Samuels behind the camera, where he sees things best.
H.G. (HEADLEY George) 'Dellmar' Samuels was named after the famous West Indian cricketer George Headley. It was fortuitous, it turns out, for he was to spend 25 years in his career as a photographer following the West Indies team around the world, capturing their victories and defeats alike.
Dellmar has shed tears, on his knees on the dusty pitch after unexpected drubbings.
And, his trademark felt hat (a gift from former West Indies cricket captain Richie Richardson), bleached, battered, black after many years of being worn, has often sailed aloft in the dry heat in exultation.
H.G. 'Dellmar' Samuels is today the winner of numerous photography prizes. He was also awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaican Government for his contribution to the nation through photography.
In 2000, he recorded coverage of 101 Test matches, having published the highlights of the West Indies cricket team as they competed all over the world. Samuels' first Test match was in England in 1980. He has since followed the West Indies in all cricketing countries.
Cricket enthusiast
The photographer was always a cricket enthusiast. The work of Tony Kennedy, Gleaner cricket photographer in the 50s, first caught his attention while attending school in Kingston. He bought his first camera while still quite young, behaving like a tourist, taking photographs at Victoria Pier, in Kingston, and the clubs. One day, a man looked at him, he recalls, and said, "Why you don't be a photographer?" The question churned in his mind.
After leaving school, he gained work first with the General Post Office, but Samuels, called 'Dellmar' after the sea, soon discovered a love for travelling.
He joined up with the US Navy in Guantanamo Bay, at which point he did a correspondence course in photography.
In 1967 he arrived in New York, where he made a beeline for the New York Institute of Photography. When he gained employment with Don Graham, one of the few black men of the decade to own his own studio, Dellmar's career was launched.
Dellmar Samuels was to spend many enjoyable years photographing West Indians, Jews and other ethnic Jews in New York. Photographing weddings was one of his specialities, a much more challenging job than it is locally where cultural practices are much simpler.
Dellmar Samuels speaks also about the technical difficultiies involved in printing/producing photographs in the old days. Apart from the difficulty of trick shots, one could spend four hours in the darkroom before being able to break for lunch, and then take another four to produce finished prints.
Now, times have changed and the photographer is the owner of a laptop on which he sends photographs from far-flung areas of the globe where he goes to cover cricket.
Part of Dellmar's story is also the tale of his relationship with The Gleaner newspaper, where he started to cover beauty contests and the social scene, under the guidance of Theodore Sealy and Barbara Gloudon, before he started covering cricket in 1979.
In 1974, he came home to Jamaica with his wife and children, scared, he said of the changes in the New York community which he lived, where hostility was growing over oil shortage and where drugs had begun to make its appearance.
Fortunately for him, the local fashion scene was in the middle of an explosion, and he did well following the Ivy Ralph's, Francis Keane's, Ruth Hussey, Ann Lopez and other designers who were putting a national stamp on custom and ready-to-wear designs.
Dellmar also convinced Theodore Sealy to allow him to cover the Miss World competition in London in 1974, where Ms Jamaica Afro was a participant.
Dellmar recalls, when the word spread that Andrea Lyons had her own photographer ( in those times the traditional photographers would only follow around the white participants) all the black participants in the competition flocked to him, hoping to get their photos taken too. Dellmar ended up covering far more than the Jamaican beauty queen.
All along, though, he was attracted to sports, gaining his first award for sports photography in 1974 from Seprod. It was the photograph of Prime Minister Manley and others watching boxing on closed-circuit TV.
It was with the help of sponsors that he was able to go full-time into cricket in 1979. His 25-year career was then to become the primary source of support for his wife and three children.
A guarantee
The presence of Dellmar at the matches was a guarantee that editors in Jamaica would be able to print photos of the West Indies' best and worst moments. He has seen the greatest games and the dullest.
"We have had some great ones and some dangerous ones...," he comments.
His presence made a difference, he feels.
As the years went by sponsorship becomes more difficult to get. But, "Nobody asks if you are going. They ask when you are leaving," Dellmar smiles. Walking in his footsteps, is his son Kornell, a graduate of the Fort Lauderdale Art Institute, who, although employed as a photographer with the Sandals group, has been with him to Zimbabwe and other nations to cover cricket.
Wife Carol, a school guidance counsellor whom he met at church in 1967 and then got married to in 1969, recalls that Dellmar was "a smart dresser". He used to wear some suits that made other young men appear quite dull. He, she said, has been a very responsible husband.
"It never mattered to him that I worked."
Also, he was very good at remembering birthdays and anniversaries. She loved, she said, his loyalty, to friends, to institutions and even to a supermarket, she adds with a smile.
Of Dellmar, who still goes overseas at least twice a year, Carol Samuels adds, "It is not easy with him being away, but the children helped to fill the gaps."
She is also an avid gardener, using this to fill the time while Dellmar paid court to cricket, his other wife.
According to the photographer, "Cricket is the best game in the world. My theory is that Jesus Christ started it. It is the only game where I have seen people just gravitate to you."
Dellmar, his wife says with an air of incredulity, has friends all over the world, people who he just met in the ball park. People who have invited him to their homes and who have been to his. With his tripod and lens, Dellmar is at home in any nation, everywhere.
