Trevor Douglas Wainwright was born in Balsall Heath, Birmingham on the 4 October 1922. He served in the RAF from 1942-1946. In 1947, Wainwright moved to Manchester to study Pure Photography under George Wakefield at the Manchester Municipal College of Technology. He left the college in 1949 to take up a post as photographer to the North West Electricity Board (NORWEB). Towards the end of his employment with NORWEB, he started to trade as a photographer from his home in Gatley under the name Relion Studios. He left NORWEB in November 1953 to concentrate on his own photography business. On 1 January 1954, Wainwright took over Harry Kenyon’s photography studio at 6 Water Street, Manchester, and traded as Relion Studios from this address until October 1956. As a result of taking over Kenyon’s business, Wainwright became the contract photographer for Beyer, Peacock & Co.

Wainwright moved the studio to premises at 8 Bridge Street in October 1956 and traded as Relion Studios until around February 1957 when he changed the company name to T D Wainwright Photography, the name he traded under until 1976. In April 1976, Wainwright was seriously injured in a road traffic accident and was unable to work again. He retired from the photography business, and died on 24 February 2011.

During his photography career, Wainwright took commissions from up to 50 companies, both locally and nationally. The commissions varied from photographing the construction of the East African Beyer-Garratt locomotive for Beyer, Peacock & Co, to producing a series of publicity photographs for the Legal & General Insurance Company’s poster campaign on the London Underground in 1954. His work also included industrial and publicity photography for manufacturing companies based in the Greater Manchester area.