Obituaries
Mar. 15th, 2008 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe learned from yesterday's Guardian of the death of Brian Richardson, anarcho-pacifist and eco-architect; it says something about the sort of person Brian was that, sorry though I was to hear he had died, I found myself smiling with pleasure at having known him. We were allies at NCCL (now Liberty) in the early 80s, putting up a losing fight to maintain the organisation's independence from the Labour Party; Brian's contribution to the struggle was better tempered than mine.
Today, drifting from one thing to another, I discovered that Gunnie Moberg had died last autumn. I didn't know her, but loved her photographs of Orkney. One of her books kept me sane through a two week stay in London, reading at the British Museum for my thesis, but soothing myself to sleep at night with pictures of cool waters and huge open skies. Her obituary in The Independent emphasises her collaborations with George Mackay Brown. I liked the story that "when George Mackay Brown visited England for the only time in his life, it was at Moberg's firm but kindly instigation. She stood him outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and photographed him clutching his carrier bag from Argo's Bakery in Stromness, " (and not just because I too have shopped at Argo's bakery in Stromness). Also "Of all the thousands of photographs taken by her over the years, however, she only hung one. Shot in Shetland at midnight in June, it is a backlit portrait of a cow called Astrid."
Today, drifting from one thing to another, I discovered that Gunnie Moberg had died last autumn. I didn't know her, but loved her photographs of Orkney. One of her books kept me sane through a two week stay in London, reading at the British Museum for my thesis, but soothing myself to sleep at night with pictures of cool waters and huge open skies. Her obituary in The Independent emphasises her collaborations with George Mackay Brown. I liked the story that "when George Mackay Brown visited England for the only time in his life, it was at Moberg's firm but kindly instigation. She stood him outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and photographed him clutching his carrier bag from Argo's Bakery in Stromness, " (and not just because I too have shopped at Argo's bakery in Stromness). Also "Of all the thousands of photographs taken by her over the years, however, she only hung one. Shot in Shetland at midnight in June, it is a backlit portrait of a cow called Astrid."
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Date: 2008-03-15 08:43 pm (UTC)I didn't know of her at all. I wish I had.
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Date: 2008-03-16 01:02 am (UTC)Nine