Chris Steele-Perkins
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Born: 1947

Hometown: Rangoon, Burma

Lives and Works: London, England

Education: BA Psychology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1970

Chris Steele-Perkins Bio

About The Artist

Chris Steele-Perkins moved from Rangoon to London with his family in 1949. He graduated with honors in psychology at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1967-70) while working as a photographer and picture editor for the student newspaper.

In 1971 he started working as a freelance photographer and started his first foreign work in 1973 in Bangladesh followed by work for relief organizations and travel assignments. In 1975 he worked with EXIT, a group dealing with social problems in British cities. He then joined the Paris-based Viva agency in 1976.

In 1979, his first book, The Teds, was published. Steele-Perkins joined Magnum Photos in 1979 and soon began working extensively in the developing world, in particular in Africa, Central America, and Lebanon, as well as continuing to take photographs in Britain: his book 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, and the second of his Japanese books, Tokyo Love Hello, in March 2007. He continues to work in Britain, documenting rural life in County Durham, which was published as Northern Exposures in 2007. In 2009 he published a collection of work from 40 years of photographing England—England, My England.

His reportages have received high public acclaim and have won several awards, including:

The Tom Hopkinson Prize for British Photojournalism (1988)
The Oscar Barnack Prize (1988)
The Robert Capa Gold Medal (1989)

Courtesy of Magnum Photos

Chris Steele-Perkins Permanent Collections

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British Library of Political and Economic Science, London, England
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
Tate, London, England
National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire
National Portrait Gallery, London, England
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France
Tokyo Fuji Art Museum , Hachiœji, Tokyo
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC