A PICTURE POST PHOTOGRAPHER: HAYWOOD MAGEE
“HAYWOOD MAGEE, a reader of poetry and a teller of tales, and one of this country’s outstanding war correspondents, was equally at home photographing glamour girls and Atlantic convoys.”
This was how Picture Post, in its last issue on 1st June 1957, described one of its longest-serving, most versatile and productive photographers.
Haywood Magee had contributed picture stories since the start of the magazine in the late 1930s.
He was one of only two staff photographers - along with Kurt Hutton - who were with Picture Post more or less throughout its life.
Magee (known as “Mac”) never attained the fame of his colleague Bert Hardy, and has been largely forgotten in the annals of British photojournalism.
Yet he created a huge number of picture stories (nearly 600 in total), and was a respected and loved presence on the Picture Post staff, contributing across the whole breadth of its output: war reporting, celebrity features, stories on exotic foreign countries and remote British communities, life and work and play in post-War Britain.
In the following pages, we look at Magee's life and work - before, during and after the Second World War.
