Michael Jackson IX, Circa 1970

David Nutter  

David Nutter was born in Edgware in May 1939. David stumbled through several jobs and eventually got a job as a darkroom technician in the Palace Gate Kensington studio of Bob Horner, a respected photograph printer who had contracts with fashion magazines like Vogue. To earn extra income, David worked as a photographer for journalist Mike McGrath who employed young people on assignments for the teenage magazines. David met his partner Carlo Manzi at the Rockingham. At the time Carlo was working in his brother Eugene's record shop at 7 New College Parade in the Finchley Road. They agreed to set up a business together and Carlo signed a lease on an empty railway men's club opposite Primrose Hill Station. They built a darkroom and photographic studio and called the company 'NUTTER'. David had a long list of actors looking for headshots, and soon the company gained a reputation for high quality work. By 1982 David was working for the photographer Art Kane whose interests were much closer to David's. Kane had famously photographed 'Harlem 1958', a group of 57 giants of jazz including, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Gerry Mulligan and Thelonious Monk, gathered round the steps of a brownstone. Kane later worked with rock stars such as Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and The Who. Kane did not have his own darkroom, so David was put in charge of the studio.