Cherry Kearton 1871 - 1940

Photographer and documentary film maker of animals and nature; worked with his brother Richard Kearton, their book 'With Nature and a Camera', was published in London by Cassell & Co in 1899, written by Richard with photographs by Cherry; film director; set up his own film company producing natural history and expedition films. Cherry Kearton was born in Thwaites, Yorkshire in 1871 and became one of the foremost chroniclers of natural history subjects. He provided the photographic illustrations for many of the books produced with his brother Richard such as Wildlife at Home (1898), Our Rarer British Breeding Birds (1899), Keartons’ Nature Pictures (1910) and possibly most famously With Nature and Camera (1899) which documented their pioneering work in St Kilda and other remote Hebridean islands. They used innovative techniques such as extended tripods, camouflage and hides disguised as dead animals. Cherry Kearton later worked separately from his brother and moved into wildlife documentary film making. He produced titles such as Roosevelt in Africa (1909), A Journey to the Inner Africa (1910) and Tembi (1929). He later began to appear in the films himself with With Cherry Kearton in the Jungle (926) and Dassan: An Adventure in Search of Laughter Featuring Nature’s Greatest Little Comedians (1930). Many of these are held in the National Film & Television Archive.