Britbike forum Forums Remembrance Britbike remembrance forum Our Kev R.I.P.

Sadly our very own Kev passed away this morning, got a message from his brother, so bloody sad. No more will we enjoy his photos, and sadly he didn't get to do that one last ride he so much wanted to do, he just wanted to sit outside the tent, with a cold one talking shyte and enjoying the atmosphere....


Goodbye old friend....

We knew it was coming but that doesn't make the loss any easier to take...

Rest in peace Kevin Dean. We'll not forget you.

Lannis

True words

Rest in peace, Kev. Nice to know his contributions here and his art will live on.

Steve

Even when you know it's coming it still gives you a shock. Ill miss the many photo journeys and am sorry i never got to share a b re w with him. Rest easy and ride on.

RIP Kevin

Kev will be missed. The first time I met him was the first time I went to England for a bike trip . Not with Gerry to meet up with her family but a pure honest to goodness bike trip where Kev (who I never met before) picked me up at the airport in London. Drove me to Brighton for fish and chips on the beach and then to Sammy Miller's museum . Then to Karl and Julie's where I would be spending the night . Karl was lending me his BSA Thunderbolt to ride with Kev to the BSA Rally in Holland together. Meeting up with Shaun and the gang at a pub that night... All while I was fighting jet lag. I think I did sleep a bit in Kev's van on the journey but he didnt seem to mind. Then we were off to the ferry to France and ultimately Holland. Well !! I pick up a pallet stud of some sort coming off the ferry and 2 miles into France in the middle of nowhere I got a flat rear tire. Lucky for me Karl packed tools and a spare tub on the bike before we left. I had never changed a flat on the road before and Kev was happy to teach me what to do. We were back on the road and what a great week we had in Halland...
Many great times we had after as well . Mostly meeting up at pubs when I was visiting Gerry's family but he was a great parts finder too. I told him I wanted a set of panniers and a big spitfire tank and sure enough I was carrying them home in my luggage after a meet up at a pub in Abingdon . The Spread Eagle. Geoff and Sara and Shaun were along for that one too....
I cant say enough about how much I will miss Kev... Im sure we would have been closer if we had lived in the same country.

God Speed Kev.

You will live on in our memories

Met up with a friend tonight in Brooklyn and we had a nice toast to Kev while I told him all about Kev.

Cheers

Kev threatened to come to TSMR this year, and I was hoping to meet him at last.
May he be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows he's gone.

Rest in peace. You will be missed. God speed. Jeff

This is sad news.

Our deepest condolences to the family.

A glass will be raised for Kev's memory tonight at Britbike museum. 🥃

Kev's account has been changed to in Remembrance and if you wish to see some of Kev's pbotos here is a link
https://kevindean.zenfolio.com

RIP Kevin

Sad news...

Another good Brit motorcyclist gone down to the Grim Reaper.
R.I.P. Kev

Very sad to hear the news of Kev's passing, can still remember him and his teepee tent at Avebury.

I always loved Kev's contributions to this forum, R.I.P Kev, and Godspeed.
Condolences to all his friends and family.

his photos brightened many a dreary day

Kev was a fantastic human. I'll miss his photography for sure- He'd gotten into doing some different stuff, being ill and not being able to ride- one example was his series of photos of trees, and a series on England's standing stones. Anyone with an Instagram account can see what he'd been doing at his account,

[url=www.instagram.com/uk_kev/][/url]

I spoke wth him right up until quite near the end, as we had common interests in both motorbikes and photography. I got sidetracked a bit and missed talking to him in his last couple days- I was in North Carolina with my siblings, taking care of some family business & visiting relatives.

Cheers, Kev! I'll miss you, my brother.

Here’s a story Kev put together about how he came to be a photographer. He shared this with Shaun & me a couple weeks back. Posting it in case anyone is interested…
from 17 February 2023,
In his own words:

“Way back in the early sixties when I was just a nipper of maybe six or seven years old, there is a photo of me on a family holiday with a two tone plastic Kodak camera hanging from my neck on a thin leather strap. The start it seems of a long relationship with photography in my life. I appear to have inherited the photography gene from my father, as later; but before 1962 there is a picture taken by my father of my older brother and I by candle light sat on stairs in our old house, before my younger brother was born and we had moved. This picture was a 6x6, 120mm roll film slide, that was taken using either a Rollieflex, or a Rolliecord TLR camera, although I would guess a Rolliecord due to the cost involved at these times.
School came and went as was its way with no options for those with an artistic preference, boys went into the building trades, or military, for girls it was banking, or nursing, the choice was so limited to us all.
I guess I was at work when I would buy my first "proper" camera; a Zenith 35mm type with manual lens, this taught me a lot of the basics of camera use from day one. Later, a few years later I bought myself an Olympus 0m-1, although this was soon to be replaced with an Olympus 0m-2n that was later stolen from me as it headed to a service for a sticky wind-on lever. My replacement for the 0m-2n may look a strange choice but was a great camera the Ricoh KR10 super? I carried this everywhere including many trips to the USA, but the digital revolution pushed film and myself apart.

