A night at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

We are still buzzing after such an interesting, creative and energetic evening at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery last night for Document Scotland’s 1st ever portrait event “Face To Face: The Portrait in Photography Today”. Thank you to the photographers which Document Scotland invited to take part along side us, Ben Roberts, Arpita Shah, Emily […]

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Jim Yorkston – Haneen lil watten

Jim Yorkston’s exhibition opened at the Filmhouse last night. We’ve been on the lookout for an opportunity to feature Jim’s work on the Document Scotland blog so we had a chat with him about this latest work ‘Haneen lil watten’ – meaning ‘A Yearning for my Homeland.’ DS – What’s this new work about and […]

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Face to Face: The Photographers

So folks, we are now very excited to confirm the following details about the work being presented at our event Face To Face: The Portrait In Photography Today at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery on the 14th May 2014. Colin McPherson will present a short multimedia entitled ‘In the Company of Strangers’ in which he […]

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Five by Four

Our busy year of events has begun: an exhibition of work by Document Scotland opened earlier this month at the Scotland House Conference Centre in Brussels. Entitled Five by Four, the show comprises separate bodies of work from the four Document Scotland photographers, each of which were responding to themes and ideas behind the Scottish […]

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Journey’s end

After a year exploring Scotland’s 96-mile border with England, Document Scotland’s Colin McPherson finally reached the point of no return. Here he explains some of the discoveries he made during his journey from the Sark to the sea. “Photographers love journeys. From its earliest history, our predecessors found new locations, often in far-off lands, to […]

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My Addiction, My Photographs

‘My Addiction, My Photographs’, by Graham MacIndoe Over the past few years Scottish-born photographer Graham MacIndoe has been on what you could call a ‘character building’ trip. From the highs of a successful career in advertising photography to the highs of a serious drug addiction, and the inevitable descent into a world he never thought […]

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Vishnu and Lakshmi (Mr & Mrs Parkash)

Arpita Shah – Ghar

Sophie was recently invited to speak about Document Scotland as part of  TalkSee Photography at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts. It was a lively evening – a great turnout with a good debate afterwards and also it was the first time we met Arpita Shah – and saw her speak about her photography. One of […]

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The Glasgow Renaissance

Chris Leslie is a documentary photographer and film-maker based in Glasgow. We were very pleased to feature his work at our Document Scotland Summer Salon event in August last year. For 3 years now, Chris has been working on a long term photography and multimedia project, The Glasgow Renaissance, documenting the city of Glasgow as it […]

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Sandy Carson “Steadfast Love”

Sandy Carson is a Scottish photographer now living in Austin, Texas. He is an established photojournalist in America and has rarely been back to Scotland. Recently however, he returned to catch-up with his family in Newmains, Lanarkshire and started a series of photographs about his folks called, Steadfast Love, a series of intimate portraits including […]

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A man takes his early morning walk at 5am, with his radio through the streets of downtown Yangon, Myanmar. @ Sophie Gerrard, all rights reserved.

Portrait Salon exhibition January 2014

Following on from the success of the Document Scotland Portrait Salon event at Stills Gallery in Edinburgh – we are delighted that the first ever printed Portrait Salon exhibition will take place from January 10th 2014 at new venue FUSE Art Space in Bradford. The exhibition features a cross section of the best contemporary portrait […]

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EPA winner announced

The latest winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography – ‘One Another’ by Alisa Resnik – is now available. ‘One Another’ features images mainly taken at night in St Petersburg and Berlin. Leaden-coloured scenes, greasy spoon cafés, empty halls and old hotel rooms that seem to echo with traces of the past. And people’s […]

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History making

A week, as the old saying goes, is a long time in politics. But how do we measure 18 years? On another of many historic days in modern Scottish politics, the government of our devolved parliament today launches its White Paper, setting out a prospectus for an independent Scotland. Spool back almost exactly 18 years […]

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All That Remains

At a recent photography show opening in Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, I bumped into Donna Maria Kelly and she told me of her work photographing, as personal mementos, her father’s belongings in the hours after he had died. It was an interesting story and encouraging to hear that Donna, a recent photography course graduate, had […]

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A’ Fàgail na Dachaigh: Leaving Home

Ian Paterson and John Maher are two photographers who found themselves covering the same subject matter in the Hebrides and decided it would be best to join forces and present their work as a joint exhibition and potential book. Document Scotland, a great believer in photographers finding common cause and pooling resources, wanted to find […]

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DOC003 Launched!

It is with great pride that today we launch our third Document Scotland publication. Following on from our two acclaimed and fast-selling newspapers, launched over the last year, we bring you DOC003. We promised you something different this time and are confident this won’t disappoint. DOC003 is a digital publication – otherwise known as a […]

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Document Scotland Summer Salon 2013

Edinburgh during the festival is a lively place, full of energy, excitement and a melting pot of ideas, inspiration and passion. What better reason to invite friends and colleagues to an evening of Scottish photography, multimedia and conversation at Stills Gallery, Scotland’s centre for photography in the heart of the city. All of us at […]

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Commitment

Craig Buchan has been photographing, the Sisters of the Poor Clare Order, in Humbie, near Edinburgh. The work constitutes a photo exhibition starting at the recently opened Trigg Gallery in Dundas Street, Edinburgh, on August 15th. Gallery is open Monday to Friday 8.30am – 18.30pm and Saturday 8.30am to 13.30pm. Commitment by Craig Buchan. “Sisters Dominique […]

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Why I Took This Picture by Robert Ormerod

