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Stuart
Lester Rankin
Stuart
Lester Rankin was born in Liverpool, England, in 1946. He was given his
first camera, a Kodak 127, at the age of eight and graduated to a Kodak A4
a couple of years later, at which time he also began tinkering with the
mysteries of developer and fixer. His next camera was a Zeiss Colora 35mm,
which he used to chronicle the disappearance of the steam railway
locomotive from daily use in Britain during the 1960's. At the age of 16,
he began working for a large nationalized industry, soon gaining promotion
to the Public Relations department, working in display design,
photo-journalism for the inhouse newspaper, where he used an ancient
Rollieflex. All this did not leave much time for personal photography, but
being fond of hiking on holiday, he looked for a cheap, robust, and
versatile camera for landscape work, eventually settling on a Praktica
B200. This proved to be an excellent choice, standing up to being dropped
on mountainsides, and soaked by rain, so he bought a Praktica BCX as well.
These two cameras served him well, for landscape, architectural and figure
work for nearly 20 years.
Stuart was forced into early retirement for health reasons and found
himself in need of supplemental income. With his background in film and
video he ventured forth and started producing soft porn videos for the gay
market. But Stuart always preferred working alone with his subjects on a
one-to-one basis, so he branched out into still photography for
gay-oriented websites. He has since "gone digital" and uses a
Fuji 6900. Stuart now does a lots of work for several well known websites
and whenever he has some free time, like to work on his personal stuff,
which is usually more artistic black & white material.
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