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:

Vanderbilt View

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