But in the mourning and loss of someone so dear to me there was the task of continuing to grow with him. I felt I had to take up the potential that Dick had always carried for me to achieve this. So now I can be difficult for both of us, but I will never have his sense of humour, which could be, as I’m sure all who knew him would agree, utterly spontaneous and priceless. He was the master of the Bon Mot, although not long after I had first met him I realised some of his best lines were from characters such as Andy Capp. He loved every form of comedy, at whoever’s expense, including his own.
Dick’s pictures became part of a mourning process for me. Working with them has brought me closer to aspects of him as a person and as a photographer. Spending many hours looking through negatives, learning to use his cameras and working in the darkroom myself has sharpened my realisation of his natural relationship with the camera as an extension of his own body, mind and eye. I have also learnt to appreciate more his knowledge of 20th century photography and the ease with which he was able to assimilate its history into his pictures. I have begun to discover how many references to the great European and American black and white photographers can be found in his work. Arbus, Avedon, Brassai, Brandt, Erwitt, Evans, Frank, Friedlander, Kertesz, Sandler, Weegee, all these, and more, were influences for Dick, which you can see he has assimilated into his own images.
If I were to try to describe Dick’s visual language I would want to emphasise his exceptional handling of contrast, both in black and white and colour, and his ability to push light and darkness to the limit - aided by an old condenser enlarger. Usually working straight from the negative he had an instinct for the most vital aspects of the total image and composition. Perhaps what is most striking of all in his love of photography and through his work is his relationship with the world he could express though visual images. There is always a fine line in photography and filmmaking that threads precariously between intrusiveness, seduction and voyeurism; the hallmark of Dick’s approach is, to my mind, a kind of love, which is a making of something between the subject and the visual artist, which brings out an aliveness in both of them. Dick always had a great respect for the people he photographed, particularly those living on the fringes of life or who could be seen as fragile in some way, a place he identified with and which he explored in many of his pictures. He turned his unique focus on everyone, famous people, homeless people, friends, family and other creatures. He treated them all with parity. He was able to look at people and the environment unflinchingly, he did not idealise, rather the opposite, he like things lived in and real. Perhaps his years of creative work help him as a person because this was the way he faced his own death, painfully, face on and in full focus. He never denied to himself that it was happening and felt he had grown enormously in those last weeks of his life.
For me his work is like good poetry, joy touched with tenderness and often darkened with sorrow. It can be provocative, sensual witty and teasing (as he was himself). In each image is a complex layer of different, often conflicting meanings, light and dark, joy and pain, in a sure composition. He loved the people who fascinated him and his pictures are testimony to this. I am particularly fond of my own portraits, which are never flattering, but show his love for me and for what it was.
This exhibition, as well as being a fitting memorial to Dick, is also the beginning of something I hope will grow. This is the project of beginning to create a Dick Scott Stewart archive. It could not have happened without the work of Emma Gregg, archivist and picture researcher, Liz Smith photographic adviser and Nick Jones the man who has done the wonderful archival prints from Dick’s original negatives. So I should like to thank these people for their help in creating the exhibition. Many thanks also go to Dick’s brother Ian Scott Stewart for his ongoing work on the website.
By showing the landscapes and gentler images in among the more urban images I realise I may have presented a more tempered view of Dick and his work than in past exhibitions, which I think is true to where he was, aged 54, when he died. I think he felt he had realised a body of work which he wanted to be available and out in the wide world. A selection of his work is shown here at the 286 Gallery by Jonathan Ross, who also hosted Dick’s exhibition here in 2000, and is intended to raise funds for continuing to set up an archive. The true memorial, finally, for Dick will be the photographs themselves, which in their way will live on through the archive.
Mog Scott Stewart
February 2005