Those who we lost


That is harpsichord legend Scott Ross in the photo above, and Saville Rowe legend Tommy Nutter in the photo below. A post here years ago recounted how in 1984 rumours that Scott Ross had contracted Aids were spreading, and, tragically, both he and Tommy Nutter became Aids victims. Since the start of the epidemic more than 44 million people have died of Aids related illnesses. To put those deaths into perspective, around 16 million combatants and civilians died in World War 1, approximately 6 million Jews and Romany died in the Holocaust, and  14.9 million deaths were linked to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. 

 Tommy Nutter and his photographer brother David were both gay and lived in New York at the peak of the Aids epidemic. The creative community was particularly badly hit by the deadly virus, and Tommy died in 1992. His brother lived through that tragic time, and in the Epilogue to his moving biography of the Nutter brothers, its author Lance Richardson recounts the following: 

I once asked David what he was most proud of in his life. We were sitting in my apartment drinking coffee, and I was hoping he would offer some reflective statement about a photographic career that was as beautiful as it was haphazard, almost accidental.
Instead he said, "Probably surviving, because no one else did".
I was stunned, unsure how to respond.

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