Graham Keen obituary
My friend Graham Keen, who has died aged 82, was a photographer of 1960s bohemia who seems to have attended every street protest and happening during that decade, his Pentax camera capturing the icons of swinging London.
His subjects included Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Jasper Johns, Allen Ginsberg, Bertrand Russell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ronnie Scott, Francis Bacon, William Burroughs and Alberto Giacometti.
Graham adored jazz and was press photographer for the BBC Two series Jazz 625 (1964-66), shooting Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. He captured the avant garde at Better Books on Charing Cross Road, became a key photographer for International Times and did photoshoots at the Indica gallery in London.
Graham Keen set up Cyclops magazine, ‘the first English adult comic paper’, which lasted four issues, before joining Time Out magazine as a designer. He stayed there for 30 years until retiring in 2001. Photograph: Jean McNeil
His camera caught Muhammad Ali with the black power leader Michael X in May 1966 at the Central London mosque in Regent’s Park, and bore witness to the 1965 anti-Vietnam march led by Marc Bolan, Joan Baez, Donovan and Vanessa Redgrave. As a photographer for CND and Peace News he travelled to Cambodia with Pat Arrowsmith to cover the war in North Vietnam during the Tet offensive.
The delegation never made it to Hanoi but was forced under military escort through the Ho Chi Minh trail, where Graham, terrified, documented the horror of napalmed children.
Yoko Ono preparing the interactive work Ceiling Painting for her first British exhibition at London’s Indica Gallery in 1966. Photograph: Graham Keen
That experience cooled Graham’s interest in freelance photography. In 1968 he became art editor and director at International Times. When the magazine was raided by police in 1969 for publishing a gay lonely hearts section, Graham and three other directors were sent for trial in 1970 and found guilty of conspiracy to corrupt public morals, with a fine of £2,000.
Graham then set up Cyclops magazine, “the first English adult comic paper”, which lasted four issues, before joining Time Out magazine as a designer. He stayed there for 30 years until retiring in 2001.
Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Graham was the son of Arthur Keen, a miner, and Winifred (nee Hayes), a singer and pianist. He went to Cheltenham grammar school and studied sculpture at Gloucestershire College of Art before being called up in 1958 for national service in the RAF.
Graham travelled to Moscow in 1960 with the photographer John “Hoppy” Hopkins. Hoppy urged him to trade in his Rolleiflex for a Pentax and from that point he became consumed by photography. He moved to London, where he worked as a bus conductor, teacher, house painter and City clerk while getting started, sharing a flat in Notting Hill, west London, with the artist Jean McNeil, where he set up his first dark room.
Graham met Alison Seddon in 1984 and they married two years later. His last two decades were spent in Battle, East Sussex, with Alison, surrounded by his books, his art and his many friends, walking in the countryside with their two dogs, Poppy and Daisy.
He is survived by Alison, his brother, John, and a nephew, Freddie.