My brother, Martin Slavin, who has died aged 82, was a photographer whose images appeared in New Society, Time Out and the Guardian, among other publications.
He joined the staff of Time Out in the early 1970s, combining photography with photo editing and picture research. Other roles managing the work of colleagues followed: in 1979 he became picture editor of the newly launched Now magazine and in 1981 he took on the role of managing editor of the Network Photographers’ co-operative agency.
After four happy years there, he left “to take more pictures”, supporting his photography by writing for Ten.8 magazine and working as a freelance picture researcher for the Sunday Times, Marshall Cavendish publishers and the Listener. One visit to the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall resulted in a stunning portfolio of images.
Martin was born in Addlestone, Surrey, the second of the four children of Kathleen (nee Holohan), a Tefl teacher, and George Slavin, a veterinary scientist. After leaving St George’s grammar school, where he belonged to a “sort of” camera club, he arrived in 1961 to study electrical engineering at the University of Durham – and left in 1964 with a 2:2 in anthropology, having spent more time in the university’s darkroom than its library. He studied photography for a further year at the London College of Printing before launching his career.
By the 1990s, Martin had begun to take an interest in garden design, which started with a few plants on the windy concrete balcony of his flat in London, then by word-of-mouth developed into a business. In the first decade of the new millennium he was designing gardens, picture researching, mentoring young photographers and film-makers and photographing the struggles of poorer Londoners to remain in their birthplace while redevelopment accelerated around them.
He read widely on politics and society, and worked with other local activists to document and publish the 2012 Olympics site development on the Games Monitor website, plus photographing some of the comical quirks of the Games themselves. He developed an interest in abstract and fractal-based imagery, including an alluring “Blue Planet” graphic. He also produced a portfolio of photographs for the OrganicLea market gardens in Chingford.
In 1977, Martin married Hazel Kaye. They divorced as good friends in 1989. Martin is survived by his siblings, Mike, Maura and me.