John Everard was born Edward Ralph Forward in Hull, Yorkshire to solicitor Edward Forward and his wife Florence. He was a First World War veteran and former Malaysian rubber planter, who became a self taught British portrait, fashion, stage and studio photographer. He was a noted photographer of female nudes from the late 1920s until the early 1960s. As early as 1939, Walter Bird, John Everard and Horace Roye had decided that they were giving each other too much competition. To resolve that difficulty they decided to cooperate, and they set up a company called Photo Centre Ltd. They made their headquarters in a suite of rooms above Walter Bird's studio in Savile Row, and Eves without Leaves was their first joint publication.

With Bird and Roye he supplied the magazines Men Only and Lilliput. Notably, Everard’s studio was free from scandal. In an era when nude photography often attracted suspicion, his reputation for professionalism mattered. It helped him maintain working relationships with publishers and printers who were wary of legal trouble. He died in Johannesburg in 1966.