Artist, Poet, Musician, Engineer, Bodhisattva, Father, Lover, Dear Friend; A Remarkable and Beautiful Man

China was born Nicholas Zeger Driver in Norbury, London and was an established artist and one of the leading fine art erotic photographic printers of the twentieth century.

His work often examined the darker side of female sexuality alongside his more traditional erotic pictures. His unique and distinctive style of image has often been the inspiration for the work of other photographers. China strove to produce photographs that were each unique pieces of creative work. In this quest he mastered and improved upon many historic processes and has contributed to photographic science a number of new printing processes, including making photographic images upon hand-made watercolour paper and copper sheets.

China attended Croydon Technical School before spending four years at Croydon College of Art and Design where he specialised in life drawing under the renowned Fred Janes and studied fine art, graphic design and photography under Herman Hecht. He first started making his own sunlight prints and processing his own film at age eleven and at age thirteen started painting and drawing seriously. Paintings and drawings of wild landscapes and the female nude have always run alongside his photographic work.

He was a polymath, having a particular passion for precision engineering. China had a great enthusiasm for life and he rebuilt and raced historic racing cars and motorcycles; built and drove model steam engines and was a boiler inspector for steam locomotives; and was a Master Clock-smith. He loved Irish Music and was an accomplished bones and bodhran player, cutting the first ever album of traditional bones playing (“Bare Bones”) and wrote the first tutor for the bodhran and the bones.

China was a Buddhist and held qualifications in Herbal Medicine and was well known for his poems and erotic short stories, many of which have been published. China also published the journal, ‘The Black and White Art Photographer’ during the 1990’s.

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Thoughts

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE We seldom think we won’t be seeing our good friends tomorrow We take for granted they and we will meet again for sure But what when that is not the case, and all that’s left is sorrow Respect and love left unexpressed, regrets alone endure For everyone we know one final meeting has to be No matter how important they have been throughout our lives The dearest love, the oldest friend, the closest family If we outlive or lose our contact only memory survives And only then, too late, we bring our memories to bear Remember times when we first met, and know the gap they leave Recall their virtues, times of laughter, everything we’d share How sad we only do this after being left to grieve So often we would like just one more chance to meet and chat To express how much we miss them, say how much to them we owe But when that person’s gone and there is now no chance of that The ache of what we wish we’d said just never lets us go We all know this, and yet we trust that this time it won’t matter That we can say tomorrow what we might have said today They know they’re valued, loved or needed, no real need for patter We hope, expect there will be other times when we can say And really we could not go through our lives without this feeling We have to think there’ll be another day, another week So we just leave unsaid so much that we might be revealing Until one day we simply have run out of time to speak John (Pan)
john
13th January 2019
What’s Within That House by China Hamilton 30.5.15 That’s not my house I heard him say. No not mine, not any way. But what’s within I asked again, A serious question not a whim? Nothing, nothing, not a thing, His answer as he turned around And like a fine horse pawed the ground, Gave little hope to me. They are all like that one, Quite the same he murmured on, They are but empty hopes And empty dreams, Failed un-fired bricks And nothing to show for all that effort, Rot infested beams. Surely not that house, I pointed with my stick? Oh yes that house, they’re all the same, Life’s hopes and wishes all undone. Come, come, I used encouragement, Surely there’s a small gray cat And some sweet maid with flowing hair. Oh yes once and bread and wine And little mice just for the cat, The cat she stroked upon her lap. They had chairs Large oak tables set in pairs. Candles lit as nightfall come Music made their merry fun. At first out went the chairs And tables to. Two men came and drowned the cat, Don’t like em any shade of gray, Was all that others heard them say. They eat and drank and munched the mice, Then each in turn did use her thrice. Screams will empty any house, As bare and rot does echo back. He walked off not looking back, I threw the key away, For there was little more to say.. I’d ask another man upon another day.
Anita Subba
14th December 2018
ON NATURE by China Hamilton Do sit oh so very quiet, For creatures small do take affright, They can see and they can hear, They can scent that you are near. Then and only then my friend, Will sweet nature’s wilderness return, And feel at ease with your intrusion, Enough to share its great illusion. Mr. Vole and Mr. Rat, Bright eyes perky, peaking out, Cleaning paws and whiskered snout. Then the fisher’s kingly flight, The plop, the splash, the silver fish. Captured in the summer’s light. Bubbling water passes by, High above a jackdaw’s cry, The warm young breeze Through verdant leaves Emits its single sigh.
Anita Subba
14th December 2018
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