Taylor Cowe interviews photography duo Coulson & Tennant

Hi I’m Taylor Cowe and I’m on work placement with Document Scotland as part of my Edinburgh Napier University Photography degree. Whilst undertaking this placement I’ve been enjoying the chance to interview some photographers. This chat with Saskia Coulson and Colin Tennant is the second of 3 pieces I’ve put together for the Document Scotland website – I hope you enjoy the read!

TC: Your work was last featured on the Document Scotland website in 2020, could you tell us a bit about the work that you’ve made in the time since?

SC & CT: Apart from So It Is, we have been working on quite a few projects since 2020. We have continued to work on a long term, ongoing project called After It’s Gone, which is a body of work exploring the landscape, ecology and communities of the polar regions. This collection has been developed over seven years during multiple expeditions to locations within the Arctic Circle including Svalbard, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic; and the Antarctic Circle including South Georgia, South Shetland Islands and the Antarctica peninsula. We have been working in both still and moving image and by documenting these rapidly changing environments we hope to share the beauty of these fragile places, contribute to the climate emergency discussion and inspire people to work together to protect these incredible regions and our planet as a whole. Work from After It’s Gone has been shown in several exhibitions in Scotland and our associated short film, Fractured, has been screened at multiple film festivals worldwide.  

During the pandemic we collaborated with Community Land Scotland and The Stove Network to develop a project called, Stories of Radical Landownership. Through this project, we co-created visual stories with communities using a mixture of multimedia works, including photographs, audio recordings and moving image. The main purpose of this was to create a body of work that explored the community land ownership movement in Scotland at present. Working alongside Bridgend Farmhouse in Edinburgh, South West Mull & Iona Development Trust, North Harris Trust and the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, the final works were a series of photographs with accompanying text and a short film in Gaelic and English. The work represents our investigation into the rich world of community land ownership and is a testimony to the ambitions of community landowners during a very remarkable year. Our short film of the same name premiered in Glasgow during Cop 26 and images from the work were featured in the Google Arts & Culture hub during the conference.

Another project, East End Portraits, was a collaboration between ourselves and Platform Arts in Glasgow. The work features a collection of photographs of local people and community groups and aimed to document individual and collective stories of resilience and community spirit in Easterhouse and the surrounding area during periods of lockdown in 2021. For this project we used both digital and analogue photography. We used digital images to capture the activities that took place within multiple community organisations and medium format film for more formal portraits taken of the individuals at the location of their initiatives. Our portrait of ‘Heather’, a volunteer from a food bank ran by the organisation ‘The Pantry’ was selected for the Portrait of Britain Vol. 5 publication.

Last year we were commissioned by Street Level Photoworks and Open Eye Gallery to document a project called, Grow to Eat, at Cranhill in Glasgow. Grow to Eat is a health and wellbeing programme run by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). In 2023, the RHS partnered with Cranhill Development Trust to deliver workshops that offered local residents from Cranhill to develop their horticultural skills. They applied these techniques as they planted, grew and harvested produce from small productive plots at Cranhill Community Gardens. We documented this initiative through the full growing season (April – Oct) and the final works created were a combination of still and moving image and a ‘zine’ which combined growing tips, recipes developed by community members using the garden veg they had grown and our photographs. The zines were distributed back to community alongside the photos we made and an exhibition later this year is panned at Cranhill Development Trust. Some of the work was recently exhibited as part of the LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Biennial at Open Eye Gallery which explored how photography can be a relevant and powerful medium for talking about climate change.

TC: I found the images from your work ‘So It Is’ quite interesting – where did your interest in this project come from initially?

SC & CT: So it Is was initially developed while we were taking part in the Culture Collective project. The Culture Collective was a network of 26 participatory arts projects, shaped by local communities alongside artists and creative organisations, and funded by Scottish Government emergency COVID-19 funds through Creative Scotland.

In Dumfries and Galloway, where we live, the Culture Collective project was titled ‘What We Do Now’ and we worked with A’ the Airts in Sanquhar, a small multipurpose arts and community centre which is located about 10 miles from where we live. A’ the Airts were seeking to engage with young people from the town (teenagers), so as part of our residency we developed a digital programme for teenagers to learn about film, photography and music.

The project ran for over two years so we got to know the young people really well during this time and our concept for our So It Is photo essay developed from our time spent with the group. It was through our regular meet ups that we started to form the ideas behind the work. We spoke to the teenagers a lot about what it was like for them growing up in a small rural village in south west Scotland and what their ambitions were for the future. We are interested in peoples relationship to place and home irrespective of age and this formed the initial ideas for the work. The title for the project ‘so it is’ comes from a local colloquialism the young people would use on a regular basis.

