Chris Steele-Perkins

Chris Steele-Perkins was born in 1947. At the age of two, he moved to England from Burma with his father. Steele-Perkins attended the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he studied psychology while working for the student newspaper. He graduated with honors in 1970 and moved to London in 1971, where he worked as a freelance photographer.

While working in Britain, Steele-Perkins concentrated on areas concerned with urban poverty and subcultures. In 1975, he worked with EXIT, a collective dealing with social problems in British cities. This involvement culminated in the book Survival Programmes in 1982. In 1976, Steele-Perkins joined the Paris-based Viva agency. Following this, in 1979, he published his first solo book, The Teds. Concurrently that year, he edited the Arts Council of Great Britain’s book, About 70 Photographs.

After joining Magnum Photos in 1979 (he became a full member in 1983), Steele-Perkins began working extensively in economically developing nations—particularly, in Africa, Central America and Lebanon. He also continued to take photographs in Britain: The Pleasure Principle explores Britain in the 1980s. In 1992, he published Afghanistan, the result of four trips over four years. After marrying his second wife, Miyako Yamada, he embarked on a long-term photographic exploration of Japan, publishing Fuji in 2000. A highly personal diary of 2001, Echoes, was published in 2003. This was followed by the second of his Japanese books, Tokyo Love Hello, in March 2007.

Recently, Steele-Perkins has published two books: The Troubles (2021) and The New Londoners (2019). The Troubles is a collection of images that Steele-Perkins took in 1978 in Northern Ireland. The New Londoners celebrates London’s diversity through a series of family portraits captured by Steele-Perkins.