In 1974 Ian Berry won a bursary from the Arts Council to photograph ‘the English’. He’d already made his name in South Africa as the only photographer to record the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. Two years later Cartier-Bresson invited him to join Magnum. He went on to work in Vietnam, Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland and Ethiopia; he was in Czechoslovakia in 1968. When the BBC asked if they could accompany him to Whitby on one leg of his journey for the Arts Council project, he was uneasy. He didn’t fancy being trailed by a toff in jeans and a bunch of technicians, but quickly established a rapport with the film cameraman. In the one-eyed professions every Cyclops finds a soulmate sooner or later.

LRB 2 August 2012 | PDF Download