Camera Press is a photographic picture agency founded in London in 1947 by Jewish Hungarian Tom Blau, a portrait photographer[1] of major contemporary political figures, musicians and film stars, [2] who, in 1935, migrated from Berlin where he was born and lived, becoming a naturalised British citizen (also in 1947.)
The Camera Press archive is of historic importance, the agency having represented among others Antony Armstrong-Jones, Patrick Lichfield, Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, Thurston Hopkins, Baron (photographer) and Yousuf Karsh, whom Blau had signed on as the agency's first photographer.
[3] Baron's first assignment for the agency was the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II; Blau was the first to distribute pictures of the event.
It also counted among its members lesser known photographers, such as Hedda Morrison in Sarawak, and mountaineer Alfred Gregory, whose work in distant parts of the British Commonwealth were of interest to the picture magazines thriving in the 1950s.
[5] When Camera Press moved to Butlers Wharf near Tower Bridge from their original premises in Russell Square in March 1993 the agency opened and ran the Tom Blau Gallery at 21 Queen Elizabeth Street, London SE1 to exhibit photographers including Roger Bamber, Robert Whittaker, Gemma Levine and Marcus Lyon.