These two achievements involved him, if not in a double life, then in a double aesthetic: the one a new and sensitive naturalism in printing and reproducing colour, the other a surreal intensification of colour – “that extra oomph” which, he said, made postcards attractive.
He was born into a Quaker (later Christian Scientist) family, a great- grandson of James Clark who, with his brother Cyrus, founded Clark’s Shoes. Ralph Edwards, Hinde went to study colour photographic printing at the Reimann School in London with Frank Newens, a leader in colour printing in England at that time. John Hinde was one of the pioneers of colour photography in England and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society before he was 30 years old. He also founded a picture postcard empire which, when he sold it in 1972, could boast 50 million sales world-wide. We should avoid going to chain restaurants – and so on.Second, we should encourage government not to load regulations on companies, as these almost invariably benefit the large ones.

Large groups can afford the specialists to tackle the bureaucrats; small cannot.Third, if we are working for a large group we should not use the financial power of that group to put pressure on small suppliers – for example, by that common trick of delaying payment of invoices.These limited measures may seem poor defence against the power of concentration. For those of us who are concerned about the concentration of power that seems to be taking place, here are three simple ways we can, individually and collectively, counter it.One is to use our own purchasing power to favour smaller enterprises. What is happening in pharmaceuticals is one large industry catching up with the typical global structure of other industries. There are other forces, less visible, encouraging people to spend more of their income on goods and services which the multinationals will never provide – including hairdressing.. John Wilfrid Hinde, photographer: born Street, Somerset 17 May 1916; FRPS 1943; married 1952 Antonia Falnoga (three sons, two daughters); died Brive en Gaiard, France 26 December 1997.

But all economic change is at the margin: quite small changes in the pattern of spending or the way consumers make their choices have cumulatively large impact. For example, we should shop, where practical, at local stores rather than the supermarket chains We should try and travel on smaller airlines. If our bank or building society is taken over by a larger one, we should move the account. I suspect that the forces for concentration have still quite a long way to run, but the game is not entirely one-sided. To what extent will all world business become more like civil aircraft and to what extent will it remain more like hairdressing?There are at least five forces for concentration, but there are also at least five pushing in the opposite direction.