What is a portrait? A person, a look, a gaze, a moment, a superficial facade or a glimpse of raw honesty, something beautiful, something shocking. It can be all these things and more….

Document Scotland are delighted to team up with our good friends Portrait Salon to host the launch event of Portrait Salon 2013 at the ever welcoming Stills Gallery in Edinburgh on Tuesday the 12th November from 6:30pm. Please join us for an entertaining evening of photography, beers and good conversation. At some point during the evening there will also be a live link up to the several simultaneous Portrait Salon events being held all over the UK in London, Leeds, Brighton and Cardiff.

Portrait Salon is a form of Salon des Refusés – an exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show – which has a long tradition as a fringe way of showcasing artists’ work that may otherwise go unseen. Devised by Carole Evans and James O Jenkins, Portrait Salon aims to show the best of the unselected entries from the annual National Portrait Gallery Photographic Portrait Prize. We figure that, out of the 6000+ rejected entries, there are excellent portraits which deserve to be seen.

This year’s panel of judges selecting the best of the rejected images were: Harry Hardie from HERE Press, photographer Abbie Trayler-Smith, and Jim Stephenson, co-founder of Miniclick Talks in Brighton. It’s bound to be a good show.

Both the Document Scotland Seeing Ourselves newspaper will be for sale as will the new Portrait Salon newspaper. Beyond Words  specialist retailer of photographic books, will also be joining us.

We’d love to see you there. Please follow this link to BOOK your place.