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John Drysdale's photographs

A Quiet Place.





John Drysdale's photographs have appeared all over the world in magazines, posters, books, postcards and calendars. He began his career helping to photograph royalty and became famous for his photographs of children and animals.

John Drysdale was born and raised in Uganda. He has always been fascinated by animals, both domestic and wild. Another great passion of his, which began in his teens, is photography. His first experiments with photography were conducted using an old camera. He set up a darkroom in an unused water tank in the yard.

At the age of twenty, luck helped Drysdale set out on the path that led him to professional photography. While visiting relatives in England, he received an invitation to study at the prestigious Guildford College of Art, and he jumped at the chance. “If I had been British, I would have joined a waiting list of 300 people for each place. But the management wanted to internationalize the college, and I was the first person from Uganda they had heard of, and they invited me. It changed my life.”

After two years of studying photography at college, he began his career with a dream job at the legendary Vogue studio in London. Drysdale found himself in the company of the world's best photographers. "The Vogue studios hosted Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson and many other wonderful people... It was a great opportunity for me, also because after the war it was impossible to get hold of colour film, but Vogue had unlimited access to colour film from the USA."

Drysdale's first major assignment was to assist Cecil Beaton in photographing the royals at Buckingham Palace after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Photographers were struggling to get decent shots of the royal children, including the rambunctious Prince Charles and his energetic sister Princess Anne. Drysdale already knew he enjoyed photographing children.

He has since worked in reportage, advertising and industrial photography, winning numerous awards including British Press Pictures of the Year and World Press Photo. But Drysdale’s most memorable work came from working with children and animals, drawing his images from real-life situations. He has also captured many wonderful photographs of interspecies animal friendships.

When asked how he manages to create such stunning images of children and animals, who are notoriously unpredictable, Drysdale replied: “They lose interest very quickly, so you have to get everything you can as fast as you can. I always had several cameras loaded with film and lenses set up so that if one ran out, I could switch to another. I have often worked with assistants who were very good at handling both animals and children. And sometimes it was completely different: everything happened quickly and uncontrollably. Overall, there was a lot of luck involved.”

John Drysdale’s photo books have been published in Germany, Japan, Great Britain and the USA. His work brings joy to the whole world.

Trio at Dusk, London, 1956.



Sidewalk Art, London, 1956.

Smart Dad, 1968.



A ski lesson, Scotland, 1962.



A rodeo competitor at a competition in Calgary.



Sutch Savage fans.



Lantern Tarzan, 1955.



Flower library.



Leapfrog.



Schoolgirls learning to smoke. UK, 1951.



A Scottish football fan with a beer in London.