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Harry Goodwin celebrity pop photographer dies

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Harry Goodwin Harry Goodwin

The photographer Harry Goodwin, who forged his reputation as one of the UK’s leading photographers of pop music and sporting celebs in the 60s and 70s has died aged 89 at Trafford General Hospital.

A collection his work can be still found on permanent display at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

Goodwin rose to fame when he was retained by the BBC as its official photographer of the acts who appeared on Top of the Pops between  1964 and 1973.

TOTP began broadcasting from a studio in Rusholme, Manchester before moving to a former cinema in Didsbury and finally settling at Broadcasting House in London a couple of years later.

Goodwin was born in Manchester and grew up in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Harry GoodwinHis father, who was a bookmaker, gave him his first job in his betting business but while serving in the R.A.F during the second world war, he began working with cameras while flying reconnaissance planes over Burma and when back in the UK after the war, he took up photography as a profession, initially specialising on beauty pageants and increasingly professional sports events.

His agent Stuart Littlewood said: “Harry had a wonderful talent and was a truly great photographer.

“He could charm the birds off the trees – how else could he have got people such as Jimi Hendrix or Muhammad Ali to pose for him?”

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