Trying to keep up to date with the current tumultuous news of life on Twitter it’s heartening to scroll to a Tweet which shows images and catches your eyes. Such has been the way this past week or so when I’ve discovered two photographers posting old images of Glasgow and beyond. I dropped them both a note, […]
There is a lot of debate these days about the role of journalism in our daily lives. Questions are asked as to where we get our information from, and the all-pervading accusation of ‘fake news’ is something which causes a real stooshie amongst the general public and also in the journalistic trade. It’s easy to […]
The memories are still ripe in my mind. The rain sliding in a grey sheet across the train window, the cold air colliding with our faces and the wind catching our breath as we alight from the train at the inappropriately-named Coatbridge Sunnyside station. In the distance, piercing the sodden winter gloom, bright stripes of […]
It was with interest recently that I spotted a little link in a mailer from Street Level Photoworks / Photo Networks Scotland, that author Michael Cope would be doing a talk (last week) in Uist about his new book on The Photographs of Archie Chisholm. I wasn’t aware of the name Archie Chisholm, or of […]
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s images shot during the visit of Nelson Mandela to Glasgow in 1993, go on display this month at the City Chambers in Glasgow. Coinciding with Black History Month, the small exhibition has been made possible with the support of Street Level Photoworks, and depicts the events of the visit of Mandela to Glasgow to […]
Photographer of Glasgow, Colin Templeton, is exhibiting work in a group show Photography Now, at the Brick Lane Gallery in London, from 8th – 20th November. There’s an opening night on the 8th Nov, 6.00- 8.30pm. Of the work he’ll exhibit Colin says, “The city is in constant flux. Right now in Glasgow the shipyard […]
We’re delighted to write that Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert currently has two bodies of work exhibiting with Shetland Arts. North Sea Fishing is showing until August 27th at the Bonhoga Gallery, and Klondykers is showing at the Mareel arts centre for the next year, both in the Shetland Isles. About the North Sea Fishing exhibtion, Shetland Arts wrote: “Scottish […]
Tanera (Ar Dùthaich) is a project by Derbyshire-based photographer Kevin Percival which will be exhibited from this Sunday, 18th June, at Rhue Art in Ullapool. The photographs featured focus on a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland, where Kevin lived and worked for several years. Like many of Scotland’s coastal communities, the challenges […]
In Scotland’s Season of Photography, the Scottish Fisheries Museum is delighted to be hosting a striking exhibition of black and white images shot by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert aboard the seine net fishing boats, Mairead and Argosy, in the North Sea in the 1990’s. These images capture the reality of the life at sea for the fishermen […]
It would be easy to label Larry Herman’s work as ‘old school’. His photography is indeed imbued with an aesthetic sense which resonates the past. Grainy, monochrome images which depict life at a time when Scotland’s Industrial Age was coming to an end and the new service economy and its illegitimate offspring, unemployment and job […]
Cliftonhill is one of the most evocative grounds in Scottish football, yet one suspects hardly anyone in Scotland could describe what it looks like or even – given Albion Rovers’ name – where it is. Photographer Iain McLean has spent many years visiting the ground as a fan and a photographer. His project, entitled More […]
To mark today’s final printed edition of the Independent, Document Scotland’s Colin McPherson talks about his contribution to the newspaper and the motivation behind the publication of a book of his photographs taken on assignment for, or published by, the paper. Document Scotland (DS): Today, 26th March, the last edition of the Independent will hit […]
Happy 2016 everyone – to kick start this year Document Scotland have once again joined forces with our good friends the Welsh collective A Fine Beginning. Continuing our theme of collaboration and partnership to show our exhibition Common Ground. The exhibition opening evening (to which you are all most welcome) is on Thuesday 4th February […]
*** New just in! There’s going to be a second edition of the book printed. Another 150 are being printed to meet demands! More news soon, once they’re available *** Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s fourth Café Royal Book was released last Thursday, and very nicely sold out overnight! Thank you everyone for your interest and support. ‘Klondykers in […]
I’m very pleased to let you know that the black and white images I took of Nelson Mandela, in Glasgow in 1993, when he came to here to receive the Freedom of the City (and which I’ve written about previously), have been published as a little book by the industrious Craig Atkinson at Café Royal Books. On […]
We are delighted to announce that publisher Cafe Royal Books has produced a very special, limited edition box set of work by Document Scotland’s four photographers. Timed to coincide with our exhibition entitled The Ties That Bind, which opens at the end of September at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the compendium of […]
A Stroll Through The Gorbals To walk in the Gorbals area of Glasgow is to walk through a district of this city immortalised in iconic photographs, a district whose name is known far and wide, for better or for worse, and whose history has been captured in silver by some of the great photojournalists of […]
Journalist and editor Alan Taylor has kindly given us permission to republish his appreciation of photographer Joseph McKenzie who recently passed away, aged 86. This article first ran in The National, on July 20th 2015. (See also The Herald obituary of Jospeh McKenzie.) Belated praise for Joseph McKenzie – a neglected pioneer of Scottish photography, by […]
We were very excited to hear of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s latest photography acquisition, great to hear that nine images from South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, by Paul Strand have been acquired for the nations’s photography collection. Great news indeed. Below, you can read about the acquisition and see the images, but we recommend […]
