Celebrity photographer Ken Ramsay is dead


Saturday, March 29, 2008



RAMSAY. appeared to have died in his sleep
Jamaican celebrity photographer Ken Ramsay was found dead at his home in Portland yesterday morning.
Police said that Ramsay, who lived alone, was found by his gardener at about 9:00 am.

"The house was locked up and the gardener had to force open the door to get in," Senior Superintendent of Police Derrick Shand told the Observer. "Mr Ramsay was found in his bed and the house was intact," he added, suggesting that Ramsay had died in his sleep.

Shand, who is in charge of the police's Area 2 Headquarters, said that Ramsay was seen by a doctor recently.

At the time of his death, Ramsay was a freelance photo-journalist with the Observer and had recently made plans with the newspaper to cover the involvement of Jamaicans and other West Indians in the Barack Obama campaign in the United States.

In the past, he covered major sporting and celebrity events overseas for the Observer, including the summer and winter Olympics, Wimbledon, the US Open, the West Indies cricket tour of South Africa in 1998 and gave special focus to the Williams sisters (Venus and Serena) on the international tennis circuit.

Ramsay, known for his signature riding boots and scarf, studied photography at Harrow College, London, and Germain School of Photography in New York in the 1960s, after which he worked for a short time with New York fashion photographer Peter Basch.

He returned to Jamaica in 1969, and the following year concentrated his efforts on classic black and white photography, earning international fame with his creations, among them The Head.

In the 80s, he did a lot of work with Pulse model agency and eventually in 1994 published his first book, Dare to Dream with co-publisher Verlag R****ach of Freiburg, Germany.
In 1997, Ramsay published his second book, The Dream lives on - a range of black and white photographs of late Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley.

Between 1999 and 2000 he started working on a series of black and white photographs featuring Jamaica's ethnic diversity.

Ken Ramsay, brother to late defence attorney Ian Ramsay, is survived by his wife Pat Ramsay, one of Jamaica's foremost educators and charity fund-raisers.