Grace Robertson OBE (13 July 1930[1] – 11 January 2021[2]) was a British photographer who worked as a photojournalist, and published in Picture Post and Life.
[3] Her photographic series, including "Mother's Day Off" (1954) and "Childbirth" (1955), mainly recorded ordinary women in postwar Britain.
[10] Some of her early submissions used the male pseudonym "Dick Muir", ( a name made up of an old boyfriends first name and her mothers maiden name) to avoid revealing she was a woman, Her first commission for Picture Post was in Snowdonia, which resulted in "Sheep Shearing in Wales" (1951).
[8][10][12] The Scotsman describes both these sets of photographs as "perfectly composed, artifice-free examples of classic reportage".
[10] Her series "Childbirth", published in Picture Post in 1955, included photographs of a woman in labour and delivery, considered explicit at the time, and were among the earliest such images to appear in a magazine.
[12][16] Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, characterises Robertson's work as recording ordinary women in postwar Britain, and describes her as a "proto-feminist".
[14] Robertson, who stood 6 ft 2in in her bare feet,[19][20] married in 1955 the Picture Post photographer Thurston Hopkins.