South London Press has apologised to photographer Peter Jordan for incorrectly using his bio in a story about a photographer with the same name.
SLP ran a story in March this year about a photographer called Peter Jordan who won the British Press Photographers Association’s Portrait Photographer of the Year Award.
The publication accidentally used the bio of a different award winning photographer, also called Peter Jordan.
The latter Mr Jordan was born in 1946 in London and sold his first photograph at the age of 15 to The Western Morning News, captioned “Icicles on Jacob’s Ladder” taken during the big freeze of that year for the payment of 14 shillings.
After completing his studies at Exeter College of Art he moved to live in Paris spending two years working at the American Embassy and studying French at the Institute Catholic.
By the time he was 25, he had travelled extensively in South East Asia living in Japan for over a year. He hitchhiked through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia before arriving in Darwin, northern Australia in 1968 where he found a job as an industrial photographer for Bechtel, one of the largest construction companies in the world.
Mr Jordan also travelled through Europe to Africa to work as staff photographer for The Rhodesian Herald, three years later he was covering the war of independence in Angola for the Johannesburg Star.
The following year, in 1976 he freelanced for Photographers International and returned to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where an ugly war had started.While out on patrol with the security forces, Mr Jordan took a picture of an armed black Rhodesian soldier advancing in front of his white fellow soldier, the image suggesting this might represent the country’s future. In June 1976 Newsweek The American weekly news Magazine used the picture as their cover – Peter’s first. A career-booster, it also earned Peter deportation from the troubled country.
Mr Jordan’s first Newsweek cover Picture: Peter Jordan
He then went onto assignments from AP, Newsweek and European publications. In 1977, his pictures of the badly beaten body of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in his coffin at the family home earned him another Newsweek cover, and a spread in Time Magazine.
This event is considered by many to have marked the beginning of the end of Apartheid.
After a short contract with Newsweek, he then moved to TIME, the world’s largest news magazine, a contract that lasted over 13 years.
In 1981, Peter moved back to London for TIME. During the Iran/Iraq war, in 1982, he had an exclusive photo session with Saddam Hussein and on one occasion achieved a world exclusive on the frontline with the Iraqi army.
The following year, while spending two months in Beirut he was among the first on the scene after the horrific bombing of the US Marine base on October 23, picking up awards from Overseas Press Club of America and the New York Guild of Journalists.
Between 1984 and 1987, Peter travelled extensively with Margaret Thatcher. His photograph of Thatcher in the Chieftain tank, headscarf on and goggles down is still widely used today.
Mr Jordan’s famous picture of Margaret Thatcher Picture: Peter Jordan
In 1988, he joined the British photo agency – Network Photographers – and in 1989 he won Gold Medal at The International Photo Expo in Budapest.
He now lives in Gloucestershire.
Pictured top: Peter Jordan covering the Gulf War Picture: Allan Tannenbaum
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