Guy Reynolds' Obituary
When Guy Reynolds was at his best, he was a creative force — a gifted photographer with a quirky eye.As a Dallas Morning News photo editor and as a visual artist, he captured the odd beauty in the world.Then a darkness would set in, bringing feelings of inadequacy — the result of the bipolar disorder he’d battled for decades.He’d spoken openly about his struggle, hoping to help erase depression’s stigma.On Monday, Reynolds took his own life. He was 62. “He had the eye of an artist,” said Mike Wilson, editor of The News, which Reynolds joined in 1996 from the Indianapolis Star. “The images he chose always illustrated the story but also told beautiful, poignant stories of their own.”“Guy loved to tell stories,” said the News‘ photography director, Marcia Allert. “He used his camera to amplify voices that we rarely hear and to peek into lives that were not our own.” Reynolds saw the potential for extraordinary images where nobody else could, said Robert Hart, The News‘ former picture editor and director of online content.“It’s not about the camera in your hand; it’s the way you see,” he said. “Guy just had that gift.”Reynolds’ influence spread far beyond a tight-knit tribe of photographers. Friends called him an inspiration as a journalist, artist and mentor — and as a fighter who’d taken on stage 4 cancer. “They don’t come any finer, I assure you,” said retired publisher Ken Riddick, who’d called Reynolds his best friend since childhood. “This is a hard one on everybody.” Born in Columbus, Ohio, Reynolds moved with his family to Richardson when he was 4 and grew up near Canyon Creek.While attending J.J. Pearce High, he took a photo workshop at Southern Methodist University. As he recalled on his blog, dubbed Guydaho, “Watching an image bloom in a tray of chemicals was an instant and permanent hook.”He soon bought a Minolta at Kmart with money from his Morning Newspaper route and went on to earn a photojournalism degree from the University of Texas in 1983.Reynolds’ curiosity led him on paths less traveled, figuratively and literally. Growing up, daughter Katie Kinard remembers her father’s circuitous paths to his destinations.“People usually want to get home the quickest way, but he would take the earlier exit,” she said. “We’d be, like, ‘Dad, what are you doing?’ And he’d say, ‘I like to call this the long cut.'”Reynolds had an acerbic, self-deprecating sense of humor. On the job, his sometimes brusque manner could veil the thoughtfulness and empathy underneath.“He had this gruff exterior, but he was just a super teddy bear on the inside,” Hart said. “He would help anybody who needed it, even if they didn’t ask for it.”Reynolds and his wife, News copy editor Nancy Visser, attended Grace United Methodist Church. There, he bonded with choir director Michael Manes, whose late wife, like Reynolds, had fought cancer.“That’s how we became close, sharing and supporting each other,” Manes said. “And after … [my wife] passed away, within three weeks, he came over and brought me a lasagna. I was, like, ‘I should be bringing food to you.’ But it was delicious, I must say.”Reynolds was a dedicated supporter of Meals on Wheels, delivering meals since 2013.He felt compelled to take pictures along his route and of the people he served and donated the proceeds from exhibitions of those photos to the organization. At The News, Reynolds mentored young photographers, including former staffer Melanie Burford.In a Facebook tribute, she recalled how the gruff editor became frustrated with her scant images from a baseball game, a sport with which the native New Zealander was unfamiliar.But she said Reynolds then spent an hour with her at his desk explaining the game’s intricacies on a baseball diamond he drew to illustrate the visual possibilities.“I realized, intimidating or not, this man had the biggest heart of them all,” Burford wrote.His ability to see things other photographers miss “is the mark of a great editor,” Hart said. “Those editors that sort of prick you under the skin to be better — those are the people you are grateful for in your career.” Reynolds’ own art photography started on neighborhood walks with his infant son Drew Reynolds, now 16. He experimented with twin-lens reflex cameras and, in recent years, his iPhone.He began collections of unnoticed details in the world around him — images of daily detritus including broken glass and banana peels, posted on Instagram with hashtags such as #lonelyglove or #curbappeal. There was his ongoing collection of mom-and-pop businesses with signs meant to evoke the state’s shape, apparently made without the aid of a map.“They were lumpy, earnest failures,” said Wilson, The News‘ editor. “The world he saw was a little misshapen, but he made you love it.”When Reynolds learned in summer 2016 that he had Stage 4 esophageal cancer, the prognosis wasn’t good. The disease had spread to his liver, and that tumor’s size made surgery impossible. He publicly, unflinchingly documented his fight. Eventually, targeted chemotherapy eradicated his liver tumor and esophageal surgery did the rest.By late last year, he believed he had beaten cancer. But another enemy lay in wait.He’d battled depression since 1991, and finding the right balance of medications was a struggle.In the low periods, he vanished from public view, barely able to rise in the morning and haunted by self-doubt.Depression settled over him for the final time earlier this year. “It came down like a curtain for him, and he just dropped out of life,” Visser said. “He would say to me, ‘Depression is worse than cancer.’ I think he just wanted the pain to end.”In addition to his wife, daughter Katie Kinard and son, Reynolds is survived by daughter Claire Reynolds of Dallas; three brothers, Brad Reynolds of Austin, Jack Reynolds of Plano and Eric Reynolds of Mansfield; two sisters, Ann Marie of Superior, Colo., and Holly Job of Stephenville; and a granddaughter, Sage Kinard.A public memorial service will be at 2 p.m. June 29 at Grace United Methodist Church, 4105 Junius St. in Dallas.The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Meals on Wheels.
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