AN ECCLES photographer who progressed from taking pictures at a school camera club to documenting the planet’s most famous faces, is displaying his work across the world.

Martin O’Neill discovered his passion at St Patrick’s High School, aged just 13, and went on to take pictures of George Best, Mohammed Ali, the Queen and rock band Joy Division.

The photographer will display a collection of 100 photographs at Eccles Library this summer, before showcasing his Joy Division pictures in Tokyo.

His library exhibition is called ‘Eccles 1977’, and features pictures he took as a teenager, to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year.

He will then reveal 26 images of Joy Division at shows called I Remember Nothing – after one of the band’s songs - to coincide with the Japanese launch of the biopic about the band called Closer.

Meanwhile a book of his work, called Don’t Miss This, will go on sale at London’s Photographer’s Gallery.

Martin, who worked at the Manchester Evening News, is now a portrait and wedding photographer in Culcheth.

He said: "After joining the camera club it didn’t take long for me to realise I wanted to be a photographer.

"I thought it would be such an adventurous lifestyle."

He took his iconic pictures of Joy Division when they played at Bowdon Vale Youth Club in 1979.

He said: "There were about 200 people there. I recall the strange way the lead singer Ian Curtis danced.

"They were beginning to get quite a following at the time. Sadly Ian killed himself a year later.

"The photographs stayed in a drawer for 25 years.

"Then I got them out and to mark the 25th anniversary of Ian’s death some of them went up in Piccadilly Records. A guy from Japan came into the shop and asked if I would mind if he put them in a full exhibition in Tokyo."

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