This week, we're thrilled to announce the representation of the archive of another outstanding photographer. John Sadovy (1925-2010) was a highly successful photojournalist in the 1950s and 1960s, shooting for the top magazines including LIFE and Vogue. He is perhaps best-known for his award-winning coverage of the Hungarian Revolution, yet this represents only a fraction of his wide-ranging body of work.
Born on 29th October 1925, in Pisek, a tiny farming community in eastern Czechoslovakia, it was expected that John Sadovy would become a farmer. But at the age of 12, he bought his first camera - a cast metal German Sida - and began to photograph life around him, teaching himself how to develop and fix film from photography magazines. Following the Nazi invasion of 1939, John fled his homeland, serving as company photographer in the Polish 8th Army under British command in Italy. After the war, he chose to make a life in England, arriving at a Polish resettlement camp at Helmsley, Yorkshire in 1947, with just a suitcase, two weeks' wages and his camera. While there, he was ideally placed to capture the famously harsh winter of 1947 and once discharged, made his way to London, stopping off in Sheffield for a spell, where he worked as a portrait photographer at Coronet Portrait Studios above a Burton menswear store in the city's busy Haymarket.
His big break came late in 1951 when Picture Post published his images of swans on Kensington Round Pond, and paid the handsome sum of forty pounds. Soon, he was freelancing for Time and LIFE, Parish Match, Lilliput, Stern, Sports Illustrated and The Observer. His archive spans a fascinating variety of sitters and subjects: Antwerp bars, the Stoke Mandeville Games of 1953, 1950s London, cabaret performers, the departure of the final inhabitants of Inishark, western Ireland, dog shows, and the 1963 boxing match between Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Henry Cooper at Wembley, as well as elegant fashion and numerous celebrity faces including Noel Coward and Peter Sellers.
For more than four decades most of John's photographs and negatives lay in storage, but have recently been painstakingly sorted and restored, and an initial set of images are now available to license through ourselves. As this exceptional photographer's centenary approaches, the timing couldn't be better for us to share his brilliant archive, which will continue to grow and develop over the coming months. The photographs, full of humour and spontaneity, not only record a time of hope and change in the post-war era, but stand as testament to a remarkable talent. Ron Spillman, author and photographer, said of John Sadovy: 'Each time we look at a Sadovy picture we learn something about our fellow humans.'
You can view the John Sadovy collection here.
We hope you find our newsletters interesting and inspiring. If you need a hand with picture research, would like a quote, or have any other questions about using our (frankly quite brilliant) picture library, then do get in touch. You can reach us either by emailing [email protected] or calling 020 8318 0034.