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LETTER OF THE WEEK

Jimmy Forsyth

The late Jimmy Forsyth was one of the North East’s best-known documentary photographers. His pictures of the now long-gone Scotswood community and other West End working-class areas in Newcastle just bristle with the cold stark atmosphere of the times in which they were taken. Jimmy was more interested in picture content than in the camera he used to capture them. Many of his shots may be a bit awry technically, but they’re a superb reminder of an era now passed into history.

I once chatted to Jimmy in Newcastle’s Grainger Market in 1988 where he was using an old Ilford Sportsman camera as well as a Russian Lubitel TLR. To him, getting the shot was all that counted and