An email slipped into our Document Scotland inboxes recently which we felt would be good to share with everyone, telling us of a new book out on Thomas Annan, Scottish documentary photographer. “…latest Open Access book, Thomas Annan of Glasgow: Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph by Lionel Gossman, a study of nineteenth-century photography, urban life, and Scotland – […]
Keith Ingham‘s photographs, taken from 1976 – 1979, were shot as part of a project for The People’s Palace Museum. Large parts of Glasgow’s East End, especially in Calton, were due for major demolition and it was felt the soon-to-be-disrupted community should be recorded. This series of images documents life not only in the East […]
Published some years ago by the World Jewish Congress, Jewish Communities of the World is a slim anthology providing a snapshot of the history of Jewish people in each country of the world at the end of the 20th century. In dates and numbers, it lists how many Jews are living in their respective countries and […]
It was with pleasure that I followed a link on Twitter today, that great oracle, and found out news that a book of Scottish photography is about to be reprinted. Always joyous news here in Document Scotland. The book in question is Stone Built by Gunnie Moberg, so with kind permission of the Gunnie Moberg […]
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 […]
We are delighted to announce a partnership with the Scotland’s oldest university that will see our photography become part of one of country’s most important photographic archives. This new collaboration between the University of St Andrews and Document Scotland will unite some of the oldest photographs in Scotland with contemporary documentary images. The initiative will […]
An exhibition of black and white photographs called ‘Six Percent’ is currently showing at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. The work, by Perth based documentary photographer Graham Miller, was carried our over two years in conjunction with Down’s Syndrome Scotland who then funded a print run of the book and the framed images which […]
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 […]
Although it has been a number of years since Document Scotland’s Colin McPherson produced the main body of work in his Catching the Tide series, the photographs of his long-term project documenting the lives of Scotland’s remaining salmon net fishermen continue to be published. A new book entitled The Salmon Fishers – a history of […]
I remember where I was twenty three years ago, on Sunday, February 11th 1990. I remember it clearly. I was sitting in a little blue Ford Fiesta car, for which I can still remember the registration number, my first car. I was stopped at traffic lights in Charing Cross, Glasgow, and the radio was on. […]
We’ve been here before! Seeing all the images this week in the media from the Govan shipyard in Glasgow, reminded me of the last time the yard was in crisis and under threat of closure and redundancies. On 14th April 1999, I was dispatched along with reporter Jack O’Sullivan by the Independent to get over […]
Paul Duke, a Scottish photographer who now lives in London, has completed a series of black and white portraits of the men and women who work in the fishing industry on the North East coast. Each subject was shot uniformly, standing against a dark backdrop in a portable studio which Paul set-up in shipyards, factories […]
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 […]
An afternoon of talks and photographs will take place today at the Old School Community Centre at Shawbost on the island of Lewis to celebrate the life of Dr Norman Morrison (Tormod an t-Seoladair), whose pre-World War I photographs of life in the area are being presented in public for the first time. Dr Morrison […]
“I’m are very pleased to announce that today Cafe Royal Books, run and published by Craig Atkinson, have published a little limited edition (of 150) ‘zine book of my Common Riding photographs. All the images were shot in 2000, in the Scottish Borders, and 14 of them form the 28page black and white ‘zine. All […]
“On Twitter and the BBC this morning I read that Kay Matheson, one of the four students whom on Christmas Day 1950 liberated the Stone of Destiny from it’s position in Westminster Abbey, had passed away aged 84. The story of Kay Matheson, and her three accomplices Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart, is […]
It had been a long day. I had started early, going straight to Home-Start Levenmouth offices and interviewing all who worked there. It was just before Christmas and everyone was running around trying to organise the bags of presents which had been donated. Never ending lists filled with children’s names were being checked off and […]
Over here at Document Scotland we were recently excited to find out that Craig Atkinson, under his Cafe Royal Books publishing name, was going to be publishing a book of photographs from the Gorbals area of Glasgow, by renowned advertising and portrait photographer John Claridge. Our curiosity was piqued, we hadn’t known that John Claridge […]
Hugh Hood, by Allan Brown. For four decades now, the photography of Hugh Hood has hidden in plain sight. Quite literally. It lies in a ring-bound folder in a corner of the Mitchell Library’s Glasgow Room, sharing shelf space with the dusty gazateers and the typewritten reminiscences of old Shettleston. A note has been Sellotaped […]
In 2013, Document Scotland were approached by Gemma Ovens, at the time a student at the City of Glasgow College, about showing her photographic work on the Skeklers, and skekling tradition from the Shetland Isles, and we felt both that the images Gemma had sent over were so interesting, so strange looking, and also that […]
Renowned London-based editorial and reportage photographer David Levenson has had a small zine published via Cafe Royal Books, showcasing his photographs of the Burry Man tradition in South Queensferry, Scotland. We thought it a great little set of images, and nice to see archive work finding new uses. We asked David via email if he’d be […]