Mark Gerson obituary

Photographer whose perceptive portraits of writers included well-known images of Evelyn Waugh, Doris Lessing and Faber poets of the 1960s

For around half a century, whenever a British publisher wanted to get a new picture for the next book by a major author, as often as not they would turn to Mark Gerson.

Mark, who has died aged 104, had all the gifts of a great photographer with one special skill: a knack of getting his subjects to trust him. He always preferred to visit people in their own surroundings, as informally as possible. He read their books; he read their minds.

Since his career began soon after the second world war, informality did not come easily to all his early sitters. One of the first, in 1953, was the octogenarian Walter de la Mare, complete with dark suit, waistcoat and stern visage – but with a warm sunlight shining through the window. And as time passed, his sitters caught up with him.

Perhaps his most famous picture was of the notoriously grumpy Evelyn Waugh on his 60th birthday. Mark was plied with so much lunchtime wine that he needed a lie-down. Waugh thought this so funny that he became completely pliable and posed in his garden between two unusually busty sphinxes.

Mark was born in London, into a Jewish family. His father, Bernard, had come from Poland via South Africa – where he fought in the Boer war – to Britain, and opened a silverware shop. He married Esther (nee Miller), whose family were of Lithuanian descent. Mark, the youngest of their three children, grew up in Stamford Hill in the 1930s and his childhood was beset by jeering and insults from supporters of Oswald Mosley’s fascists.

But he was riveted by photography and, after leaving Central Foundation boys’ school, studied the subject at Regent Street Polytechnic. When he volunteered for the RAF in 1940, he hoped to use his hard-won skills. So, naturally, they made him a radio operator. After VE Day his unit visited Buchenwald concentration camp, which had been opened up by the allies to show local Germans what had been done in their names. Mark was mortified that he could not speak enough Yiddish to talk to the ravaged survivors in the camp.

After the war he began to find his destiny. With his demob money he leased a war-damaged studio near Marble Arch, and in 1949 met and married Renee Cohen. She was a would-be historian who struggled against misogyny before climbing to a senior post at London Guildhall University (now London Metropolitan University) with a speciality in the 18th-century Netherlands.

Mark’s progress was smoother. His aunt Betty Miller was an author (and mother of the polymath and humorist Jonathan). Mark took her picture. The literary magazine John O’London’s Weekly liked it and thus Mark began a career devoted to authors.

There was a particularly delightful photo of Doris Lessing in 1956 stroking her cat next to her typewriter. Later on he had William Golding staring at his chessboard; a thoughtful Tom Stoppard sucking his fingers; Alan Sillitoe with a cup of tea; Martin Amis leaning against a pinball machine … Many of the subjects were smoking, which was of course the standard way of dealing with a slightly stressful situation, like having your picture taken.

Another famous photo came at a party in 1960 given by the publishers Faber for their matchless list of poets. It showed Stephen Spender, WH Auden, TS Eliot, Louis MacNeice and Ted Hughes. The poet it did not show was Sylvia Plath, Hughes’s wife. She was not yet famous in her own right and Mark had not spotted her. It was said she was making the tea.

By the 60s photography was becoming recognised as an art form in its own right. When the young Roy Strong became director of the National Portrait Gallery in 1967 he gave the genre its due. He rated Mark’s work highly and added much of it to the gallery’s collection. In 1996 the gallery held a major exhibition, Literati, devoted to Mark’s work. The event’s curator, Terence Pepper, remains an admirer: “He was doing stuff that was very rare at the time.”

By then Mark was already past the normal retirement age and photography was about to be revolutionised. He preferred the old-fashioned ways: “in his old Austin mini carting a tripod, lighting equipment and a couple of Rolleiflex cameras,” as his daughter Jane put it, then heading back to his darkroom at home in St John’s Wood to develop the product. He always favoured black and white, and his craftsmanship would seem quaint nowadays.

He was the gentlest of men who, in 1967, found enough forgiveness/professionalism/curiosity to photograph Mosley, who told Mark he was never an antisemite. Mark remained throughout his long life a man without anger, firmly of the left, and lucid until his last minutes. He leaves a huge legacy of fascinating portraits, many of which can be seen on the National Portrait Gallery’s website.

Renee died in 2024. Mark is survived by their daughters, Ruth and Jane, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. His two elder sisters, and a grandson, predeceased him.

• Cecil Mark Gerson, photographer, born 3 October 1921; died 14 April 2026