Richard Souan, sports car racer and eagle photographer, dies at 77

Richard “Dik” Souan didn’t have hobbies. People who knew him best prefer to call them obsessions.

When the longtime photographer fixed his gaze on a new subject — first sports car racing, then waterway expeditions and later bald eagles — he puzzled over how to get the perfect shot. Souan’s portfolio was infused with a deep understanding of Baltimore, where he lived for many years among a community of graphic artists working around Maryland Institute College of Art.

The longtime 25th Street resident would learn “as much as possible to make sure what he was doing was perfect or as close to perfect as possible,” said Karl Esch, a longtime friend.

Souan’s loved ones gathered in Harbor East last month to celebrate his life. They said Souan had been diagnosed with an illness and his death on Jan. 26 by suicide was unexpected. He was 77.

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Hidden behind Souan’s signature beard and mustache zested with Old Bay from last night’s crab fest was a mind at work, friends told The Banner. His skill as a photographer was matched only by his engineering and marketing instincts. Souan used all three talents to photograph things that would get people’s attention — and their business.

Souan never married or had children. He was shrewd in his business dealings and known to befriend some of his associates. Friends remembered him for his wicked sense of humor and loyalty to the people he loved.

“He had a deep and abiding cast of friends who were close to him and replaced his actual family,” friend Doug Kadan said.

Souan was born Feb. 2, 1946, in New York City. His family, including his father, Thomas Souan, and sister, Evelyn Souan, soon moved to Baltimore. He learned early as a child how to market goods at his father’s machine craft and tool business before graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1966.

As the story goes, Souan enjoyed “rat racing” in the streets before a brush with a traffic court judge led to his enlistment in the U.S. Army, Esch said Souan told him. He was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, and it was there that he fell in love with European sports cars.

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Souan racing at Summit Point in West Virginia. (Courtesy of Karl Esch)

Souan later returned to Maryland and became involved as a driver and instructor with the Washington D.C. region of the Sports Car Club of America, earning a reputation for driving cars with technicolor paint jobs. Souan told Kadan the candy apple magenta and tangerine colors screamed “get out of the way,” but to everyone else it seemed to squeal “look at me.”

“It was one large marketing campaign and, when he went down certain sections of the road, he’d pick up his camera and point it down the track to photograph his own race,” Kadan said. The finished results were images no other photographer could capture.

By the 1980s, Souan’s photography subjects had branched out to include any bit of Baltimore he thought he could market — from boa-bedecked dancers on The Block to big ships moored at the Inner Harbor.

“He loved Baltimore, every nook and cranny,” Kadan said.

Souan soon bought himself a boat, named it Hot Rubber and began learning Baltimore’s waterways as well as he already knew its streets.

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When the Queen Elizabeth II luxury liner sailed into Baltimore in 1985, Souan zipped his little vessel near the bow and snapped a picture. The distorted perspective from the deck of Hot Rubber created the illusion of an image shot with a wide lens.

“Instinctually, his character and soul were committed to the lifestyle of a photographer, but that led him to recognize how intertwined it was with knowing how to market,” Kadan said.

The rise of smartphones posed a challenge for Souan. His work for commercial advertising companies dried up, and the once celebrated community of screen printing and press businesses around MICA withered.

So he pivoted to selling prints, which is difficult to do when everyone is carrying a camera in their pocket. Souan soon found one place where he knew an iPhone couldn’t compete.

In the shadow of the Conowingo Dam, Souan became well known among local eagle watchers. He put a boat chair on a swivel and mounted it to a rig so that both he and the camera could swivel and track the eagles with ease, Esch said.

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Dik Souan captured this image of an eagle near the Conowingo Dam. — Dik Souan became well known among local eagle watchers for the images he captured. (Courtesy of Dik Souan)

Sure, passersby could attempt to snap their own photos of the eagles. But, if the view of the birds disappointed them, Souan had his own stunning prints handy to sell.

To Souan’s niece Gale Ingram, he was simply “Uncle Richard” — intellectual and generous.

“Always the wheels were turning in his head,” Ingram said. He taught her daughter about photography and gifted old cameras and a computer.

He was generous with the people he cared about and often took Ingram and his friends out on his boat for an adventure.

Ingram has a few of Souan’s prints hanging in her home in San Antonio, Texas. Her favorite is a shot of the Baltimore harbor at night.

Friends sprinkled some of Souan’s ashes in Fells Point under the noses of the patrolling police and herds of unsuspecting revelers, Esch said. On April Fools’ Day, they took the rest of the ashes to the racetrack at Summit Point in West Virginia.

Lillian Reed

lillian.reed@thebaltimorebanner.com