Neil Brake…. When I remember him, it’s with a smile — flashing back to his kind face and gentle presence. The first time I met him was a photo shoot for Vanderbilt Law School. It was around 2000. We were doing a site redesign and badly needed some decent photos. Neil came through with not just decent photos, but great ones: a dramatic shot from top-to-bottom of an obscure stairwell, a student curled up on a sofa, a pile of law books in the courtyard, and so on.
Fast forward to 2006 — doing a redesign for Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Guess what I needed and guess who came through again. Of course, these too were beautiful. You can see a small sampling here. But what’s even more important to me, Neil was so gracious about sharing them.
I emailed him, concerned that for many photos I couldn’t find a way to include his name. He wrote back – no problem. “Thanks,” he said. “I will leave it up to you. You do what you need to do with the images.”
Like many, I was both shocked and deeply saddened to learn of his death and, like many, I will miss him, his generous soul and his beautiful art.
For more information about Neil, see: