Michael Peto

Michael Peto (also known as Mihály Petö) (1908 – 25 December 1970) was an internationally recognized Hungarian-British photojournalist of the twentieth century. Emigrating to London before World War II through business, in the postwar years he became one of a generation of Hungarian artists working abroad. During the war, he worked for the British Ministry of Labour. With exiled Hungarians, he also worked to found a postwar socialist government in Hungary, but they were defeated by the Soviet Union.

In the early postwar years, he studied photography in Paris with fellow Hungarian émigré Ervin Marton, already a recognized artist. Returning to London, Peto established his career as a photojournalist, covering the 1948 Summer Olympics and starting on staff of The Observer in 1949. He gained recognition in the 1950s and 1960s, capturing British cultural life, including figures ranging from ballet dancers Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev to The Beatles. He also traveled internationally and produced many photographs of people and regions around the world. Archive Services at the University of Dundee hold the Michael Peto Collection, which includes thousands of photographs, negatives, slides, publications and papers.

He was born Mihály Petö in the small town of Bata, Austria-Hungary in 1908. His father had a general store, where the young Petö began to work after completing his secondary education. With an interest in Hungarian arts and crafts, he developed his own business and exported items to western European countries.

In the 1930s, Petö moved to Budapest, where he continued to work in his family's export business of Hungarian craft products. Through this, he was able to reach Great Britain before World War II. During the war, he lived in London and worked for the Ministry of Labour. He strongly backed the Allied war effort. In his free time, Petö worked with other Hungarians, planning for the postwar future of their country. He worked as personal secretary to Count Mihály Károlyi, who had been president of the short-lived Hungarian Democratic Republic. As the leader of the New Democratic Hungary, he was trying to create the next postwar government. They hoped to establish a socialist Hungary after its liberation at the end of the war, but did not anticipate the postwar domination by the Soviet Union. During the war Peto also advocated the development of an international exchange school of teachers and pupils once the conflict was over. this reflected his strong interest in the education of adults and children. Peto favoured progressive education systems and was a strong supporter of A S Neill, becoming involved with his Summerhill School in 1944.

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