musicians and film stars, who, in 1935, migrated from Berlin where he was born and lived, becoming a naturalised British citizen

Historic archive

The Camera Press archive is of historic importance, the agency having represented among others Antony Armstrong-Jones, Patrick Lichfield, Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, Thurston Hopkins, Baron and Yousuf Karsh, whom Blau had signed on as the agency's first photographer. Baron's first assignment for the agency was the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II; Blau was the first to distribute pictures of the event.
It also counted among its members lesser known photographers, such as Hedda Morrison in Sarawak, and mountaineer Alfred Gregory, whose work in distant parts of the British Commonwealth were of interest to the picture magazines thriving in the 1950s.
Each decade is represented in the collection with some of the best known celebrities: Steve Emberton's picture of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen at Vicious’ Maida Vale home in 1978; Clive Arrowsmith’s Kate Bush in 1980, Madonna, and Public Enemy in the 1990s.
In 2007 former managing director Roger Eldridge who had joined the agency as an editor in 1969 died suddenly, at 63 years old, on the way to a radio interview about the 60th anniversary of Camera Press. Other former managing directors of the agency included Donald Chapman and Jon Blau.
Emma Blau's photograph of Basement Jaxx appeared in an exhibition she curated of Camera Press imagery Camera Press at 70 – A Lifetime in Pictures which was held May 17–June 10, 2017 at the Bermondsey Project Space, 183-185 Bermondsey Street, London.