Dick Pope, the legendary two-time Oscar nominated British cinematographer and longtime collaborator of auteur Mike Leigh, has died at the age of 77. News of Pope's passing was confirmed by the British Society of Cinematographers in a statement shared on their website earlier today.
"It is with deepest sadness that we learn of the passing of our friend and colleague Dick Pope BSC," wrote the organisation in their post, which highlighted Pope's record three Camerimage Golden Frog wins as well as his achievement of the society's prestigious 'Cinematography in a Feature Film' award for his work on Mr. Turner. Continuing, the society also paid homage to their alumni's commitment to his craft and its furtherance, writing, "Dick had a reputation for being a wonderful collaborator and someone who was passionate about the artform of Cinematography. He was keen to embrace new technologies and ideas while also ensuring the skills and crafts of those that came before him weren't lost. To this end Dick would guest tutor at schools such as the National Film and Television School."
A keen still photographer during his youth in Bromley, Kent, Pope cut his cinematographic teeth on documentarian fare, including ITV current affairs programme World In Action, Pope first made a name for himself as the videographer responsible for shooting some of the most iconic music videos of the 80s. Having lensed everything from Iron Maiden's 'Women In Uniform' and The Specials' 'Ghost Town' to Madness' 'It Must Be Love' and Queen's 'I Want To Break Free', Pope's keen eye for visual storytelling and versatility behind the camera made him an obvious candidate to make the leap from shooting for the box to the big-screen.
In 1990, Pope shot two movies that changed the course of his career. The first was Philip Ridley's The Reflecting Skin, a beguiling, nightmarish, Lynchian coming-of-age movie about a young boy tormented by his own imagination in rural 50s America that remains perhaps the most evocative demonstration of Pope's painterly approach to lighting and ability to map out the psyche of a subject in the spatial composition of a frame. The other was Life Is Sweet, a richly textured and reverently shot slice-of-life drama about a working class northern family that marked the beginning of a fruitful, life-long creative partnership between Pope and auteur Mike Leigh.
Together, Leigh and Pope's symbiotic working relationship — both fierce artists committed to capturing the elasticity, electricity, and colour of life as it's lived on film — yielded a slew of landmark works. Naked, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Happy-Go-Lucky, cinematography Academy Award nominee Mr. Turner, the extraordinary historical epic Peterloo... the list goes on. And, most recently, the duo made the critically acclaimed and sumptuously shot Hard Truths together, a movie which gave Pope and Leigh a long-awaited reunion with acting powerhouse Marianne Jean-Baptiste after almost three decades apart.
In between those many unmissable Leigh collaborations, Pope also worked with Neil Burger on The Illusionist, for which he gained his first Oscar nomination, Barry Levinson on Man Of The Year, and on many more movies made by the likes of Richard Linklater, Christopher McQuarrie, John Sayles, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Gurinder Chadha, and Edward Norton amongst others.
The expression "every frame a painting" is one that has been used many, many times over the years, and yet rarely has there been an artist whose work so consistently and thoroughly deserved to be described in such terms as Dick Pope, whose ability to convey the darkest, brightest, and most diverse shades of humanity in his camerawork will be remembered for generations to come. Our thoughts are with Dick Pope's family, friends, and peers at this difficult time — especially his wife Pat. He will be sorely missed.