Derek Jarman, London 1985.

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Sunday, 19 February 2012 Today is the anniversary of the death of painter and film maker Derek Jarman. He died from an Aids related illness exactly 18 years ago.  He was 52.

I photographed Derek three times and I certainly wish it had been more.  He was a wonderful, sweet man and truly an inspiration.  

When I first met him, he lived very simply.  First in a small flat opposite Central Saint Martins in Charing Cross Road, London.  Then, in later years, in a small cottage next to the nuclear power station in Dungeness, where he rather famously took up gardening.

The first time I was commissioned to photograph him, I had this rather crackpot notion that fire should somehow be involved in the photograph.  It was during the years when I still thought it important to have a very specific idea for every photograph and fire was a motif which, I'd noticed, often cropped up in Derek Jarman's films.  So I sketched out a few ideas and took them with me to show him.

Unlike, I suspect, many a famous painter or film maker, he was very enthusiastic.  One idea was for me to photograph him reading a book with flames arising from the pages.  I planned to go and buy an old book from one of the many second hand bookstores nearby but I didn't need to.  Derek Jarman pulled one out from his own shelves and, with a tin of lighter fuel which he also had handy, he pretty much set up the whole thing for me (detail shown above).

A few days later, we drove down to a bit of waste ground in the docklands area (it was in the days when it was still fairly desolate down there) and I did another shot of him standing in a ring of fire.  I made a circle of crumpled newspaper about six feet in diameter, he stood in the middle of it and a colleague set light to it.  He was a real trooper.  I guess it wasn't particularly dangerous.  He could probably have stamped out the flames if he'd wanted to.  But it was fantastic to have a photographic subject that was prepared to go to some lengths to help me get an interesting shot.

If I'm honest, I don't think either photograph was as successful as I'd hoped but I was certainly right about one thing.  Derek Jarman certainly did seem to quite enjoy a good fire.

He's sadly missed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/feb/14/art.margaretthatcher