Fran May: Photography 1974-1978

This edition presents extraordinary images form the archive of renowned photographer Fran May - extraordinary for their quality but also for the fact that she started capturing these moments while still a teenager. A few years later, while at the Royal College of Art, Fran's personal tutor - the famous photographer Bill Brandt - made her promise she would look after these images, stating that they would have social significance one day. She did just that, and here they are presented, as they deserve to be, in this superb and luxurious publication.

Starting as a Fine Art Painting student at Sheffield, Fran completed her education at the Royal College of Art with a master’s degree in photography in 1978. While in Sheffield she started to use a camera to document not just Sheffield but also Manchester, Sunderland, Leeds, Scarborough, Blackpool, and many small towns before moving to London to study.

Fran was awarded the Junior Travel Scholarship as the most promising student and at her degree show, she was also awarded the Vogue Prize by Barney Wan (art editor of Vogue Magazine) for her documentary photography. Her first commissioned appointment came from The Brooklyn Museum, documenting the Valley of the Kings in Egypt as the museum’s Royal Theban Tomb Photographer. On her return, she took a studio space in Hoxton Square to build a freelance photography business and worked for the British Museum and The Sunday Times Magazine as well as on documentary projects in Africa. 

Later work included the creation of corporate images for investment banks, law firms, publishers and scientific research companies. For over thirty years she worked freelance for the Development Offices of the University of Cambridge providing images of the people working in scientific and technological innovation for alumni publications.