David Hurn is a photographer whose career has encompassed documenting current events to pursuing a more personal approach in his later work. He is also an avid collector of photographs.
Born in Surrey, of Welsh descent, Hurn was brought up in Cardiff, and after leaving school he moved to London to work as a photographer. By 1955, he was an assistant at the Reflex Agency and working as a freelance photographer. He made his name the following year with his images of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. During his early career, he also worked as a photographer on film productions, including the James Bond film, From Russia with Love, and Barbarella.
By 1967, Hurn was a full member of the Magnum photographic cooperative. He returned to Wales in the late 1960s and spent a year living in a van and taking photographs around the country. In 1973, he set up the renowned School of Documentary Photography at Newport College of Art where he worked until 1989.
In his later works he shifted his attention from current affairs to a more personal approach. His best-known body of work is Wales: Land of my Father, published in 2000, a collection of images taken between 1970 and 2000, which together are an exploration of cultural and national identity. He continues to live and work in Tintern, Monmouthshire.
In 2017, David Hurn made a remarkable gift of 1500 of his own photographs and 700 works by other photographers to Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales – some of which he had acquired by swapping his works for prints by colleagues.
Mari Griffith is an art historian who has worked in the field of museums and galleries for 30 years, developing and overseeing learning and interpretation provision for public art collections and exhibitions, including at the National Gallery, National Gallery of Art and Royal Academy of Arts. Following a period working internationally on art and heritage interpretation, she is now a freelance writer, editor and translator – focusing mostly on art.
