“Persevere, young man” So scrawled the advice across the rejection slip Grace Robertson received from Britain’s Picture Post in 1949. Aged 19, the aspiring photographer used a male pseudonym for this first submission, being published under her own name the following year. Along with her peers at the magazine, Robertson forged a tradition of visual storytelling within the UK, where the potential of images to describe narrative and direct empathy was fully considered alongside the written word. With an editorial focus on “the ordinary man and woman...their faces are more striking, their lives and doings more full of interest”, Robertson‘s ability to find the remarkable in the everyday fitted the brief, while her sensitivity to the experience of others set her apart. When LIFE magazine looked to offer her a staffer role in the States, Robertson faced a decision between, as she put it, “LIFE or life”. A working newlywed in the 1950s, she chose the latter. Our gallery here includes an imag...