BPH has learnt with much sadness of the peaceful death on sunday evening of the museum director, historian and broadcaster Colin Ford, aged 91 years. Colin was the founding Head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, in 1983 and led the museum for its first decade. He was actively involved in photography from 1972 until his death.
Colin's career started in the world of theatre, following a MA at University College, Oxford. He joined Kidderminster Playhouse as manager/producer bringing 150 productions to the public before he moved on to the Western Theatre Ballet. Two years later he was visiting lecturer in English and drama at California State University. He emerged into the world of visual imagery at the British Film Institute joining in 1965 as Deputy Curator.
Then, as the National Portrait Gallery's first Keeper of Film and Photography from 1972, he was tasked with building up its collection of photography and initating a collection of film. Although the Gallery had photography in its collections Colin's appointment was a deliberate move to actively collect photographs in their own right - the first by any national institution. Within a few months of joining the NPG Colin was caught up in the Royal Academy's ill-thought out decision to sell at auction three volumes containing 250 calotypes by Hill and Adamson presented to a former RA president. The intervention of Roy Strong and Colin along with a groundswell of public opinion led to the sale being abandoned and the albums were eventually secured for the NPG by an anonymous donor for £32,000. The auction did much to raise awareness of the importance of photography and the need to tighten up the export of historical photographs. Colin was still involved with the export of historic photography into the 1990s as the government advisor on the subject. The albums formed (with Roy Strong) one of his many books An Early Victorian Album: The Hill Adamson Collection (1975).
Colin's scholarship on Julia Margaret Cameron began in the mid-1970s and occupied much of his career and he was due to be guest of honour at a symposium being held at Dimbola in June 2026. He secured Cameron's 'Herschel Album' for £52,000 for the NPG and it followed him to the NMPFT, now the National Science and Media Museum, where it is still housed. With Julian Cox he authored a catalogue raisoneé of Cameron's photographs in 2003.
During the 1970s Colin was involved, often chairing, networks of photography collections and was part of a group advocating for a national museum of photography. When the Science Museum sought to deliver such a museum Colin was appointed in February 1982 as Keeper, later Head, of the nascent National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford. The story of the NMPFT has been widely told, not least by Colin, and there is more to say about its gestation and history on another occasion.
Colin brought with him a passion and enthusiasm for the project, along with a similarly-minded group of colleagues able to deliver on his vision, all the more necessary in the face of concerted opposition to locating a national museum in Bradford. It opened to the public in June 1983. Under Colin's tenure as Head the museum acquired the Kodak Museum collection in 1985 which it used as the basis for a major new gallery telling the story of popular photography which opened in 1989. The project was led by one of his significant curatorial appointments, Roger Taylor. The museum made a number of important acquisitions including Graham Smith and Chris Killip's Another Country, the Andor Kraszna-Krausz/Focal Press archive, the Zoltan Glass archive, the purchase and gift of photographs by Lewis Carroll, and saw collaborations with many photographers including David Hockney.
The NMPFT received the Museum of the Year Award in 1988 and had been visited by 3½ million visitors by its fifth birthday. In 1989 the museum's contribution to photography's 150th anniversay was the Makers of Photographic History conference which brought together many of the great names of twentieth century photography. That year Colin noted we 'have turned a very entertaining showplace into a centre for research and understanding.' The museum became the most popular outside of London with 750,000 annual visitors at its peak. Colin noted that his one regret of his time in Bradford was that he had not been able to set up a chair in the history of photography at the University of Bradford.
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n 1993 Colin left the NMPFT to become director of the National Museum of Wales in October. At the time he stated that after ten years it was time to let a second generation of leadership take over. The background for his move is perhaps also best left for another occasion, but Colin continued to remain actively committed to photography. The British Journal of Photography which had regularly challenged the setting up of a museum in Bradford noted that he had 'left behind a formidible legacy' and wished him well. Left unsaid was a frustration, that remained with Colin until his death, that the museum was always subserviant to, and reliant on, the Science Museum, and he had never realised his early ambitions for a national museum of photography.
Although there is much more to say about his life, his many publications and exhibitions, it is worth highlighting his long-standing interest in, and advocacy for, Hungarian photography. He wrote the catalogue that accompanied the first exhibition in Britain of André Kertész which opened at the Serpentine Gallery in 1979, followed by The Hungarian Connection at the NMPFT in 1987. In 2011 the exhibition Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th century at the Royal Academy drew together many of the key Hungarian photographers from the twentieth century several of whom Colin knew personally. He always cited André Kertész as one of the greatest photographers in the world.
Outside of the museum world in the 1980s and 1990s Colin was a host and broadcaster on the BBC arts programme Kaleidoscope and regularly appeared on BBC Radios 3 and 4 discusing the wider arts and as an interviewer. He was an opera and music lover and as his brother, Martyn, notes 'his knowledge of music was more than that of any non-professional musician I have ever known. Colin was passionate about grand opera (a passion we did not share!), light opera, musical theatre and symphonic music.' He was a member of the Garrick Club where he curated exhibitions of photography.
Colin was involved with the formation of the European Society for the History of Photography from its inception in 1977 and the NMPFT hosted the Society's 1985 symposia. He was involved as a trustee of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and in 2005 undertook a review of the Foundation's activities and aims; he was a vice chair of the Julia Maragaret Cameron Trust for twenty-five years, and was chair of the Committee of National Photographic Collections from its outset in 1988. He served on the Advisory Board of History of Photography journal from 1989 to 2009. Away from photography he chaired the Peel Entertainment Group, a global entertainment specialist and talent agency based in Skipton, for sixteen years.
Colin was awarded a CBE in 1993. He received the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1999 and for a number of years from 2003 he supported the Colin Ford Award for curatorship given by the RPS. The Society's Historical group continues to host a Colin Ford lecture, the next of which is scheduled for 2026. He received the Hungarian Order of merit for his contributions to photography in 2013.
Colin leaves his wife, Sue Grayson Ford, a son, Tom, and grandchildren, Esmé and Inigo, plus brother Martyn. His archive is to be desposited with the Bodleian Library and his collection of photography books given to the National Museum Cardiff.
© Michael Pritchard
See: An interview with Colin Ford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIU437VzV8 Colin was also interviewed as part of the British Library's Oral History of British Photography and other interviews with him exist.
Images: (top): Colin Ford with his collodion portrait in the style of Cameron at his 90th birthday event at the Weston Library, Oxford, May 2024 / © Michael Pritchard; Colin Ford with the Herschel album, 7 January 1975, unknown photographer, NPG x135971; the National Museum of Photography, as it was originally known before 'Film and Television' were added to the exterior signage, NMPFT; (l-r) Colin Ford, Graham Smith, Chris Killip and Gustav Ahrens, MD of Agfa Gevaert at the presentation of Another Country, unknown photographer;