TC: Why is it that you are looking specifically at the teenagers in this area?

SC & CT: In the first instance the arts and community centre we were working with were keen to try and engage with teenagers so we naturally started to build relationships with young people of that age. We ran photography classes in the local high school and the arts and community centre and soon built up a community of young people interested in digital media. As the project developed we started to explore ideas around digital inclusion and isolation with young people within a rural context. Having worked with teenagers in urban environments we were keen to explore the differences and similarities of those within a rural environment and how their connection or perception of home and place may differ.

We found it interesting that the pandemic highlighted how teenagers living in remote locations were at risk of not gaining the digital skills that could be beneficial to their future career opportunities. With the world changing at such a rapid pace, we were interested in how teenagers from a village are interpreting what is happening to society and the world at large, specifically in relation to digital tools and social media.

TC: The images give a strong sense of a childlike innocence – is this something that you had in mind while making the work?

SC & CT: We can see how this could be interpreted through the images. During the process of making the images we were interested in the young people’s relationship to place and how they navigated their social environments particularly with a backdrop of a global pandemic. There is a sense of innocence within this but it wasn’t at the forefront of our minds while making the work. The age group of those we photographed (between 13 – 17) is such an important age, it’s when we are transitioning from from childhood to adulthood and we wanted to portray this transition of adolescence within the distinctive backdrop of rural Scotland.

TC: To what extent are the images staged or posed – for example the image of the boy in the tree

SC & CT: These images were made during the time we spent teaching the group. During our photography classes, we would go out on photo walks around the village and make images of interesting scenes and try to teach the young people photography techniques both technically and conceptional. We would also carry around our medium format camera and if we were in an interesting location or the light was particularly good we would ask one or a few of the young people to stop so we could make a portrait. In the case of Edward in the tree, the group had decided they wanted to go to a spot outside of the village where they usually hangout.  When we got there, Edward climbed up the tree and we asked him if we could take his photo while he was sitting there. He chose to look out over the field where the tree was, the photo is posed in that sense but he directed himself in this. This is similar to all the images we created. Most often the young people would take us to locations in the village or just outside the village that had meaning to them and we would make portraits in these locations. 

TC: The image of Kayla from the project was published in ‘Portrait of Britain Vol. 6’, do you have any intentions of publishing a larger series of the work?

SC & CT: Yes. We are keen to develop the series further. We did exhibit some images from the project in 2023 in A’ the Airts in Sanqhuar. It’s really important to us that the work we create can be viewed in the place it was created by the communities  and individuals involved. We are very proud, as are the young people, that A’ the Airts decided they would like to keep the portraits after the exhibition and display them permanently through the centre. This brings us much joy every time we visit.

Sanquhar, like many other towns in the area, is a post-mining town and we would like to build a photographic project around young people who come from former mining villages in Scotland. It’s an idea very much in its infancy but we see it as a way to develop this body of work.

TC: What is the working dynamic of an artist partnership like?

SC & CT: We’ve been working together for over seven years and our dynamic has changed over time and depending on which project we are working on. We will often divide our tasks so we can achieve more during the same period of time. When we are working in the field one of us might be shooting with a long-lens and the other with a wide angle so we can create a collection of images from different perspectives. We are also filmmakers so sometimes one person might concentrate on moving image while the other might focus on still images.

For So It Is, we were also delivering an educational programme with the teenagers while we were creating this body of work. It was helpful to be two people in this instance as one person could be discussing photography while the other was making a portrait for the project. Whatever project we are working on we are always sensitive to those we are working with and documenting. Often being a male and female partnership can help in these circumstances as some people, depending on demographic, may feel more at ease being photographed by a woman or a man.

TC: What projects are you working on now?

SC & CT: We are working on a filmmaking project with the Galloway and South Ayrshire Biosphere and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, where we are supporting two groups in Ayrshire to create short films about their connection to place and the local environment.

We continue to develop work associated with our long term project After it’s Gone and at the moment we are working with various media we created at the end of 2022 where we spent a week documenting the Inuit community of Arctic Bay (based in the Canadian Arctic). We feel there could be an exciting thread that links the young people we photographed in Sanquhar and the young people we photographed in Arctic Bay.

TC: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview

If you wish to see more about Coulson and Tennant head to their website at https://wearectproductions.com/ and follow them on Instagram @coulsontennant