A PHOTOGRAPHER who has lived in Monmouth for 10 years is having his work shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

Richard Sadler has his photograph of ‘Weegee the famous’ showing in the free exhibition ‘The Camera Exposed’ now at the V&A until March 2017. Not only is the photograph hanging alongside those of famous photographers Eugene Atget, Richard Avedon and Philippe Halsman but it is being used as the ‘poster boy’ in the museum’s publicity campaign.

Weegee was an American photographer working in Chicago at the time of prohibition, gaining a reputation for being first on the scene of a gang murder thus getting his photo on the front page. He had a police radio at the side of his bed, and it was said that he must have had an Ouija board, hence the nick-name.

Richard, originally from Coventry, spent a week with Weegee when he visited the city in 1963. Richard was there during the Coventry Blitz of 1940 and remembers walking into the city the next morning with his father and seeing in the ruins of the cathedral that someone had erected a cross out of the charred timbers and written the words ‘father forgive’. It is with this memory and spirit of reconciliation that, as a photographer, he began to document the reconstruction of the city of Coventry and Coventry Cathedral, becoming their official photographer and providing the photographs for many of their books and other publications.

He was also to become the official in-house photographer for The Belgrade Theatre over many years. This was the first civic theatre in Britain and during Richard’s time it’s productions starred many actors who would become household names. His other work includes photographs of The Goons, Ken Dodd, The Queen and many others who are all included in his enormous archive that spans more than sixty years.

Richard’s photographs are held in several international collections such as that of The Royal Photographic Society within the National Media Museum in Bradford, The Centre for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, The National Portrait Gallery as well as The V&A, while his photographs also feature in many private collections.

He became a principal lecturer at Derby University who has granted him an honorary doctorate, and is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society who awarded him The Fenton Medal (created in the name of Roger Fenton, a pioneer of early photographer who documented the Crimean War).

Richard continues to photograph to this day. Some of his projects are concerned with the different ways people live their lives, including their homes and private spaces and people who decorate their bodies with tattoos and piercings. He has led a rich and varied life through photography, which has given him access to many different worlds.

Richard’s latest book ‘The man who shot Weegee’ is available from blurb.co.uk, with the book containing a selection of his portraits.