Pope, who died this month, worked on every film Leigh has made since 1990. It was a professional partnership of ‘total harmony’, says the director

Forgive the cliche, but my friendship and collaboration with the great cinematographer Dick Pope was a marriage made in heaven, and his loss is indescribably painful.

Over the two decades before we met and first worked together, on Life Is Sweet in 1990, while I was making TV films and stage plays, Dick was shooting World in Action and many other documentaries in far-flung dangerous places. He also made several feature films and a lot of music videos, including Kylie Minogue’s Wouldn’t Change a Thing and I Want to Break Free by Queen.