The Golf Photography Collection

George Middlemass Cowie (1902-1982) worked as a freelance press photographer from the 1930s until 1982. His work covers all aspects of life in and around St Andrews and includes an outstanding collection of golfing photographs.  In his early years in St Andrews Cowie was photographer in the area to most of the national dailies working closely with the local syndicate of reporters, particularly Alexander Brown Paterson. After the war the national papers built up their own staff of itinerant press photographers and this outlet for George's work became less important, although at the same time the local press began to make greater use of his talents.

Lawrence Levy (1947 -1995) started out in the field of landscape architecture and worked for a short while with Desmond Muirhead in California. After founding ‘Yours in Sport’, a management and promotion company, Lawrence became a freelance photographer and was recognised as Golf World’s lead ‘lensman’. As official photographer for the European Ryder Cup team, Lawrence had access to some of the most iconic moments during the reniassance of this event in the 1980s. Lawrence died of cancer yet his work lives on in his photographs – some 250,000 of them – held by the Special Collections Division of the University of St Andrews.