When Jane Bown donated her life’s work to the Scott Trust, Luke Dodd was assigned to help her archive the vast collection of negatives and prints. He recalls the friendship that grew over several years of them working together, allowing him to see the formidable talent that hid behind her unassuming persona
- Jane Bown: the eye had it
- Jane Bown remembered: ‘We had fun, didn’t we?’
- Jane Bown: a life in photography – in pictures
- Jane Bown: the final picture
Thinking back about our unlikely friendship, I realise that Jane, ever reticent, ever watchful, tested me in gentle ways until trust developed. Early on, there were trips to her house, introductions to family and friends, the ritual of the Thursday curry in the staff canteen, the joy in showing me contact strips fresh from the darkroom, the visit together to a man near the British Library who serviced cameras, a trip to Glastonbury to take photos of rock stars. Jane had to be sure of me because I was the person she had agreed would slowly dismantle the numerous filing cabinets of negatives and prints, fortress-like, around her desk and transfer them to the archive created by the Scott Trust to preserve the histories of the Observer and Guardian.
These cabinets held Jane’s life’s work, each series of negatives carefully annotated with the subject and date in her elegant script. It was a painful process, a tacit acknowledgment on Jane’s part that she would not be able to take photographs indefinitely – she was in her late 70s at the time – and a growing awareness that this had been an immense support to her in a way she had always taken for granted. Long after she reached that point and when all the contents of those cabinets were carefully repackaged and catalogued, her weekly pilgrimage to the office continued – her last one was in August this year.
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