My father, Terry Scholes, who has died aged 85, was an outstanding British street photographer for several decades. His images documented and celebrated community and cultural events, mainly in the north of England.
Born in Barton-upon-Humber, north Lincolnshire, to Terry, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Maggie, a shop assistant, he attended Roundhay school, in Leeds, and won a scholarship to the Leeds University. After graduating in 1954 he did his national service in Egypt, where he picked up a camera for the first time. It would be his constant companion for the rest of his life.
Returning to the UK, he joined the Manchester Amateur Photographic Society. In the early 1960s there was little to encourage an aspiring street photographer, but there he found a few like-minded individuals. They named themselves Group M, a group within a group, and they helped him develop his own style of photography.
Initially inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, he favoured a Leica to shoot unobtrusively. However it was the work of his contemporary Tony Ray-Jones that had the greatest influence on his style and subject matter. Starting his career as postwar Britain embarked on a period of rapid social change, Terry took photographs that captured the spirit, humour and habits of a vanishing way of life in an unposed and spontaneous way.
Festivals, fairs and hypermasculine sports, such as rugby league and boxing, were favourite subjects that he returned to time and time again. He demonstrated a unique ability to capture a detailed narrative in a single image. Upon moving to Sheffield for work in 1972, he sought out photographers with similar interests. After meeting Ken Philip at Sheffield Art College he became heavily involved in the early years of the Untitled gallery in Sheffield.
Terry never worked professionally as a photographer. He took all of his photographs in his spare time or as he travelled the country in his role as a sales manager in the engineering industry. He had no darkroom to work in, developing his pictures in the family kitchen late at night.
His work appeared infrequently in magazines and in two exhibitions – one at the Untitled Gallery in Sheffield in 1983 and the other, entitled Gatherings, at Oldham art gallery in 1985.
In his later years, his BMW motorcycle took him around the country photographing people and places and keeping him in touch with friends old and new.
Terry’s wife, and enthusiastic supporter of his talents for 52 years, Patricia (nee Armfield), died in 2010. He is survived by two sons, Andrew and me, and his grandchildren, Lyndon, Charlotte and Kate.
