Inspiring British photographer and teacher John Blakemore died this week at 88.
John Blakemore was celebrated for his landscape and nature photographs, especially his use of long exposure techniques. He also creatively used multiple exposures in his work, sometimes capturing nearly 50 shots over an hour to capture the progression of time in nature.
The Centre for British Photography describes Blakemore, who was entirely self-taught, as “one of the leading photographers of landscape and nature in the world,” noting his incredible control over tone and exposure.
The video interview below, Seduced by Light by James Hyman, captures much of what made Blakemore and his work exceptional.
Dr. Michael Pritchard from The Royal Photographic Society describes Blakemore’s work as “beautiful, meticulously executed and thoughtful,” to the BBC.
“John wasn’t a diva,” adds Blakemore’s friend and colleague Paul Hill. “He was an extremely engaging individual who was very generous with his time. His gentleness, his understanding, his intellect was of a very high caliber.”
Blakemore spent decades teaching art and photography, including through formal classes at Derby College of Art, through workshops, and in media. In 2001, Blakemore became Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Derby.
Blakemore’s award-winning photography was featured in more than 25 solo exhibitions across six decades. He won the 1992 Fox Talbot Award for Photography and was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.
The photographer published numerous books throughout his lengthy career, including Inscape (1991), Stilled Gaze (1994), John Blakemore’s Black and White Photography Workshop (2005), and John Blakemore Photographs 1955-2010 (2011).
John Blakemore will be remembered for his incredible portfolio of nature, still life, and documentary photography and for his lasting impact on the generations of photographers he taught.
“Through his exhibitions and books, his work reached a wide audience,” says Dr. Pritchard. “His legacy is his own photography but also the students he taught and who now produce work to his exacting standards and teach in their own right.”
“I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been important to me. And my personal life has been ridiculous and always for me, photography has been a sort of strand of sanity through it,” Blakemore concluded in an interview in 2023. “And so [photography] has been very important to me and I’ve worked very hard at it and I’ve enjoyed it.”
“But at the end of the day, there’s a lot of bits of paper in boxes,” Blakemore laughed, smiling broadly. “And that’s a suitable end, isn’t it?”
Image credits: Featured image is a screenshot from James Hyman’s brilliant video interview with John Blakemore in 2023, which can be viewed in full above.
