Royal Ballet dancer who became a celebrated photojournalist of social history in Britain and beyond
One line that always produced a laugh from audiences watching the film Billy Elliot was: “What’s best, to be a ballet dancer or to be a miner?” The photographer Colin Jones, who has died aged 85 from Covid-19, would not have thought this such a funny question. He had worked in one of those worlds as a dancer touring with the Royal Ballet and had documented the other with superb photographs, published in the Observer and the Independent magazines and in a book entitled Grafters (2002). He also did important work for the Sunday Times, in particular The Black House project in the 1970s, leading one critic there to describe him as the George Orwell of British photojournalism.
October 4, 2021
