Between the ages of about 15 and 21 George Douglas lived in Santa Monica California with his mother. They had an apartment near the beach and George realised its potential as a huge outdoor sketchpad.

 He started working on a series of pictures of girls drawing flowing images in the golden sand – this was his favourite. He kept a print of it in his home all his life.

George Douglas was born in Rottingdean, Sussex in 1922, but moved to America with his mother, an American citizen, in the 1930s. They settled in California and he began freelancing as a schoolboy with a pawnshop Leica. He started selling pictures of movie stars he spotted in Santa Monica to the Los Angles Times and progressed to Life Magazine where he realized that the Life photographers he most admired had trained in London on the Picture Post, which specialized in 35mm photography and a gritty documentary style. He was completely smitten. “I knew this was the future,” he wrote in his memoirs.  He started working on a series of pictures of girls drawing flowing images in the golden sand – this was his favourite.

Who Was George Douglas 

Born in 1922 in Rottingdean, a seaside village just outside Brighton but his father was American and the family moved to the States in the 1930s, first to Texas and then to Santa Monica, California.

Santa Monica, guaranteed sunshine apart, was not that different to Brighton. George bought a battered old Leica camera from a pawnshop for a few dollars, and patrolled the seafront, capturing the locals doing their thing.

His work began appearing in magazines like Life and other publications all over America but he wasn’t content. What he admired was the daring style of the ground-breaking British magazine Picture Post, which was setting new standards in photojournalism.

In 1951 he travelled to London by ship, busked his way into the Picture Post office the day after he arrived and managed to sell them a feature. Two days later he sold them another. George and Picture Post were made for each other. He sold them 99 stories in three years – serious features, silly celebrity stunts, beautiful reportage on the lives of everyday working people in England and always, whenever possible, beautiful girls.

The commissions rolled in as he met and photographed a myriad of celebrities and chased stories all over the world.

Then, when he was still only 48, he decided to give it all up, shrugging off the decision with: ‘Press photography is a young man’s job.’