Throughout my lifetime, I've seen David Hockney described as the "world's greatest living painter". Sadly, that no longer applies: the artist born in Bradford, England in 1937 died yesterday, one month short of his 89th birthday. Most tributes will focus on his famous paintings: his swimming pools, his Yorkshire landscapes, his double portraits. But I think there's an added reason to celebrate his life: his photography work genuinely pushed things forward.
This innovation was born of personal frustration with what a camera could achieve. "Photography is all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralysed Cyclops, for a split second," he once said, pithily. But rather than letting that limitation put him off the medium, he burned with the desire to push it forward.
