Born in Somerset, England, in 1916, John Wilfrid Hinde's interest in colour photography arose during the 1940s. From the end of the Second World War to the middle half of the 1950s, he entered the circus life, where he met his future wife. However, he soon returned to photography and, in 1956, he left the circus and founded John Hinde Ltd in Dublin to produce and distribute his colour pictures of Ireland. Hinde's most famous work is that of the Butlin's Holiday Camps, in which he portrayed a welcoming and jubilant environment.
Hinde died in Dordogne, France in 1997. At the time of his death, millions of his postcards had been sold worldwide.
Hinde's postcards were immensely popular, despite Hinde's view that the photographs held no artistic value. In 1972, he decided to sell his company to the Waterford Glass Group in order to pursue his love of landscape painting.
Even though Hinde never viewed his photographs with much reverence, the Irish Museum of Modern Art recognized his photographic works with a retrospective in Dublin in 1993. Since his death in 1998, exhibits of his photography have travelled all over the world and he proved to be the most successful postcard producer in the world.
The John Hinde series of Channel Island postcards numbers over 100. We have over 60 of them on this page.
