You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Today I've journeyed to the south coast of England to meet one of the great female pioneers in photojournalism, Marilyn Stafford.

She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, moved to Paris in search of a

singing career, but almost by accident discovered she had a major talent as a photographer.

She won the admiration of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and like him,

she loved to capture intimate pictures of ordinary people on the streets rather than in the studio.

In the course of her career, she became one of the very few women photographers to challenge the male

domination of Fleet Street. She combined journeys to conflict zones with glamorous fashion shoots,

and her portraits of 20th century icons like Albert Einstein and Edith Piaf are familiar to many.

But she never won the international fame of some of her male peers.

But now, age 93, Marilyn Stafford's work is being admired by a new generation.

And I'm delighted to say she joins me now. Marilyn Stafford, welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you.

Let's start way back. You trained as an actress. You spend a while as a nightclub singer, and yet you really

found your creative voice in photography. What was it about photography that really reached into your

soul? I have been called an accidental photographer because I really did not set out to do the photography at all.

The photography was something that was just there.

When I was a child, everybody had a little box brownie.

Every family had a little box brownie.

And so the photography was just part of life. It wasn't anything. It wasn't photography. It was just you had a camera and you

took pictures. Would you say you were a natural observer, sometimes a little bit removed and looking in on things?

I think probably yes. I think probably to explain it to you, I remember taking my first photograph and why I took my first photograph.

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