Photo essay
From Fleet St to Auckland for snapper Albie McCabe
He introduced himself to people he was going to portray as Albert, but to everyone who knew Albert McCabe, pictured inset, at the Auckland Star he was ‘‘Albie’’. Born in 1929 in Bethnal Green, well within the sound of Bow Bells, he was a true Cockney, and he was also a very fine photographer who justly earned the by-line ‘‘By Albert McCabe’’.
Evacuated from London during World War II, he was educated in Camberley and really wanted to be a carpenter. But when the nearby Reading Mercury advertised for a ‘‘bright young lad who wants to learn to be a photographer’’ he applied. In wartime, 15-year-olds weren’t choosers.
After his cadetship, he joined London’s Evening Standard and then the senior Beaverbrook publication, the Daily Express. He was, for much of his time there, one of 66 photographers.
In 1970, he was British Press Photographer of the Year, and a veteran of Royal tours – several of them here – Fifa World Cups and Olympic Games. He took some famous pictures of the terrorists at Munich in 1972.
Albert was at the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games, when Ronnie Biggs was arrested in Buenos Aires. The games were big, but nowhere near as big as Great Train Robbers and Albert was sent to Australia, where he got exclusive pictures of Biggs’ estranged wife, Charmain.
In 1975, fed up with England’s weather, among other things, Albert joined the six or seven-strong staff of cameramen at the Auckland Star.
In conversation with his ‘‘targets’’ men were ‘‘my son’’, even Prime Ministers, like Robert Muldoon, who enjoyed being ‘‘snapped’’, right down to mowing his lawn at his Red Beach bach. Women, of course, were ‘‘darlin’’, as most women would expect from Londoners, Fleet St cameramen or not, in the 1970s.
Debbie Douglas, for several years illustrations editor at the Star: ‘‘He was your atypical Fleet St press photographer. If you had a day where you didn’t know what you were going to come up with for a front page, you could always rely on Albie.
‘‘Once there were complaints about stray dogs, somewhere in South Auckland, and the council said ‘No problem here, nothing to see’ sort of thing.
‘‘Albie went out for an hour or so and came back with pictures of stray dogs, lots of stray dogs, dogs all over the place.’’
Phil Gifford, who interviewed many visiting entertainers, said Albert had a ‘‘great way with subjects, he could get them to do some strange things’’.
‘‘I vividly remember Australian Renee Geyer, not a person you could describe as easy to get on with. And Albie had her up on the roof of the downtown Travelodge, in the pouring rain, running at him waving her arms around. And he got her to do it over and over. Amazing.’’
It was possibly a recreation of a famous picture he took in London’s Green Park of four-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr, in 1965, waving his arms and snarling at the camera. It was captioned ‘‘John F. Kennedy Jr takes a dislike to photographer Albert McCabe.’’
Back here, things like rugby games at Eden Park didn’t overawe Albert. Veteran photographer Ross Setford: ‘‘I remember a game at Eden Park in the days when Auckland ran up cricket scores against almost everyone.
‘‘It was a Ranfurly Shield challenge, they’d scored 60-plus. Albie, just as he packed up his gear to leave, grinned at me ‘Who’s the mob in blue, old son?’ But, crikey, he was good.
‘‘And remember, none of this ‘visual journalist’ stuff, he was proud to be a press photographer.’’
Too right, my son.
Albie McCabe died at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, aged 88.