The Sunday Tribune

Grant Alexander Erskine – gentle eccentric, wearer of kilts and strummer of guitars – was an experienced and intuitive photographer who died unexpectedly last weekend in the Midlands.

In the passing of Grant, we have lost a special friend and colleague and Independent Newspapers has lost a supremely talented and dedicated photographer.

Grant was happiest behind the camera capturing hard news and creative features - favouring unusual portraits and fashion - for the various Independent Newspapers titles for which he worked for many years. He also delighted in capturing special moments for family and friends. He was a talented photographer who took great care in striving for the ideal composition and perfect moment. In this disposable society it is rare to find someone with such patience, dedication to his work and such commitment to his art. He had a natural gift for photography or “painting with light” as he preferred to call it. He studied photography at DIT (then the Natal Technikon) from 1981 - 83 with the amazing Obie Oberholzer whom he adored. Obie inspired Grant and shared with him his passion for photography, for boldly using colour, for red wine and for life.

He loved capturing images - as a press photographer first and foremost and, when he took time out from the newsroom for a few years, as a video cameraman. His video career was spent mainly on documenting birds – something he had the patience and affinity for. It was the perfect combination of two great loves: the outdoors and camerawork.

Grant had a diverse range of talents, skills and interests – he loved his music and was a closet guitar player performing his own delicate and beautiful compositions to a select audience. For the past decade he has been very active in the Durban Folk Club – since when it still operated from the Plaza Hotel. He was integral to the smooth running of the many music evenings and concerts. For the past few years, he assisted his friend Sue Salusbury with stage-managing both the Southern Cross and the Splashy Fen Music Festivals. He was already planning for and looking forward to the next year’s events. During the tenth anniversary of Splashy he was delighted with the honour of being given The Freedom of Splashy Fen in acknowledgement of his contribution over the years to the festival as a photographer, as a stage manager and a committed Splashy “groupie”. He only ever missed one Splashy when he was traveling overseas.

“You couldn’t find a better person in the music industry than Grant. He just went ahead and did what was needed and never asked for anything. He really was amazing!” says Splashy Fen’s Pedro Carlo.

He was a student of tai chi – a discipline he enjoyed and embraced. He had also been studying and practicing reiki and healing techniques under the inspirational Jan de Vries and enjoyed and shared his new-found knowledge with those around him.

He was a regular water baby – enjoying many water and sea sports. As a child he was a sea scout and loved sailing. Recently, he and his brothers were contemplating buying a boat together and he regularly paddled and wave ski’d. This affinity with water extended to other areas of his life too. He loved the solitude and tranquillity of trout fishing. (He was an appalling bad fisherman and seldom caught anything). He also loved photographing things aquatic and nautical.

He was car mad and had an insatiable appetite for mostly unusual and not particularly sensible cars – changing cars often on a whim when a new make caught his fancy. He was known for gadding about in anything from a dodgy Lada Niva to an aging bright yellow beach buggy. This relationship with cars made him the brunt-end of many jokes.

A regular feature on his personal diary was an annual “pilgrimage” up Sani Pass (naturally there are many stories of car problems along the way). The trip up Sani Pass was a special journey for him always. He enjoyed the rugged beauty of the geography and embraced the spiritual quiet of the long challenging drive every year.

Grant was 100% Durban. Born in Mother’s Hospital in Greyville 42 years ago to Roy and Bev, he was the oldest of four children. He went to Tree Tops, then DPHS and matriculated at DHS. After his Technikon diploma, he did the dreaded military conscription. Two of his most significant and probably least happy years were spent avoiding active service and taking photos for regiment and military publications. At least the solitude and quiet of the dark-room provided some solace from a system he despised.

Grant was amazingly generous in spirit: always the first to crack a joke and make people around him feel comfortable – people he met socially or subjects in-front of his lens. He was an attentive friend to a wide circle of special people and a dedicated family man having a close relationship with his parents, brothers and sister, nieces and nephews (“the short people” he called them.)

He had the incredible ability to touch people’s lives in a very meaningful and personal way. He managed to cut through the social niceties to engage with his many friends, colleagues and associates on a real and often profound level.

I will be eternally grateful that we enjoyed a fabulous two-week holiday in Edinburgh together in August. For me it was about exploring the overwhelming Edinburgh festival and taking in as much theatre as possible. For Grant it was about exploring his Scottish ancestry and creating connections to his heritage by imbibing the culture and visiting Erskine graves and sites of historical importance. (And both of us sampling a fair amount of whisky and local ales as well!). A highlight for him was attending the famous Edinburgh Tattoo. He spent hours trawling through kilt shops and carefully chose accessories for his beloved kilt. He ordered a second kilt of ancient Erskine tartan which regrettably is yet to arrive on our shores.

Grant was of course well known for his “quirky” and distinctive dress sense. He was not afraid of colour and design and seldom followed any conventional sense of fashion. Friends recall him wearing a particularly loud pair of pink leopard print trousers one day to which a colleague was overheard to ask: “Who shot the couch?”

Bev – his Mum – reminded me that as a youngster he once sewed a caftan out of his bedroom curtains.

He spent his last night at his most special place – at his friends’ Leeann and Mike Mounter’s farm in the Midlands. Late on Saturday night he had a mammoth heart attack and died instantly. I think he was completely at peace and ready to move on. Grant had lived life fully; loved deeply; worked hard and achieved so much that he has managed to pack into his 42 years what many people don’t manage to achieve in a much longer life-time.

Grant was one of my oldest, dearest friends and one of the most incredible people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. So go in peace, dear Grantee and continue to paint with light. I miss and love you. Always.

Illa Thompson