Fay Godwin

Fay Godwin (born 1931, Berlin). Famous British photographer.

Godwin was the daughter of a British diplomat and an American artist, and was born in Berlin, Germany. She married Penguin Editor-in-Chief Tony Godwin. In 1966 she became interested in photography, through photographing her young children.

Since the publication of her first books – Rebecca the Lurcher (1973) and The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway (1975), co-authored with J.R.L. Anderson – she has been very prolific.

In 1986 the South Bank Show TV arts programme made her the subject of a full-length documentary. The first ever on a photographer, it was broadcast on 9th November.

Godwin served as the President of the Ramblers' Association from 1987 to 1990, after which she became Life Vice-President.

Godwin has had exhibitions which have toured Britain, the latest being a major retrospective at the Barbican Centre, London in 2001. A good retrospective book, Landscapes, was published by Dewi Lewis in 2002. All her reproduction rights are handled by the Collections Picture Library.

The slipcase Rainbow Press 1979 edition of Remains of Elmet: A Pennine Sequence, her book collaboration with poet Ted Hughes, has become highly collectable and fetches several thousand pounds. The book was also published in popular form by Faber, and re-published by them simply as Elmet in 1994 with new poems and photographs.