Johnnie Shand Kydd remembers why he is a photographer
Every so often it’s good to be reminded of why I wanted to become a photographer. I only wish that moments of magic like those described in the story below would happen more frequently.
Some years back, I was working on a project photographing the last 21 surviving veterans of the WWI. They were between 103 and 108 years old and I somehow got it into my head that you could fit this small group of men around a single table and yet their combined age took you back to well before the birth of Christ. I’m not quite sure what this observation really signified, but it intrigued me nonetheless.
One day, I travelled to the Welsh coast to photograph John Oborne. It was a vile day of battleship grey skies and horizontal rain. Mr Oborne was wheelchair-bound and at 104 years old, understandably frail of body and mind. As he snoozed and the light conditions went from bad to worse, I realised there wasn’t a chance in hell of making the portrait a success. We were in the conservatory of his residential home when I noticed that the downpour was subsiding. Grabbing the opportunity, I asked whether his nurse might park the old boy under a tree in the grounds outside. It wasn’t going to be a great picture but it had to be an improvement on the comatose-in-a-green-house scenario I had been working on before. Oborne continued to doze under the blasted pine while I loaded my camera. It was while I was preoccupied doing this that I sensed something moving in the corner of my eye. Turning, I saw in the distance a white stallion heading towards us. He continued to advance until he reached the barbed wire fence, which separated animal and veteran. At this point, the stallion stretched its neck and nuzzled the sleeping man. Oborne immediately awoke, opened his eyes and raised his hand towards the animal as if in benediction. I triggered the shutter. Release.
I was listening to a lot of Johnny Cash at the time. When I got back to London that evening I started to play The Man Comes Around. I had forgotten that it contains the lines “And behold – a pale horse – and his name that sat on him was Death.”
John Oborne died a few days later. Since then, all 20 of his fellow veterans have followed in his footsteps. History does not relate whether white stallions featured in their respective demises.
Johnnie Shand Kydd is a photographer based in London. He has just published his third book Siren City, a celebration of the city of Naples.
