A reflective eulogy in Tribute to Hugh Milsom
There's a deeply felt echo of sadness throughout our photography world following Hugh Milsom's very recent passing. Hugh was a Lode star in my own and many other's photographic lives, he had a certain aura of permanence and such an extensive and emotively brilliant body of work. It's difficult to express what he meant foremost to his family, the gentle man he was , husband and father, as the grief and memories become such difficult companions. His life, all those 91 years, ebbed away quietly like a receding tide on his favourite Luskentyre beach. He meant so much to those he guided along a different path, changing perceptions and attitude within their landscape photography. A rich seam of accolades came with that, from an RPS Fellowship to the panel that earned him his MFIAP distinction, not forgetting a thousand, yes a 1000 acceptances in international exhibitions. His landscape photographers 'voice' was revered by those who attended the workshops he ran with Iain McGowan. That voice was of a dedicated man married to his own sense of amazement, one which once echoed in many clubrooms, now sadly unheard. His many books, filled as they are with deeply resonant pictures, remain with us, pages holding a printed legacy that rewards repeated viewing.
Hugh was a photographer who had an unerring skill in expressing what he felt in such a significant and emotionally intelligent way allowing an underlying spirit to animate and inhabit his pictures. While others play on the obvious notes, Hugh looked for descant and improvisation, employing lost, often foreboding chords or delicate, pearlescent nocturnes. He understood just how potent restraint could be.
Hugh had a succinct and defined attitude to the photographic medium. His work has an honest individualism, deliberately non-conformist, principled, thereby side-stepping the mainstream. Much is allegorical, pensive, undefined and based around abstraction, while other pictures use deep impact apertures to benefit distant detail. In his extensive portfolios you can find poetic menace, revealing the measured beauty of an apprehensive calm, that perturbing silence before the storm. Those images carry his own unpretentious echoing truth, a harmonic signature of time and gold standard empathy.
He had a profound dislike of images manufactured for instant impact, the cold and the soulless anonymity often found among exhibitions now.
He was a member of Arena and the London Salon. Hugh 'graduated' on his own terms in the darkroom, with an aptitude for chemistry & film development, a master with Infra-Red film and gifted printer. Digital capture transformed brought him a softer lyrical style using harmonic pastel colours, personal psalms and arias, with a euphoric cadence and balanced precision, in reality marvels of economy and craft.
Hugh was also a long-standing member of UPP, having joined the group in the 1960’s while still a relatively nascent photographer. His contributions and shared knowledge, including his perceptive comments on his fellow members’ images over the years, were greatly appreciated and as a result, he helped others enhance their own photographic journeys.
He was an enthusiastic producer of books until the very end of his life, and his latest one, on American landscapes, which he completed just prior to his passing, will be published posthumously.
The painter inside his soul constructed and the photographer in him disclosed. Hugh made photographic confessions to the viewer, a highly acclaimed landscape photographer who dealt not just in landforms and geology but in loyalty to his art and the telling atmosphere of solitude - he's given us all a sublime and coherent portrayal of the 'serious still'.
Leigh Preston
There's a deeply felt echo of sadness throughout our photography world following Hugh Milsom's very recent passing. Hugh was a Lode star in my own and many other's photographic lives, he had a certain aura of permanence and such an extensive and emotively brilliant body of work. It's difficult to express what he meant foremost to his family, the gentle man he was , husband and father, as the grief and memories become such difficult companions. His life, all those 91 years, ebbed away quietly like a receding tide on his favourite Luskentyre beach. He meant so much to those he guided along a different path, changing perceptions and attitude within their landscape photography. A rich seam of accolades came with that, from an RPS Fellowship to the panel that earned him his MFIAP distinction, not forgetting a thousand, yes a 1000 acceptances in international exhibitions. His landscape photographers 'voice' was revered by those who attended the workshops he ran with Iain McGowan. That voice was of a dedicated man married to his own sense of amazement, one which once echoed in many clubrooms, now sadly unheard. His many books, filled as they are with deeply resonant pictures, remain with us, pages holding a printed legacy that rewards repeated viewing.
Hugh was a photographer who had an unerring skill in expressing what he felt in such a significant and emotionally intelligent way allowing an underlying spirit to animate and inhabit his pictures. While others play on the obvious notes, Hugh looked for descant and improvisation, employing lost, often foreboding chords or delicate, pearlescent nocturnes. He understood just how potent restraint could be.
Hugh had a succinct and defined attitude to the photographic medium. His work has an honest individualism, deliberately non-conformist, principled, thereby side-stepping the mainstream. Much is allegorical, pensive, undefined and based around abstraction, while other pictures use deep impact apertures to benefit distant detail. In his extensive portfolios you can find poetic menace, revealing the measured beauty of an apprehensive calm, that perturbing silence before the storm. Those images carry his own unpretentious echoing truth, a harmonic signature of time and gold standard empathy.
He had a profound dislike of images manufactured for instant impact, the cold and the soulless anonymity often found among exhibitions now.
He was a member of Arena and the London Salon. Hugh 'graduated' on his own terms in the darkroom, with an aptitude for chemistry & film development, a master with Infra-Red film and gifted printer. Digital capture transformed brought him a softer lyrical style using harmonic pastel colours, personal psalms and arias, with a euphoric cadence and balanced precision, in reality marvels of economy and craft.
Hugh was also a long-standing member of UPP, having joined the group in the 1960’s while still a relatively nascent photographer. His contributions and shared knowledge, including his perceptive comments on his fellow members’ images over the years, were greatly appreciated and as a result, he helped others enhance their own photographic journeys.
He was an enthusiastic producer of books until the very end of his life, and his latest one, on American landscapes, which he completed just prior to his passing, will be published posthumously.
The painter inside his soul constructed and the photographer in him disclosed. Hugh made photographic confessions to the viewer, a highly acclaimed landscape photographer who dealt not just in landforms and geology but in loyalty to his art and the telling atmosphere of solitude - he's given us all a sublime and coherent portrayal of the 'serious still'.
Leigh Preston
Hugh Milsom
FRPS MFIAP EFIAPD2
FRPS MFIAP EFIAPD2
