Peter Turner

Who was Peter Turner?

Peter Turner was a photographer, curator, and writer. He was the longest-serving editor of Creative Camera.

Turner was born in London on 3 February 1947. He studied photography at the Guildford School of Art between 1965 and 1968.

He began working at SLR magazine where he learned the journalist's trade and encountered Creative Camera. In 1969, following the departure of founding editor Bill Jay, Turner became assistant editor to Creative Camera's founder and publisher, Colin Osman. David Brittain, writing in Afterimage Journal, said "Over the next nine years Creative Camera became a pillar of the support structure for photography in the United Kingdom and a byword for good taste". He left Creative Camera in 1978 to set up with his partner, Heather Forbes, the short-lived photographic publisher Travelling Light in 1980 in Putney. Its publications included the first edition of Chris Steele-Perkins' The Teds. In 1986, with Travelling Light in financial difficulties, Turner returned to Creative Camera as editor, welcoming colour photography and tolerating the photographic work of "fine artists".