Self-taught Harold Chapman started his career photographing jazz in Soho, until a chance meeting with a Vogue photographer changed his life.

He went to Paris and became a street photographer and the New York Times came calling, and a book of his images, The Beat Hotel, became a collector’s item - selling for $2,250 in New York Sotheby’s in 1999.

Harold Chapman at 90: Not Only the Beat Hotel will display a selection of his work at the Linden Hall Studio in his home town of Deal until Sunday, July 2. Here, he talks about his life and work.

Photographer Harold Chapman may be 90, but his eye for a good photo is as sharp as ever.

His memory, too, is full of fascinating anecdotes and stories of a life documenting the world around him, starting in the 1960s, photographing life in Soho and seeking out jazz in “dumps and dives” as he calls them.

It was a chance meeting with Vogue photographer John Deakin which was pivotal to his career.

“One day, sitting at the bar, a little man sitting next to me offered to buy me a drink and started a conversation,” he recalls. ““What are you doing?” he asked me, and I replied pretentiously, “I am documenting Soho.” It turned out that he was a fashion photographer for Vogue. I’d never heard of him.”

Harold asked if he would look at his work and he said: “He looked through it all without saying anything, then I remember clearly what he said – ‘Carry on as you are. Take the hardness of an ashtray, a guy digging his chick. Get up at 5am and go to photograph markets’. This meeting changed my life forever. I discovered he had an exhibition in a coffee bar in Soho. Never have I seen such pictures as these... black, contrasty, grainy.”

He moved to Paris and found a tiny hotel of six floors on the Left Bank.

“It was absolutely narrow,” he says now. “It was amazingly cheap and I was sent up a spiral staircase to the sixth floor, a tiny room. I then went off exploring the Left Bank... soon found the Mistral, an odd bookshop which had books on everything. Inside there were lots of people doing nothing but sitting down, standing up and reading books. Well, I was determined to stay. Paris looked like it was a magical city.”

Having an eye for anything and everything on his travels made for fascinating photos.

“I used to wander between London, Paris, Holland, Belgium and most other countries,” he says. “Travelling was no problem. It was so easy to hitchhike and as everything was random, life was extremely interesting.

“I put two plastic portfolios in my suit and used to wander about showing them to people in the streets. By chance, I showed it to the theatre critic of the New York Times. He asked for my phone number and about three or four weeks later, I had a message... would I go to the New York Times news bureau? I was asked to do what I did in the streets. The fashion editor for Europe said, “Would you like a job with the New York Times doing fashion?” “No,” I replied. “I don’t want a job but I will do it freelance and if I don’t like what I’m offered, I won’t do it, if that’s all right with you.” So that was that – I became a freelance for the New York Times.”

He even slept on trains to save on hotel costs and “wandered around Europe, having a wonderful time”.

Although he retired at 60, he is still always armed with a camera. “I found I could not stop taking pictures. I still carry a camera with me and take pictures walking around Deal. Keeping an eye open for the changing technological ways of making images, I soon acquired a digital camera.”

DETAILS

The gallery is in St George’s Road, Deal. Visit lindenhallstudio.co.uk or call 01304 360411.