Old forum member...

[Xavier]

Some of you may remember this gentleman who used to post on the board in the very early days about 15 years ago (eventually was banned due to threats) ...very talented a great writer...

Confirmed: Jamaican Photographer, Businessman and Social Media Personality Peter Dean Rickards o/c "Edgy Petes" passed away today. He had cancer. Rickards was behind Afflicted Yard and First Magazine, and was also known for his iconic photographs. Rickards also made international news for his photograph of infamous graffiti artist Banksy and for attempting to sell a wall that Banksy had painted in Kingston, Jamaica. - Source On the Ground News Reports.

[kia027]

I remember hearing about afflicted yard.

May he Rest In Peace

[RichD]

www.afflictedyard.com

typical. He was very abrasive and troubsome.

R I P still.

[Xavier]

I will never forget a story he wrote and posted on the old board (back then we had 2 boards...general and tourist). It was based on a Jamaican gentleman in London. His descriptions were so vivid and real that you felt like you were in the story. Most will remember him for his photos, film and website articles but he was a great story teller. You can get past the front page to see some of his work here - http://www.afflictedyard.com/archives.htm

[Peasie]

I don't remember him. From a cursory glance at his website, I like his writing.

[Peasie]

This is a good story about his grandmother's teeth

http://www.afflictedyard.com/gransteeth.htm

RIP. Still.

[Blackstar*]

He was young. I noticed he wasn't posting so much on his site. All that time, he must have been ill. R.I.P.

[RichD]

Ross SheilKingston, Jamaica
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RIP Peter Dean Rickards: Jamaica just lost its most important artist

• Posted on January 4th, 2015 at 7:36 am

The day I met Peter summed him up perfectly. Sometime in 2003 I was sitting with my then boss by the Kingston Hilton poolside preparing for a meeting with some businessmen or other, when this man with crazy hair showed up for the first time. “I’m gonna go shoot Ninjaman on the run from police…guns…somewhere in the bush…ya wanna come?”
This didn’t take long for my boss to consider before giving a polite “No.”

But that was Peter: prepared to do something completely nuts; a something that occurred only to him, and that only he would risk doing; and trusting me, basically a stranger at that time, to share the experience. The end result was that iconic photo of Ninjaman holding Peter’s “Get out of jail free” Monopoly card – one of a series of shots, which included the deejay waving around a loaded gun.
Little did I know then that I’d have the privilege of crashing on his pleather couch for the best part of the year…and dodging the occasional firework he liked to let off inside the apartment.
Visiting him at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre hospital in Toronto, Canada this week he was in a bad state, but knew it, and remained, outwardly at least, interested only in hearing news about others: how’s so-and-so, when’s the baby going to come? It’s not easy seeing your best friend like that and while the mental spark and jokes were ever-present, his physical state jarred with the man who had been so full of life and who had shared so much of it with others.
We dropped some Chinese food off with him at 11pm. And at 2am the hospital called…
And even after death his instruction to upload the following image to Afflicted Yard was so typically him.

Peter had lived life to its fullest. And it was his appreciation of life that which was such an essential quality of his art. There weren’t the conventional divides in his work: he crisscrossed uptown as much as downtown as much as country; and he looked outwards of Jamaica as much as he proudly celebrated his own culture.

His eye for a story enabled him to work across different media – from writing to video – and to chance upon random, fascinating subjects that the rest of us would pass on by. Peter would show them in an honest and fresh light: he loved the underdog, the unusual; and equally, he shunned the fake or hypocrites.

Which is where he sometimes got into trouble, never afraid to speak his mind and frequently troubling the corrupt that keep Jamaica in their greedy grip. Or of course he could be a complete troublemaker – a “media terrorist” as he put it. That it was the youth arm of a political party that was sent to kill him speaks volumes of how at odds this young artist was with mainstream society, which is exactly why his AfflictedYard.com website built such a cult following.

Much of the content produced from Jamaica he felt, and I had to agree, merely self-stereotyped the culture. What he wanted to do was to challenge not just the competing foreign depictions of Jamaica as either some ‘Hearts of Darkness’ versus ‘Happy Rastas’ serenading tourists on the beach; but in doing so also to challenge our own insecurities as a small island nation. “An unofficial member of the Jamaica Tourist Board” was how he liked to plug Afflicted Yard.
Good and bad Jamaica was more complex, more sophisticated he felt. And while living here had it’s frustrations and lacked the opportunity, and appreciation afforded by working in a major city, he kept plugging away nonetheless.

• Kingston Signals: dancehall webcast live back when dialup Internet was all we had.
• Afflicted Yard: the website that pioneered blogging in Jamaica and showcased his evolving photographic work: everything from hilarious satire pieces to carefully put together pictorials.
• FIRST Magazine: a bi-monthly print magazine turned blog that attracted praise from the likes of Vanity Fair…and Jamaica’s then minister of information!
• And in recent years he moved more into video, including some unfinished TV and documentary projects.
• Peterdeanrickards.com features a lot of his recent work.

Peter’s natural sense of inquiry remained constant throughout all of this work. The moment he found a subject, the little boy inside him became immediately fascinated. He didn’t know how to webcast, so he taught himself, the same way he learned how to build a website and as a photographer began with a crappy 1-megapixel, moving onto a more ‘professional’ camera only after he’d already learned how to frame shots beautifully as well as capture Jamaica’s breathtaking natural light.
I think we call that “creativity”. And in the Jamaican context where so many must make do with so little it made his work all the more authentic.
There’s so much I can say about him, stories personal and professional, and we’re yet to begin the process of organising Peter’s work and many, many hard drives. Then we can begin to honour his last wishes.
Walk good pikcha man.

[Peasie]

I am sorry he died. His photo compositions are forceful and wonderful. His photos of Nikia Phoenix are striking (and she is stunningly beautiful).

Thanks RichD for that article.

[Pepper]

typical. He was very abrasive and troubsome.

.

That's putting it mildly. I had nothing but disdain for him after he threatened Marcia.

But as you said, RIP.

[RichD]

That's putting it mildly. I had nothing but disdain for him after he threatened Marcia.

But as you said, RIP.

I remember how he used to rail against the moderation here and decided to start his own BB where it would be a free for all. he soon had to lock it down so tight that it was like a police state over there

[Xavier]

That's putting it mildly. I had nothing but disdain for him after he threatened Marcia.

But as you said, RIP.

The Marcia threat was heartbreaking...she did not got to any of the bashments because she was looking behind her back. May he rest in peace