Don McPhee

Don McPhee, who worked for the Guardian in Manchester as a photographer for 36 years, died on March 26, aged 61.

McPhee, whose quiet skill was widely admired by his professional colleagues, was born in Manchester and educated in the city.

He began his training on the Stockport Express and then moved on to an evening paper in Basildon, Essex. As soon as he completed his training there he was sacked because as a fully qualified journalist he would have been too expensive to keep on.

McPhee, who lived in Poynton, moved on to the Eastern Daily Press in Norwich and then to a picture agency in York (where, against his better judgement, he several times photographed a bathing beauty with a killer whale).

He was head-hunted by the Guardian and began a career in which he roamed the north, Britain and the world. He covered elections in South Africa, where he was proud to have seen Nelson Mandela, and in the US, where he talked himself on to aircraft following candidates.

At home, he was in the thick of the 1984 miners' strike and produced at least one picture that went round the world - a shot of a picket in a toy policeman’s helmet eyeballing a line of police officers at the Orgreave coking plant.

But he also loved the eccentricities of everyday life, particularly in the north, and produced a string of well-loved pictures. Highlights included a portrait of two farmers in gut-to-gut stance at a Yorkshire horse sale and another of two pensioner gents flat out on the beach at Blackpool in raincoats, shoes and flat caps. He also produced one of the most beautiful of pictures of Oldham ever taken.

He was quietly delighted when Manchester Metropolitan University gave him an honorary MA in 2000. In 2005, Manchester Art Gallery staged an exhibition of his work in the Manchester Evening News gallery that attracted more visitors than any other show since the gallery reopened in 2000.

People travelled from all over the country to see the work and to hear McPhee speak, modestly as ever, about his working life. He was touched by the warm comments they left in the visitors’ book.

McPhee was a great support to the reporters he worked with but he was an inspiration to many photographers who admired the man and his work.