A few years followed where I dedicated my time to motorcycle photography, but really only as a hobby, but became really quite good at it; ending up with photo's in some serious books and magazines, upto the point where my own style was being recognised o the point of being copied, with friends calling and telling me they had seen my pictures even though I hadn't taken them! At the same time I was also taking urban/rural style photography and have prints hanging in fancy lawyers in both Atlanta and New York City, as well as private homes from rural Georgia and Florida in the USA, to Cornwall in the UK.

As of late the sad demise predicted of all things film never happened, and just like vinyl records vintage camera's and vintage film is making a huge comeback, with many new and exciting products being released, as people realise that digital memories are so easy to lose. As for me I use a blend of both analogue and digital for my enjoyment in taking pictures, these days that means the incredible Fujifilm Xpro-2, fitted with 23mm lens, for my newly acquired love of street photography, damn what a camera. And a couple of older film camera's that include a Rollieflex tlr, a Mamiya C330f, and a Bronica SQ-A 6x6 system camera, and just lately an awesome fuji GW690 rangefinder with stunning lens.

For Tom Banks and Shaun.
When we pass then our memories pass too, share the memories, keep them afloat.”

Some recent images from Kevin. He sent me these in late January or February. I’d seen them before either on Insta or [email protected] b00k. I asked if they were shot on film and he said he couldn’t recall. He was pulling stuff out of his phone to share.

My last exchange with Kev…
Friday I checked in to see how he was holding up and he responded in a very Kev-like manner: “as can be expected, Tom, listening to Taj Mahal”!

Saturday as I traveling south with my sister, who’d flown in from Italy, I got this:

“I found myself awake this morning at 02:30 thinking about my motorcycle past, and I realised that something like 75% of all my bikes I had bought as non runners in some form or other 🤔 and had to fix them to ride them first.
I loved this side of owning my bikes, and it taught me so much.

I guess that my thoughts and time had moved on a little along with the memories as I realised thoughts were now concentrated on my best bike🤷 but how do you choose that?

This took some time I can tell you especially when your brain is full of morphine 🚀 but I stewed on it for a while and really there could only have been one winner, it had to be that Norton I built from scratch!
Starting with just an idea and a frame I found in Cornwall on eBay, and then finding or making everything else at auto jumbles, even though I had no idea what I needed, just a worn out dog eared parts book, and an enquiring mind.

I can’t believe how lucky I got along the way, the gearbox a friend gave me from a barn collapse on the isle of white, may not have left Norton attached to my exact frame, but it was in the same set of numbers 😱
Finding a genuine competition motor to, all these things went my way, and many more.
I would probably have kept that bike if had lived closer to Kent and Shaun, but hey ho. There was always another project around the corner 👍“

I replied
That bike was amazing and such a fantastic story of how it all came together just a piece at a time, going in diffeeent directions, swapping bits in & out….

And he sent this pic -

f*ck.

The boy went through a lot of motorcycles……I remember that beautiful Norton.

He shared some of the “standing stone” photos with us….his work was/is beautiful and will be around for a long time……hopefully

Those of you who are close to the family.

I’m making an offer to keep his photo accounts active…..maybe Morgan would be able to incorporate links to them from this site?????

I would like to see them live on……….

I have no clue how to go about it though……anyone have a clue if it’s possible????

It might be way out of line even mentioning it but it’s on my mind and now I wish I had talked with kev about it earlier.

I suspect easiest thing is to prepay the Zenfolio account.
$84 a year for base plan.
Most of the links out there already point to it.

I downloaded Kev's avatar on Zenfolio and added to his britbike account

[i][/i]

Kev asked me in January if I would like home to send me a hard drive with all his photos on it. He was thinking about this exact thing!

Tuesday 31 January:

Hey Tom let me ask you a strange question 🤔

I have been thinking about all my digital motorcycle images, and what will happen to them when I pass. I know for sure they won’t be found in box like Vivian Maier’ s archive 😱

So I wondered if you might like them, to use/share as you feel? If so I will copy them all to a portable drive and send it on out to you.
It would seem a shame to just have them deleted somewhere down the line 🤷

Of course I said heck yes I’d be honored and pleased to have them! I also told him I’d also gladly take any scans from his recent forays into film photography.

But I’m not sure he got around to doing this- or if he did he wound up in the hospital before he could get the drive sent. The subject didn’t come up again and I didn’t want to mention it while he was laying in there dying…

Maybe something will turn up- all his archived photos are possibly in his laptop- it sounds from this as though he could have easily accessed them- so maybe his brother can do something to have the photos extracted from whatever device Kev had stuff stored on?

I am happy to meet Kev a few times and will certainly keep him in mind. Was browsing in my files for some pics but was not very lucky.
Except a few ones, like this fro the John Bull Rally back in 2017


Buddy Rene sitting on the KE Model , then The Hairy Mong with Kev standing beside.

Godspeed Kevin, see you later on the other side.