My friend Jonathan Bayer, who has died aged 87, was both a noted photographer and a writer on photography. His work, like him, was droll, watchful and kind.
His gelatine silver print Arthur, Arthur (1956), in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, shows a large praying mantis clinging to net curtains. Although it suggests the inevitable triumph of nature over man, the image’s mood is curious rather than fearful. So, too, with Jonathan’s later work – Trees and Pram in Park (circa 1977, part of the Government Art Collection), and the elegiac Thames landscapes in the book Eye on the Estuary (2000) are meditations on fading worlds.
