Peto worked overseas on Save the Children Fund assignments, capturing the poverty and hardships of what was known then as ‘third world countries’. This photograph from 1967, taken in Kerala, is one of many featured in the Peto Collection from his time overseas with Save the Children.
Photo-journalist Michael Peto worked with The Observer during the 1950s and ‘60s. His collection is a chronicle of an age – a spirited mix of arts and culture, politics, war and peace, social documentary and the emergence of twentieth celebrity culture. Peto had a very personal humanist style, seeking to record ‘the basic serenity of the human form’.
The collection was gifted to the University of Dundee by Peto’s stepson Michael Fodor and comprises some 130,000 prints and negatives. It is held by the University Archives.