Howard Grey

Howard Grey (May 24,1942) is a British photographer. He is known for his photographs of the arrival of the last West Indian migrants at Waterloo Station, London, before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came into force.

Life and work Grey was born in Slough. His father, Alf Grey, was a studio portrait and seaside holiday photographer who gave Howard, then aged six, a Zeiss Ikon Baby Box camera. Grey studied photography at Leicester College of Art (1957–1958), and Ealing School of Photography, London (1958–1960), then worked as an assistant photographer at Woburn Studios. They were exhibited in London in 2018.

Throughout the 1970s, Grey's experience with the Rolleiflex SL66 medium-format camera attracted the attention of the Rank and Carlton Tower Hotel Groups. For them he frequently achieved through-focus photography of bedrooms and banqueting facilities that, until then, was viable only with bulky studio plate cameras.

In 1974 Academy Editions, London, commissioned Philippe Garner with Grey, to author a seminal book on the decorative arts of Émile Gallé.

In 1976, inspired by a small paper-back book on Bloomsbury by Quentin Bell, Grey spent a day photographing Post Impressionist artist Duncan Grant at the artist's home and studio near Lewes in Sussex. Stunned by Grant and his home's decoration and history, Grey envisaged an illustrated book on the Bloomsbury artists and their world; with author and art and crafts historian Isabelle Anscombe as its writer, Thames & Hudson published Omega & After – Bloomsbury and the Decorative Arts in 1981.

For Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Grey travelled to Philadelphia with the lead singer of The Three Degrees, Sheila Ferguson, to supply all photography for her recipe book Soul Food – Classic Cuisine From The Deep South.

In 1982, Howard Grey co-founded a small production unit called Midnight Television. With producer John Clark, they made the first of a series of bawdy one-hour TV entertainment shows primarily aimed at North Sea Oil-rig workers, and at a time before satellite TV had become readily available. After sales of almost a thousand VHS tapes to the general public, the unit ceased production when the National Union of Mineworkers Pension Fund took control of the unit's distribution company.

In 2023, The Royal Mint introduced a special edition of a 50 pence coin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the first arrivals of West Indian immigrants to the UK. Later to be known as the Windrush Generation. The presentation package for this issue included a photograph from the photographer's Windrush 1962 series.

Publications Howard Grey – 2500 Weekends Ago. Self-published / Blurb, 2014. The Victorians By The Sea. Academy Editions 1973 Howard Grey and Graham Stewart. Island. The Store; The Spaces, 2018. By Caruso St John and Marcus Taylor. Includes two short stories by Sam Selvon and photographs by Grey following the Windrush generation and their arrival in London; poetry by Kae Tempest, photographs by Hélène Binet, a contribution by John Akomfrah, a visual essay by the architectural firm Caruso St John, and an essay by Penelope Curtis and other artists who explore the notion of floods such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Alongside these are found texts by William Shakespeare.

Exhibitions In A Different Light, New Acquisitions, Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, London, 2017. Curated by Renée Mussai with Cherelle Sappleton. Group exhibition. Black Cultural Archives, Brixton, London, 2018. Solo exhibition.