Farewell to photographer who captured North
Jul 14 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
JIMMY Forsyth, who wandered the streets of Newcastle for almost 50 years taking pictures, has died a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.
He began taking photographs around his home in Scotswood Road in 1954, recording life in the West End of the city.
He documented a world which was to soon disappear, and he also recorded the demolition of many buildings and landmarks like the Scotswood Road and Redheugh bridges.
Jimmy’s camera also captured new buildings which were changing the face of the city. In later life he lived in The Cedars high rise flats in Cruddas Park but had been in Elswick Hall care home for around the last 18 months, where he died on Saturday.
Only last month Tyne Bridge Publishing produced a new book of Jimmy’s photographs, taken in the 1950s and 60s.
This replaced a previous book, Out of One Eye, which had been published in 2002 and is now out of print. The title refers to the fact that Jimmy was left blind in his right eye as a result of an accident four days after he started work as a fitter at an ICI works in Prudhoe, Northumberland.
Jimmy was born in Barry, South Wales, and served in the merchant navy before training as a fitter. He came to Tyneside, aged 30, in 1943 to help with war work at ICI and in 1952 was living in a flat on Scotswood Road.
For years he was a familiar figure on the city’s streets, continually taking pictures.
Then in 1974 he contacted West End librarian Des Walton and handed over albums of negatives because he feared they would be lost if something happened to him. Mr Walton staged exhibitions of the photographs and that was the start of the “discovery” of Jimmy Forsyth.
In 1981 Jimmy’s pictures went on show in the Side Gallery in Newcastle and five years later Bloodaxe Books published Scotswood Road, a volume which showcased his work.
In 1987 Jimmy received the Halina Award for Photography.
Thousands of Jimmy’s images, many in tartan albums, are now with Tyne Wear Archives in Blandford House, Newcastle, where they will take years to be sorted and catalogued. Chief archivist Liz Rees said: “In historical terms they are immensely valuable. I am not aware of anyone else who took photographs as systematically as Jimmy did. He was the only person documenting the changes in this way in Newcastle, recording a way of life in a community of which he was part and which was to vanish quite quickly.”
Jimmy Forsyth’s funeral will be on Thursday at West Road Crematorium at 2pm.
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