Ian Dryden

Ian Dryden (29 December 1944 – 30 May 1993), also known as Ian Dryden Pyle, was a British photojournalist and arts photographer who worked in Edinburgh, California and Mexico prior to his death from lung cancer in 1993 at the age of 48. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Early life & Education Born in London and raised in South Wales, in the early 1960s Ian studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh, where he was enrolled under the name Ian D. Pyle. From 1968-1971, he studied architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art, which was affiliated at the time with Heriot-Watt University.

Bertrand Russell In 1965, he took a break from university studies and moved to Merionethshire, Wales, where he worked for a year as personal secretary to British philosopher, peace activist and Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell. On 1 April 1966, in Merionethshire, he married Felicity Anne Russell, the adoptive daughter of Russell's eldest son, John Conrad Lindsay, 4th Earl Russell. After their marriage, Ian and Anne left Wales and lived together in Edinburgh from August 1966 until separation prior to their divorce in 1971.

Edinburgh Given his first camera at the age of 10, Dryden was an avid amateur photographer until 1972, when he turned to photography professionally in Edinburgh, working as a freelance photographer there until 1975. "As a photographer to the Lindsay Kemp Mime Troup and other emerging theatre groups" at the Traverse Theatre. During the city's second theatre fringe festival in 1973 he produced what a reviewer for the Guardian newspaper deemed "a beautiful film" that was shown as part of an evening tribute to avant garde music composer Eric Satie. Early published photographs also included a portrait of the artistic-bohemian community of St. Stephen Street, where he lived, In 1973, Dryden was given the first individual exhibition of his work by the Scottish Arts Council in Edinburgh, with a show titled "Man to Mankind". as well as on the European continent, where in 1975 he met and photographed the Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett in Paris.

In Edinburgh, Dryden met Mary Rule, an American-born aspiring model and stage actress, who after undergraduate studies at the University of London and the University of Bath was studying Shakespearean drama as a graduate student from 1972-74 at the University of Edinburgh.

California From 1975 to 1977, Ian worked as a freelance photographer, The quality of his work for the Reader attracted the attention of the photo editor at the daily San Diego Union-Tribune newspapers, which hired him as a staff photographer in late-1977, a position he held until mid-1983. Following that assignment, he returned to Los Angeles and by year-end resigned his staff position in order to relocate to Mexico City.

In addition to his photo-journalism work, Dryden also served during his years in California as company photographer for the San Diego Dance Theater, the L.A. Actors Theater Center and the San Quentin Drama Workshop.

Mexico Over the next six years, Dryden lived and worked mainly from Mexico City, accredited as a correspondent for the Gamma-Liaison photo agency including Belgian-born artist Francis Alÿs, British-born Melanie Smith , Texas-born painter Thomas Glassford, Mexican painter and performance artist Eloy Tarcisio and performance artist Elvira Santamaría, Dryden's partner during the last year of his life.

Interviewed by Canadian arts journalist Jennifer Morton, Ian was identified in Belong, Morton's subsequent book on emerging art scenes worldwide, as "a British ex-pat photojournalist who feels he is a refugee from his past. He's now a conceptual artist." In the book, Morton quotes Dryden as saying, apparently in reference to Mexico's contemporary art milieu of the time, that "We are living in the last bohemia. Bohemia implies living outside the laws of society, living without money, living as you want in defiance of society."

Exhibitions Individual exhibitions:

1973, Man to Mankind, Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh.

1981, Prisoners, Gallery Graphic, San Diego, CA, USA.

1990, Wandering Eye: The Photography of Ian Dryden in Mexico, Instituto Anglo-Mexicano de Cultura, Toluca, Mexico.

Group exhibitions:

1973, Photography Into Art, Camden Arts Centre, London. His remains were cremated on 7 June 1993, and following a funeral and memorial service among family and friends his ashes were scattered in the River Leith in Edinburgh.