Peter Dean Rickards

Self-taught Jamaican photographer, born in Kingston in 1969 and died of cancer on 31 December 2014, aged 45. He was called "the eye of Jamaica", and the description holds: through the 2000s he did more than anyone to fix how dancehall and Kingston street life looked to the rest of the world.

In October 1999 he launched the Afflicted Yard website with Ainsley Weir, using early internet livestreaming and his own photography to show Kingston without the tourist-board filter — sound systems, street dances, and ordinary life in communities that Jamaican and foreign media alike photographed from a distance, if at all. In 2004 he launched the magazine FIRST with Ross Sheil. He photographed Sizzla, Anthony B and Lee "Scratch" Perry among many others, and his pictures ran in The New York Times, Vibe, The Guardian, Vanity Fair and Vogue and for the BBC. He worked with Terry Lynn on Kingstonlogic 2.0 and directed the video for "System", collaborated with Josef Bogdanovich on Kingston Signals, and mentored the photographer Marlon Reid.

"He destroyed stereotypes and replaced them with stronger images of reality," Russell Hergert wrote after his death. "I tell you, he was unmatched.".