The artist, photographer and author Roger Phillips’ talents led him in many directions, not all of them predictable, and it is entirely consistent with his roaming, inquisitive spirit that he will be remembered by many as a learned and media-friendly mycologist, a David Attenborough of the mushroom, and as the guru of the foraging movement.
The distinguishing feature of Roger’s more than 40 books was their clean, uncluttered look, his meticulous colour images set against a white background, like the specimens pressed in paper in the collections of Victorian naturalists. In a green-fingered nation the books were a brilliant publishing idea, and there can be few gardeners who do not own at least some of them.
Roger became a friend of my family in the late 1960s, when he was working as a food photographer, capturing, for magazines and partworks, glistening images of both natural produce and exquisitely presented meals. Prior to that he had worked in advertising, serving as art director at the Ogilvy & Mather agency on campaigns for Schweppes (“Schhh . . . you know who”) and the Egg Marketing Board (“Go to Work on an Egg”).
Commissioned by his friend the illustrator Alan Aldridge, he photographed the rock band Cream for the album Goodbye , forming a friendship with the bassist Jack Bruce that led to Roger creating the images for Bruce’s albums Songs for a Tailor and Out of the Storm.
