Sean Plunkett took this picture at a hotdog stand at Hull Fair in the early 1970s when he was studying photography at Ealing College in London. It is part of a series of portraits he made of the city in which he grew up that came to light last year when he sent them to a publisher, Café Royal Books. After college, Plunkett had worked in mines in Australia and, for most of his life, as a builder in the UK. None of his pictures had ever been published. A book of his Hull pictures is now out, and another, from a trip he made to Sicily 50 years ago, is planned. Sadly, Plunkett died in the spring, aged 75, of motor neurone disease.
Speaking last week, his son, Leo, also a photographer and film-maker, explained how the pictures had been unknown to the family until Sean started making prints of them a few years ago. “It was funny,” he says, “I’d go to the print lab that I also use, and the people there would see my name and say: ‘Are you any relation to Sean Plunkett?’ They had been printing his pictures and they thought they were incredible.”
He is not sure whether his dad had any regrets in not pursuing his original vocation – “building work is probably a more secure job” – but he suggests he never lost interest in photography, introducing his son to cameras from an early age. He can see his father’s character in the Hull pictures. “He took pictures of things he found funny, or bizarre,” he says. “He was good with people, and he had an ability to get right up in their faces – even with some fairly dodgy looking guys in Sicily.” Leo is planning an exhibition of his dad’s work, and there is a website devoted to it. It’s just a great shame, he suggests, that Sean didn’t live to see the book. “He’d have loved it.”
Hull 1970s by Sean Plunkett is published by Café Royal Books
