Jones took advantage of the ballet company's travel to photograph extensively in the streets of
Tokyo,
Hong Kong and the
Gorbals,
Glasgow in 1961. Driving with fellow dancers from
Newcastle to
Sunderland that year, he saw, north of
Birmingham, coal searchers on the spoil-heaps. While on tour in the early 1960s, Jones witnessed the burning of slums in the Philippines, which had been happening while he was sitting across the bay in Manila sipping champagne. The sight of children being bulldozed while they were still in bed affected him greatly, and he said, "I think it was then that I decided to leave the ballet. This is what was happening while I was sipping Krug". Shortly after he turned towards Photography. for
The Observer, he returned to produce a series of photographs recording the vanishing industrial working poor and mining communities in the
North East of England, later publishing the essay as the book
Grafters. At
The Observer he worked alongside photographers
Philip Jones Griffiths and
Don McCullin. He worked in
Fleet Street for several years before turning
freelance. Commissioned assignments took him to
New York City in 1962;
Liverpool docks in 1963; the
race riots in
Birmingham, Alabama, USA, where he made portraits of both
'Bull' Connor, and
Dr Martin Luther King in 1963; and Leningrad, USSR in 1964. In 1966 he photographed the British rock band
The Who at the beginning of their career, and
Pete Townshend, then
Mick Jagger in 1967. He travelled to the
Philippines in 1969 where he photographed the
sex trade. He portrayed significant dancers, including
Rudolph Nureyev for several publications. == The Black House ==