By David Steen
Located in London, GB
Richard Harris – Malta,
1973
Born in 1930 in Limerick, Ireland, Harris made his screen debut in the 1958 film Alive and Kicking. This was followed by solid supporting roles in films such as Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). But he jumped to the top of Hollywood’s list of leading men in 1963 following his performance as young coal miner turned professional rugby player in This Sporting Life which earned him an Oscar nomination. Once a notorious drinker and hell-raiser to rival Oliver Reed, his work during the Seventies and Eighties isn’t widely revered, but in 1990 he once again earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in The Field.
Limited Edition David Steen Estate Print
Limited Edition: All prints are limited editions, no further prints are produced once sold
Paper size - 34 x 24 " / 86 x 61 cm
Limited to 30 only this size
All prints are bespoke and printed to order
stamped and numbered by the Estate
Copyright: © David Steen / The David Steen Archive
David Steen’s introduction to photography was as a 15-year-old school leaver joining Picture Post where he had the good luck to be taken under the wing of the legendary Bert Hardy as an assistant. It was the ultimate training ground in photojournalism, and the launch pad for his career.
David’s reunion with Picture Post after doing his National Service (as special photographer based in Eygpt, covering the major trouble zones) was short-lived. The magazine was losing ground and closed. He moved to Fleet Street, first to a bright new Mirror title, Woman’s Sunday Mirror, where incidentally he picked up First Prize in Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Best Pictures of the Year Award for his sequence of ‘Birth of a Baby’, the progress of a young woman delivering her own baby under hypnosis.
He was 21, the youngest ever to be awarded this prize. There followed time as a staff photographer with The Daily Mail; Fleet Street was the hub of the world. Then on to freelancing…Queen magazine, Nova, the Sunday Times Magazine, international magazines around the world, over the years covering projects as diverse as riots in Harlem to a film set in Acapulco, a battered wives’ refuge to the Queen and family at Sandringham: the hopeless, the homeless, the glitterati. Trained on the maxim ‘every picture tells a story’ he has focused on film stars, actors, criminals, politicians, prime ministers and countless men, women and children going about their everyday lives.
David Steen believes himself to be lucky. He thinks lucky; luck is being in the right place at the right time, having the luck to have a loving family and enduring friends and winning a three-year battle against cancer.
Asked by aspiring photographers for his best advice, his stock reply is: ‘Get up early.’
David Steen † 1936 – 2015
Tags: richard harris, actor, movies, hollywood, film, writer, irish, 1970s, 70s, film director, this sporting life, king arthur, camelot, a man called horse, unforgiven, gladiator, harry potter and the chamber of secrets, harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone
Category
1970s Modern David Steen Figurative Photography