Eamonn McCabe - more than just sports pictures

Eamonn McCabe died at the age of 74 having been one of the best sports photographers of his generation. He later became picture editor for The Guardian and Observer in 1988.

Maradona

He won the prestigious Sports Photographer of the Year four times and was also named News Photographer of the year for his pictures and work at the Heysel Stadium disaster, which he had gone to photograph. Awards didn't stop there and he was named Picture Editor of the Year six times, a record that still stands. He stepped down from that role in 2001 and returned to freelancing using his reputation to work with a number of reputable magazines and other print outlets which cemented his reputation.

Li Chen Shi

Whilst well known as a sports photographer (my favourite is the one of table tennis's  Li Chen Shi serving -above) he had other strings to his bow and took many portraits - a good number of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery. He was also interested in writers and how they worked and took many photographers of the study's they worked in such as the one below belonging to Will Self. They were, in their way, another sort of portrait.

Writer's Room - Will Self

A self taught photographer from North London but eventually settled in Suffolk. McCabe was Visiting Senior Fellow in Photography at the University of Suffolk held an Honorary Doctorate of the University of East Anglia and Staffordshire University, and was an Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University.

Anthony Hopkins

With his later portraits he began working in colour with a Hasselblad. The medium format meant that he could take less pictures but repeated a discipline he had learned with sports pictures - work fast and directly. Most of his portraits are confrontational in that the person is always looking at the camera and asking the viewer to consider them directly.

Juliet Stevenson

In his retirement McCabe also had time to shoot some scenes of his beloved Suffolk, where he had eventually settled, usually showing the side to rural life that must have seemed a long way from the international sports events he had become used to.

Threshing in Suffolk

I was lucky enough to see him talk about his work at an event in Hull University a few years ago. He was am amusing speaker and a gracious man when I had to apologies after my phone went off in the middle of his talk. Oh dear.

Seamus Heaney