David S Danby

My younger brother, David, passed away on the 1st of May.

David was a man of great curiosity and wide knowledge. (At University he was a philosophy major with a chemistry minor.)

David S Danby

David had lost both feet and much of his vision to diabetes. He had been on kidney dialysis for over 10 years. It's an insidious disease. Yet, whenever we spoke he was interested in something new and was looking forward to something on the horizon.

For most of David's working life he was a movie theatre manager. First at the Wilmette Theatre, then the 3-Penny Cinema in Chicago, and later, octaplexes (8 screen theaters — he hated those).

He was full of surprises. When the photography of Vivian Maier came to light I was telling him about her, partly because many of her photographs were taken in the neighborhood where we grew up — one was taken outside the door of where we grew up. His response was nonplussed: "Yeah, I knew her. She used to stop by the theatre and we'd talk." Holy Hell.

For the last 25 years we were separated by a continent, an ocean and the equator. He visited Brisbane and we returned back to Chicago; but it was hard. 

So, I'm headed back to Chicago. I hope you will forgive a brief hiatus.

Love you, Dave.