Starting a new series is always a tentative process:  The fulfilment of an idea that may have been gathering momentum in a closet somewhere in a corner of your mind.  Will a story translate from idea form to visual reality?  Will I waste my time working on something that may lead to nothing? The night […]

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Why I Took this Picture by Sophie Gerrard

Spring 2013 was one of the coldest on record – it almost never really came. Farmers all over Scotland were concerned and anxious that by mid April, there was still no sign of grass,  that’s pretty much unheard of. 15 foot snow drifts on Arran over Easter and -5 degrees recorded in Fort William added […]

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‘Britannia Herself’ by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

It was the second Rangers away game I’d been to for my, at that time, new project ‘Life In The 3rd’. I wished to follow Rangers FC as they travelled around the country and through the Scottish footballing 3rd Division, taking in the small towns and lesser stadiums of the land. I’d just recently returned […]

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Break for the Border….Colin McPherson

As the old maxim in publishing goes, celebrity sells. So I was delighted to encounter Rod Stewart on a scrubby patch of land, a few short yards inside Scotland. Not the real McCoy, of course, but an invocation to attend a musical tribute to the great Jockney singer at some nearby watering hole. An evening […]

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Self, #1

“A couple of months ago Document Scotland were invited by Stephen Mather, at the City of Glasgow College, to give a talk on documentary photography, and also to set a brief for  the student’s documentary photography module on which they were about to embark. We chose the title, or subject, of ‘Self’ as the brief, […]

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DOC001 newspaper

We’ve decided to showcase some of our many projects and work in a new Document Scotland publication, a 16 page colour newspaper, with the catchy title of DOC001. Primarily designed and published for our own use, we’re so happy with the look of it that we thought we’d also offer them to the readers of […]

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Glasgow Effect from The Human Endeavour Collective

The Human Endeavour Collective will be exhibiting for the third time as part of the Brighton Photo Fringe, having exhibited in 2008 and 2010 with the backing of the Arts Council England. Acting as an evolving platform for contemporary photographic practice, Human Endeavour aims to explore and reflect the sociological and political impacts of poverty […]

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Jill Todd Photographic Award

The Jill Todd Photographic Award has been set up to promote new photography in Scotland and will stage its inaugural event at Whitespace (formerly Doggerfisher Gallery) in Edinburgh between the 2-11th November 2012. Three winners have been selected from an open submission to the JTPA, and their work will be showcased in the gallery and […]

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100 Weeks

“In the shade of St. Andrew’s House the press awaited the appearance of, and handshake between, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and British Prime Minister David Cameron. The cold seeped to the marrow of journalists and photographers, as the police and politician’s aides kept us all behind barriers. With little fanfare, and with the lone […]

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Easdale’s World Stone Skimming Championships

Last week, the island of Easdale was in the news about a threat to a world-class sporting event held on its square mile of craggy slate anchored off the Argyll coast. Apparently the island’s owner wanted to cancel the island’s premier sporting event of the season, the World Stone Skimming Championships, for not providing a […]

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Crossing Paths

Scottish photographer Niall McDiarmid was recently awarded a prize for portraiture in the International Photography Awards for his current Crossing Paths portraiture project,  an ongoing project which stands as a social document of the looks and styles of people on the streets of the UK at present. Niall kindly agreed to answer a few emailed questions from Document Scotland about the background to […]

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Doomen and Dookits / Robert Ormerod

Young Scottish photographer Robert Ormerod has had his ‘Doomen’ series, a project of portraits of pigeon keepers, published in The Guardian Weekend magazine. The images comprise a beautiful set of portraits, quiet moments of the men and women with their pigeons, a breed of pigeon known as Horseman Thief Pouters. The images were shot in […]

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Burns Country

While traversing Scotland in pursuit of photographs for my long-term project, Scotia Nova, I often find myself in small, un-heralded towns looking for little moments which reveal a wider truth about modern Scotland. Towns like Shotts, Peterhead, Larbert, Wemyss Bay, solid working class towns with civic monuments and no-nonsense inhabitants. These settlements are representative of […]

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Turkish Delight

Well it’s been a great week here in Turkey, delightful even. Very kindly I was invited to participate in the Bursa Photo Festival, and to exhibit my photography work with the Roma of Sintesti, Romania, at the festival which this year had the theme of ‘Traces of Humanity’. The organisers had asked that I show […]

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Last chance to see

Photographing conflict and post-conflict arenas is one of the most interesting sub-genres of documentary photography. There are many different approaches which make for outstanding viewing. From the monumental landscapes of Donovan Wylie and Simon Norfolk, depicting the theatre sets of war to the late Tim Hetherington’s claustrophobic and intimate moments with the dramatis personae, there […]

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On show, Bursa Photo Festival.

Document Scotland are pleased to announce that they’ll be represented at this year’s Bursa Photo Festival, in Bursa, Turkey, from September 15th-21st. Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert will be present at the festival, the 2nd year of the Bursa festival, and will be exhibiting a selection of portraits shot during his long term project with the Roma of […]

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Life In The 3rd.

In all my years working as an editorial photographer in Scotland I always tried to stay away from shooting the obligatory football matches. It isn’t that I didn’t like football, or didn’t follow the results, just that I had no desire to sit and photograph football games on Saturday afternoons or on wet Wednesday nights. […]

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Listen to China’s Voice

In June of this year the Document Scotland photographers were invited by the Beijing Municipality Government to be part of their ‘World Photographers Focusing on Beijing’ project. Each year since 1999 this project has  taken place with 10 photographers from across the globe being invited to participate, to visit Beijing, to photograph and capturing their own […]

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