ABSTRACT
The touring shows which he produced for the Combined Societies group included work by Barbara Morgan, Minor White and Paul Strand. It was British photography bewitched, reinvigorated, brought back to life by a touch of transatlantic magic. If the Hayward's Brandt exhibition illuminated, briefly but blindingly, the potential of British photography, then it was Creative Camera which went on to explore and constantly justify photography's right to be represented within visual art institutions in Britain. Although the story of Album is outside the parameters of this essay, its demise represents a minor tragedy in the emergence of the new publishing in British photography. Interestingly, perhaps inevitably, given the machismo of the sixties art scene, those who gathered around Turner were primarily men in their early twenties who possessed a highly developed sense of youthful masculinity. Creative Camera remained independent for over a decade, thanks to the financial support of publisher and co-editor Colin Osman.
