Anthony Kersting (A F Kersting) started his photographic career at the age of 20 in 1936 when his photograph of the Peter Jones Department store under construction was published. Two years on he was elected a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, such was his talent. He served with the RAF in the middle East during WWII in a photographic unit, and used his time there to photograph the people of Iraq and their significant buildings and sites.
Following the war, and right up to the 2000’s, AF Kersting worked as an architectural and landscape photographer, and was widely published, with both black & white and colour work appearing in publications from the National Trust, Country Life and Batsford, amongst others. His travels saw him extensively record the buildings and significant features of the UK, Europe and Asia. He was a resolute 4x5in glass plate camera operator, only eventually moving to 4x5in sheet film, and not roll film. These cameras required him to haul around both a heavy camera and tripod, which is a considerable achievement given some of the difficult viewpoints he shot from.
He is rightly regarded as one of the foremost architectural and landscape photographers of his era.
Upon his passing in 2008 at the age of 91, his entire black & white archive was donated to the Conway Library, part of the Courtauld Institute at Somerset House. This included thousands of high quality black & white prints, and film and glass negatives. (42,000 in all). Courtauld volunteers are busy digitising these, and one large and highly rewarding task was to transcribe AF Kerstings hand written ledgers, in which each shot was identified by place, building name, notes, and the precise date of capture.
Two comprehensive obituaries about Kersting’s life were published by the Times and Daily Telegraph in 2008. Tom Bilson, AF Kersting’s biographer and head of Digital Media at the Courtauld gave a webinar talk at Dulwich College in 2018 covering Kersting’s life and career.
Links:
Links:
https://www.dulwich.org.uk/senior-school/news/news/~board/news-21-22/post/anthony-kersting-webinar
Anthony Kersting in Iraq c. 1944
One of his Ledgers, listing each photograph taken
