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John Levett

    John Levett passed away on 25 April 2022.

    A friend was beside him when he was bidding goodbye to this earth. John’s memory started fading away some time ago.

    John was a unique and engaging man. He was full of presence. His eyes wide, his whole face faintly smiling, looking into you intently while listening. He always had a comment to make on what you had just said. What he had to say made you think.

    He was ever present to the possibilities of ideas and thoughts, even the ones only at their seed stage. His encounter, always mental and physical. His slender body, limbs and long strides in constant motion like his brain, as he searched for the insight of what had just been shown or said. There was a sort of dance about John. He talked as he thought. He had joy for people and thoughts.

    John worked closely with many LIP members through Greenwich LIP, Crossing Lines and London Villages Project, all of which he founded.

    The London Villages Project was to mark the end of the millennium. We met over several months and produced a book and a website. Members will have many memories of the conversations about their respective photographs and projects. John would pay attention to every photograph, cast aside some, talk through each and ask questions. His questions would seek to know how much you knew about the subject, your commitment to it and what it was saying. If it was a place he would ask ‘how many times have you been there?’. Or he would say that you were not close enough to the subject. He wanted to ensure that the project stood on solid ground reflecting the artist’s view of the time and the place photographed.

    John had many qualities and positions that you sensed rather than heard espoused by him explicitly. These appeared in conversations and responses. We can conclude that he was a socialist, a humanitarian and very grounded in the land in which he lived. He was an archivist. We would have heard him say that he did not throw away photographs, letters, postcards or even old printers. He actively invited postcards.

    Crossing Lines is a collaboration between LIP and Goldsmiths. It’s about photography meeting the urban and ‘anything else’. We went there for the subject but also to see John conducting the meetings. Many of his own presentations were autobiographical and inspirational. We saw him, in his work, revisiting the places where he had lived in the past as a university student or where he had lived with his mother as a child. These places were important to John. He undertook this like a pilgrimage. He would go, stay in a B&B and walk and talk to people. Then he would put together presentations. They were about those places but also about his memories of those places when he was there long ago. We would have heard him say that he did this to hold on to the memories that are disappearing. It was about not giving up. John was not about giving up.

    Photograph: John at the opening of the London villages Project – by Anne-Marie Glasheen.