Obituary: Gordon Jack, photographer

Gordon Jack: Much-loved press photographer considered among best in the business. Picture: Alan Simpson

GORDON Jack’s last assignment was to cover Andy Murray’s wedding at Dunblane Cathedral at the weekend. As fate would have it, the photographer appears to have had a heart attack during Friday’s marriage rehearsal. He hit his head on a gravestone and later passed away in hospital on Saturday just as Murray and Kim Sears were exchanging their wedding vows. Contrary to some reports, there was not a “media scrum” at the time. Jack and his Scottish, British and overseas colleagues merely jostled with mutual respect to get their pictures of the tennis star arriving.

Journalists and photographers around Scotland and beyond turned from their wedding coverage to mourn the colleague they called Jacko or “the Jackal”, described by one of his former photo editors as “the best photographer in Scotland by a country mile”.

He worked at the Daily Record for several years, covering the crisis in Kosovo, the Kosovar refugee camps in Macedonia, the war in Afghanistan and the heartbreaking Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan which resulted from that conflict.

In recent years, Jack, aided by his wife Gilly, had run his own photography studio in Linlithgow, specialising in “documentary” wedding photos – not just portraits but action pictures of barefoot newlyweds paddling in surf, jumping for joy against the backdrop of Arthur’s Seat or the Scott monument, or of a groom carrying his new wife on to a rowing boat. His photos of Scottish rugby international Kenny Logan and television sports presenter Gabby Yorath outside the kirk in Blairlogie, Stirling, after their 2001 wedding were spread over Scottish and UK papers.

His other celebrated photographs include: singer Robbie Williams waving a cup of tea out of a window to show he was teetotal; a frilly Sir Sean Connery with Alex Salmond at the opening of the Scottish Parliament; Gordon Brown “scoring a penalty” for his beloved Raith Rovers; and the laughing Prince William and Kate Middleton in which the latter’s tiny waistline fuelled speculation about her health.

Jack was also a much sought-after child and family portrait photographer, again using his charm, patience and good humour to bring out the best in his subjects as they relaxed and had fun, rather than posing. One such picture was of a little boy listening to his future sibling’s heartbeat while pressed against his pregnant mother’s bare tummy. Magazine fashion shoots also added to his reputation as an all-rounder.

His photos brought him letters of gratitude and delight from clients. (To see the range of his work, it is well worth looking at www.jackphoto.co.uk and www.scotimage.com.)

Gordon Jack was born in the Simpson’s maternity centre at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 25 March, 1968, and spent his early years in Haddington, East Lothian, going to primary school there. When he was ten, his family moved to Linlithgow, West Lothian, where he attended Linlithgow Academy and became a popular and “well-kent” face. He would spend the rest of his life based in the town.

In fact, he turned to photography relatively late, when he was pushing 30. His first job was as a motorbike courier before he worked for several years as a customer service rep at the Edinburgh-based Standard Life savings and investments company.

He was 28 when he took his first photography course and found that his natural knack for getting along with people rewarded him with better and more natural pictures.

In 1999, impressed by Jack’s freelance work, technical skill, journalistic sense and larger-than-life personality, the then Daily Record photo editor Stuart Nicol took him on staff. “His real key skill – talk to any people who had been on the road with him – was that he cared passionately about the story and worked very hard to make it work,” Nicol said at the weekend. “Not just the picture side of it; he put the legwork in, knocking doors to help the journalists out. He had a great news sense.

“He always worked away in the background… I think, he never wanted to be the story,” according to Nicol. “He touched a lot of people’s lives. I’ve never met anyone who’s had a bad word to say about Gordon. Not one person ever. Nobody can believe it. Scottish photography has lost one of its brightest stars.”

Jack also worked regularly for the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. He became known as a “scribbler’s snapper”, a photographer who helped those print journalists, often younger, with whom he worked. Within the tight-knit community of photographers, he was also known for his kindness, generosity and helping others, even his competitors. One such recalled how Jack gave him one of his big lenses when his own got smashed.

In a tribute, Record writer Annie Brown, who covered the Kosovo crisis with Jack, wrote: “Gordon, Jacko, the Jackal, was the man reporters wanted at their back, the photographer who sweated blood for the shot no-one else got.

“In Scotland, Gordon covered all our news events, the major, the minor, the dreich and the dreary. Nothing put him in a bad mood.”

In the same tribute, fellow photographer Paul Chappells added: “If I were in a trench in Belgium in 1916, I’d want to be next to the Jackal. He’d know the way out – or at least negotiate our free passage to Switzerland.”

Jack also embraced and made good use of the digital revolution, when photographers moved from developing their film in darkrooms to sending them to their media outlets by computer.

Leaving his staff job at the Record, he set up his own studio, Linlithgow-based Jack Photography, in 2003, concentrating on wedding, fashion, family and PR shots. He later opened Scotimage, also based in his adopted home town, using a stylised Saltire in its logo. He was working for Scotimage at Andy Murray’s wedding when he had his fatal heart attack.

According to Jack’s friend and former colleague Annie Brown, his wife Gill said after his death: “I have lost my best friend.” Their daughter Megan added: “I love you to the Moon and back, daddy. Goodnight.”

Gordon Jack died in the Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, near Falkirk, on Saturday. He is survived by his wife Gilly (née Smith, of Linlithgow), son Sam, 14, and daughters Megan, 17, and Emily, ten.