CLIVE GAMMON Cars in the Monaco Grand Prix blur together
in brilliant, bedraggled primary school colours, as if the child couldn't wait for one to dry before slapping on the next. The Spurs—goalie leaps high for joy in the murk of a winter afternoon as, invisible to us, his team scores at the far end. Gareth Edwards, all mad black hair and cheekbones, hurtles across the line for a Welsh try at Colombes. Paris. Tiny, gay, breughel-like figures disport themselves in a landscape of snow. Projectiles of turf and mud explode around the broad buttocks of a horse straddled across a high fence-and-ditch at a Sandown Park steeplechase. All showing daily at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 18 May. Only once before has the v and A assembled an exhibition of the work of a single photo: grapher. That was in 1968 when Henri Cartier-Bresson was so honoured. The pre' sent showing is of pictures taken by a forty- two-year-old ex-draughtsman who didn't own a camera until he was twenty-four and began his serious professional career when he was over thirty. And as a sports photo- grapher to boot.
A long time ago, such men were the object of a deep, sadistic curiosity of mine. As a boy at football matches I used to watch them lined up behind the goals. It could only be a matter of time, I reasoned, before one of them would be decapitated, or at least have his neck broken, by a cannon-ball shot just outside the post. Most of them looked de- pressed and wore thin macs cruelly soaked by the rain which fell almost every Saturday. Their work appeared in the local papers mostly and had no artistic pretension, though sometimes, when an odd, balletic pose emer- ged as two players went up for the ball, there would be a whimsical caption.
Cranham's pictures are not whimsical, though there is one near-lapse in the present exhibition, a shot of Jo Bonnier in the Dutch Grand Prix seemingly staring at an innocent Pigeon that has wandered on to the track. This is entirely uncharacteristic : the only unsurprising thing is that it's by courtesy of World Press, the kind of shot that would have made Lilliptit in the old days.
This apart, the pictures celebrate action and endeavour in a manner which has made Cranham the most sought-after sports photo- grapher in Britain. These are not gimmicky Pictures of triumph or despair they try, nearly always successfully, to convey physical Striving. The mud-bespattered legs of cross- country runners in close-up mean more than a shot of the winner breasting the tape. The face of a Wigan supporter at the Rugby League final or the gleaming wet pectoral muscles of a water-polo player at a practice session are better interpreters of sport than a picture of the winning score.
This may well havt something to do with the fact that Cranham was himself a success- ful athlete once : as a regular soldier in the REmE he won the inter-service half-mile title; he was Southern Counties junior half-mile champion for two successive years and was a torch-bearer at the 1948 Olympics. A foot injury in 1953, though, put him out of com- petitive athletics and it was then that he took uP photography, principally to show the athletes of Herne Hill Harriers whom he then began to coach what was wrong with their style. Perhaps because of this personal involvement with sport, he is rarely to be found behind the goalposts or at the finish- ing line. He is well aware that the crises and moments of revelation happen in other Places and from better angles. The classic Picture of Gareth Edwards at Colombes was taken from high in the grandstand-1 was sitting next to him at the time.
Covering a story with Cranham is no joke. Foot injury or not, he moves along at a pace that someone like me, disqualified from the school cross-country run for hitching a ride on a lorry, cannot compete with. He uses more film than anyone else I have ever seen, and is in a perpetual state of nerves about the outcome. I spend a great deal of our time together telling him that everything is going to be all right. , It always-is because Cranham combines Insight in a rare way with a huge appetite or gadgetry : a vast collection of lenses tor his Nikons, radio-controlled shutters and the rest. The Japanese camera industry undoubtedly prays nightly that he should continue to flourish. I am sure that he will.
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