Ja­maican pho­tog­ra­ph­er and pub­lish­er Pe­ter Dean Rickards who died on De­cem­ber 31 was con­sid­ered a mav­er­ick and was an in­spi­ra­tion for many re­gion­al cre­atives. This is an ex­cerpt from a trib­ute writ­ten by Ja­nine Mendes-Fran­co for the Web site Glob­al Voic­es.

In the ear­ly hours of the last day of 2014, the in­ven­tive Pe­ter Dean Rickards lost his bat­tle with can­cer. Rickards was a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and di­rec­tor with an orig­i­nal eye, quick wit and unique per­spec­tive. He was al­so an as­tute user of so­cial me­dia as a ve­hi­cle for his thoughts and his art–right up un­til his death, he held ac­tive ac­counts on Face­book, In­sta­gram and Twit­ter, un­der the han­dle Af­flict­ed Yard.

And he was. The con­sum­mate cre­ative, Rickards was smart, edgy and a lit­tle off the wall. On Face­book, peo­ple who knew him said he was a man be­fore his time– that Ja­maica and the world weren't yet ready for him.

In a piece shared by ARC Mag­a­zine, the pulse of the re­gion's artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty, Ross Sheil called him Ja­maica's "most im­por­tant artist". Sheil be­gan by re­count­ing his first en­counter with Rickards:

"The day I met Pe­ter summed him up per­fect­ly. Some­time in 2003 I was sit­ting with my then boss by the Kingston Hilton pool­side prepar­ing for a meet­ing with some busi­ness­men or oth­er, when this man with crazy hair showed up for the first time. 'I'm gonna go shoot Nin­ja­man (a dance­hall DJ) on the run from po­lice...guns...some­where in the bush...ya wan­na come?'

"But that was Pe­ter: pre­pared

to do some­thing com­plete; a some­thing that oc­curred on­ly to him, and that on­ly he would risk do­ing; and trust­ing me, ba­si­cal­ly a stranger at that time, to share the ex­pe­ri­ence. The end re­sult was that icon­ic pho­to of Nin­ja­man hold­ing Pe­ter's 'Get out of jail free' Mo­nop­oly card, one of a se­ries of shots, which in­clud­ed the DJ wav­ing around a loaded gun.

"Lit­tle did I know then that I'd have the priv­i­lege of crash­ing on his leather couch for the best part of the year...and dodg­ing the oc­ca­sion­al fire­work he liked to let off in­side the apart­ment."

The post went on to talk about how Rickards, in hos­pi­tal to­wards the end, was "in­ter­est­ed on­ly in hear­ing news about oth­ers":

"Pe­ter had lived life to its fullest. And it was his ap­pre­ci­a­tion of life that which was such an es­sen­tial qual­i­ty of his art. There weren't the con­ven­tion­al di­vides in his work: he criss­crossed up­town as much as down­town as much as coun­try; and he looked out­wards of Ja­maica as much as he proud­ly cel­e­brat­ed his own cul­ture.

"His eye for a sto­ry en­abled him to work across dif­fer­ent me­dia–from writ­ing to video–and to chance up­on ran­dom, fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects that the rest of us would pass on by. Pe­ter would show them in an hon­est and fresh light: he loved the un­der­dog the un­usu­al, and equal­ly, he shunned the fake or hyp­ocrites."

A self-pro­claimed "me­dia ter­ror­ist", Rickards of­ten spoke his mind quite blunt­ly, which didn't al­ways go over well with those with some­thing to lose by it. As an artist and as a Ja­maican who un­der­stood the nu­ances and con­tra­dic­tions of his so­ci­ety, Rickards was keen­ly in­ter­est­ed in "chal­leng­ing not just the com­pet­ing for­eign de­pic­tions of Ja­maica as ei­ther some 'Hearts of Dark­ness' ver­sus 'Hap­py Ras­tas' ser­e­nad­ing tourists on the beach; but in do­ing so al­so to chal­lenge our own in­se­cu­ri­ties as a small is­land na­tion."

Sheil praised Rickards' "nat­ur­al sense of in­quiry" and au­to­di­dac­ti­cism:

"The mo­ment he found a sub­ject, the lit­tle boy in­side him be­came im­me­di­ate­ly fas­ci­nat­ed. He didn't know how to we­b­cast, so he taught him­self, the same way he learned how to build a Web site and as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er be­gan with a crap­py one-megapix­el, mov­ing on­to a more 'pro­fes­sion­al' cam­era on­ly af­ter he'd al­ready learned how to frame shots beau­ti­ful­ly as well as cap­ture Ja­maica's breath­tak­ing nat­ur­al light.

"I think we call that 'cre­ativ­i­ty'. And in the Ja­maican con­text where so many must make do with so lit­tle it made his work all the more au­then­tic."