John Guy was born to a large family who lived in the Kensington district of Liverpool in 1960. He later moved to the district of Everton where he spent the rest of his childhood. Much like his peers, John was brought up in a Protestant Christian environment; Father, Son, Holy Ghost and church on Sundays.
Whilst meandering through a car boot sale at Aintree Race Course in 1989, John came upon an object that would change his life. He bought a Russian SLR camera for just £10; probably the best purchase he ever made, Fascinated with the camera and how it worked he decided to take on a A level course in Photography and went on the following year studied photography as an Art form on an advanced course.
With qualifications in hand, John joined Barry Farrel a sports photographer for Liverpool’s, on Daily Post and Echo on assignments. Barry took him to photograph the Saints at their rugby ground in St Helens where he managed to capture Jonathon Davies scoring a try.
John became freelance photographing models, Dancers in dance studios and supplying work for magazines such as Black Beauty & Hair, The Big Issue, Just Liverpool, and also to sales and marketing companies around the north west of England producing work for website design and development. He also has developed an interest in photographing his home town Liverpool and Merseyside and has thousands of Black and White, Colour photographs taken on conventional film and digital images of the beauty of his Liverpool homeland which he has now put into the commercial market locally and international.
In recent years what started as a raising awareness campaign about the atrocities suffered by the hands of the Nazi’s at Auschwitz turned into a hunt to discover John’s own ancestry. His grandmother’s nationality was German but was never spoken about and twenty eight years ago, just before she died, she destroyed all her personal documents from Germany and leaving her family with just her British marriage certificate declaring place of birth “Germany”.
From what he and his family have discovered it seems likely that despite his Christian upbringing, his grandmother was a German Jew who according to a Scotsman John met in Krakow, Poland, may have emigrated in or around 1916 on a ship possibly bound for America. The ship stopped off at Aberdeen or a nearby port close to Aberdeen, with rumours around the port of its final destination being America its passengers got back on board and the ship then sailed around the British coast and landed in Liverpool where she disembarked as a child with one or both her parents (not known).
His family were aware of his grandmother’s hatred for the Nazi’s and her denial of being German, although her name was Linderman or Lindeman. As John grew up, his mother Irene, had told him some stories about how his grandmother had a deep hatred for the Nazi’s and she said this started in the later part of World War II and this hatred became very strong after the War and to the end of her life around twenty eight years ago.
This knowledge made John’s trip to Auschwitz more poignant and memorable. Emotion that he shares in his remarkable exhibition Echoes of Sorrow. Unlike most of the photographs taken at Auschwitz, John has captured the atmosphere in full colour and black and white. His photographs convey the desolation, isolation, and inhumanity of Auschwitz, where a struggle to survive is all consuming and the willingness to terrorise commonplace.
The Exhibition was first shown at the Holiday Inn, Liverpool in January 2007 followed by Liverpool Town Hall January 2008 then Liverpool’s World Museum May – August 2008. In January 2009 it was shown at the Civic centre Ellesmere Port for the Cheshire, Warrington and Halton Racial Equality Council and also at Saint Francis Assisi School in Kensington, Liverpool who have now purchased the whole exhibition for the schools Holocaust studies. Other Exhibitions include Behind the Liver Birds for John Lewis store 2003. A further Exhibition for Liverpool City Town Hall will be to view on 27th January for Holocaust Memorial Day.