Colin O'Brien (photographer)

Colin O'Brien (8 May 1940 – 19 August 2016) was a British street photographer.

[1][2][3][4][5] He began documenting life in London in the 1950s and continued to do so for over 60 years, leaving behind a photographic archive of around half a million negatives.

He says his “first real photograph” was a photo of his two childhood friends against a car at Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, in London in the area he was raised.

At the time O’Brien shot with a Brownie box camera and an uncle gave him a contact printing set to help him develop his own film.

His subjects were usually his family and landscapes, with his photo of the London skyline at night used on cover of the first edition of Bill Naughton’s Alfie, an adaptation of his play and was later turned into two films.