He could have been playing himself in a film about a handsome courageous young

He could have been playing himself in a film about a handsome, courageous young reporter who always got the story and the girl. Peter Jennings was wearing an old trench coat and waiting for a taxi in the rain the first time I ever saw him, in 1972. Peter Charles Jennings, television and radio journalist: born Toronto, Ontario 29 July 1938; staff, ABC News 1964-2005, international anchor, World News Tonight, 1978-83, anchor and senior editor 1983-2005; married first Valerie Godsoe (marriage dissolved), secondly 1973 Annie Malouf (marriage dissolved), thirdly 1979 Kati Marton (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1994), fourthly 1997 Kayce Freed; died New York 7 August 2005. Despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he continued to teach and write with the sort of conviction and humour that always made something he wrote – even a humble postcard – a joy to read.Although he was the author of several books – the best known being American Images 1945-80 (1985) and The History of Photography (1987) – and an expatriate for over a decade, he will always be remembered for the “creative years” of Creative Camera.Paul Hill.

He was not strong physically either and the years of struggle began to show.In 1991 he quit the magazine and Britain, and decamped to New Zealand, Heather’s homeland. There he got back his enthusiasm and started to lecture at local colleges and write regularly for The NZ Journal of Photography. Turner was asked to manage the magazine as well as oversee it editorially The strain was too much. He was a born editor and proselytiser who had too much Sixties’ rebellious spirit, as well as nicotine and lager, in his veins to become “a suit”. He was not always pleased, however, with the way that photography had become the preferred medium of fine artists who were ignorant and unimpressed by the traditions and history of photography. He was a photographic purist at heart, but as editor he always fought against ghettoising the medium and encouraged contributors to offer challenging and diverse viewpoints to his own.With the burgeoning number of photography courses, academics, events and platforms came debates concerning the future directions of photographic practice and the seeming Modernist orthodoxy of Creative Camera and its relevance in an ever-changing, monetarist world. Colour photography made its belated d?t in the magazine around this time and Turner happily championed the emergent polychromatic talents of photographers like Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Anna Fox and Peter Fraser.

In the end it went bust.So in 1986 he responded to Colin Osman’s invitation to resume his former position at the magazine, which was to be overseen by a board of trustees rather than by Coo Press. But being a hard-nosed businessman was not in Turner’s nature and the business was plagued by financial and printing problems, although the couple did some memorable pioneering work in difficult times. Postmodernism exasperated him and he was ambivalent about photography’s role in conceptual art. Although Turner continued to make pictures (he was one of the exhibitors in “Singular Realities”, at the Side Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, curated by his friend and collaborator Gerry Badger in 1977), his strengths were as an eloquent advocate of the new “independent” photography as his written commentaries and critiques attest.During his editorship, photographic imagery rather than photographic theory was centre-stage as he thought that too much critical analysis was “doomed to failure before it starts”. His advice was always carefully considered, gently spoken, well meant, and useful – a remarkable gift for someone who was then only in his early twenties.In 1973 he co-curated with Sue Grayson the exhibition “Serpentine Photography”, one of the first surveys of young contemporary photographers, held at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Turner took photographs of pigeons for these, subbed copy in the mornings (as I recall) and spent the afternoons looking at photographers’ portfolios and gave words of advice and encouragement to aspiring “creative” photographers. As he wrote later:The notion of photography as personal expression had been subverted by the seemingly inseparable marriage of talented photographers to mass circulation publications whose editors lacked the insight to properly exploit the vision and intellect of the people they employed.He was appointed assistant editor of Creative Camera in the early 1970s by its eccentric proprietor, Colin Osman, who subsidised the magazine via his pigeon-racing publications.