Bob Kauders obituary

My friend Bob Kauders, who has died aged 74, was a photographer who specialised in raising the visibility of marginalised communities. With an eye for narrative detail, he recorded people and places touched by what he described as “the inevitability of time and change”. His work included a study of Humberside’s industrial decline and an open and engaging record of Traveller communities in Lincolnshire, as well as a photographic record of the lives of people living in Tristan da Cunha, a group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic. In the late 1980s and early 90s Bob also worked for the Weld community project in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, promoting the use of photography as a positive and expressive means of communication. In 1991 he was awarded grants by West Midlands Arts and the London & Edinburgh Trust to record the life and culture around Birmingham’s Bull Ring shopping centre and markets, creating an archive of images before its demolition and redevelopment. Bob was born in Hadleigh, Essex, to Hermann, an engineer, and Annette (nee Rousseau), a secretary. He attended King John school in Benfleet, Sweyne Technical grammar school in Rayleigh and then Southend College of Art and Design (now South Essex College) before gaining a degree in photographic arts from the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL, now University of Westminster) in 1973. After graduating, Bob was given an Arts Council award and a scholarship from PCL to enable him to study landscape through photography. From 1976 to 1978 he was a fellow in photography with Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts, where he began his work on local industrial decline and the lives of its Traveller communities. His assignment in Tristan da Cunha, which ran from 1985 into 1986, came courtesy of a Churchill Fellowship and led to a sensitively documented photographic account of the lives of a resilient, close-knit community. After working for Weld from 1986 to 1991 and then on the Bull Ring project, Bob moved back to Essex in 1992, making his living as a freelance photographer in London and the south-east of England. His clients were mainly local authorities, including the London borough of Southwark and a variety of health, housing and care charities. During his career Bob’s photographs were exhibited widely, including at the Photographers Gallery in London and at the Arnolfini in Bristol. He was also in demand as a lecturer, and was an invited speaker at many institutions, including the National Museum of Photography and the Royal Photographic Society. He ran workshops for people with head injuries and adults with special needs, showing them how photography could enhance their lives. Bob continued his career until 2013, when Parkinson’s, diagnosed in 2006, finally compelled him to stop working. Always generous with his time and energy, he met Margaret Berko, a care worker, in 1993 when a mutual friend asked him to help her move some furniture. They married in 1995 and four years later moved to Vauxhall, in south London. He is survived by Margaret and his sisters, Daphne and Julie.