There is a lot of discussion at present about what our towns and cities will look and feel like in the post-COVID world. A death spiral of economic activity and loss of both permanent and transient populations, could lastingly render the centres barren wastelands, redundant in many different senses.
As part of the launch of A Contested Land, the first exhibition of which is currently on show at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, we are staging one of our popular salon evenings at Stills Gallery in Edinburgh. The event takes place on Thursday, 7th February and as well as presenting work from our […]
Stephen McLaren talks about his new and ongoing work Edinburgh Unchained. After I finished taking photographs for my 2015 project, A Sweet Forgetting, which looked at how Scottish slave-owners made their fortunes in the production of sugar by thousands of enslaved Africans in 18th and 19th century Jamaica, I felt that there was some unfinished […]
A Contested Land – new work and exhibition from Document Scotland. Set against the current political backdrop, Document Scotland’s four photographers examine the complex relationships between the nation’s people, history and landscape. Showing at The Martin Parr Foundation, 15th January 2019 – 16th March 2019. “The Foundation supports and preserves the legacy of photographers who […]
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES: TRANSPORTATION PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND 2 June 2018 – 13 January 2019Scottish National Portrait Gallery1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD0131 624 6200 | Admission FREE#PlanesAndTrains Part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2018 The extraordinary advances in the technology of travel over the past 170 years, and their wide-ranging impact […]
Paul Duke’s new book of photography, No Ruined Stone, reminds us that the places in which we grow up rarely leave us, they exert a pull across the decades and often force us in later life to re-examine how we have become the person we are today. Muirhouse, built in the 1950s as a council estate to […]
Mhairi Bell-Moodie’s work, Nevertheless, She Persisted telling the stories of women who have faced adversity is currently being exhibited at Out of the Blue in Edinburgh. Mhairi worked closely with 25 women who have overcome child loss, domestic abuse, rape, self harm, body dysmorphia, suicide attempts, breast cancer and much more. We spoke to Mhairi about the […]
A PERFECT CHEMISTRY: PHOTOGRAPHS BY HILL & ADAMSON27 May – 1 October 2017SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY This summer the Scottish National Portrait Gallery will explore the captivating images produced by the unique partnership of Scottish photographic pioneers David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848). A Perfect Chemistry will comprise over 100 photographic works dating […]
GRAHAM MACINDOE: COMING CLEAN8 April – 5 November 2017Scottish National Portrait Gallery1 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JDAdmission free#GrahamMacIndoe Powerful self-portraits depicting drug addiction of acclaimed Scottish photographer to be shown by National Galleries of Scotland A compelling and powerful series of photographs that document an acclaimed Scottish photographer’s devastating descent into drug addiction are to […]
Scotland’s pioneering role in the development of photography in the 19th century is being celebrated in a new display at the National Library of Scotland. The exhibition runs until March 26th, and entry is free. It features one of the first ever books to be illustrated with photographs, William Henry Fox Talbot’s Sun Pictures in […]
The work of Jo Spence, British photographer, educator and writer (1934 – 1992) is the focus for Stills Gallery’s summer exhibition. Curated by Ben Harman, the exhibition presents a powerful and important collection of Jo Spence’s work from her documentary work and collaborative projects to her self exploratory portraiture. From Stills exhibition introduction: ‘Typically working […]
Our exhibition The ties That Bind is now in its final month at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – and to mark this, Sophie has written a blog piece for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery talking about how she made her work Drawn To The Land. In 2013 I began an exploration of my own […]
On Thursday 7th April at 6pm Colin McPherson will be in conversation with writer Kevin Williamson. The event is free. All are welcome!
On Wednesday 9th March at 12:45pm Sophie will be taking part in a panel discussion with historian Dr Elizabeth Ritchie (University of the Highlands and Islands) and crofter and writer Liz Paul, will look at the history and context of women crofters in Scotland and beyond. This panel discussion will take place in The Scottish […]
On Thursday 14th January 2016 Anne Lyden, International Photography Curator of our exhibition “The Ties That Bind” currently on at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, will lead a tour of the exhibition from 5pm – 5:30pm. All are welcome – this event is FREE. For more information please see here
Malcolm Dickson, director of Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow will give a lunchtime talk on 13th January at The Scottish National Galleries to accompany our exhibition “The Ties That Bind” currently on at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. All are welcome – this event is FREE. For more information please see here
This month Document Scotland’s exhibition ‘The Ties That Bind’ at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh has been featured on BBC TV and Radio. Sophie was filmed talking about her long term project about women, farming and the landscape, ‘Drawn To The Land’ on BBC1’s Landward and was interviewed for Radio Scotland’s Out of […]
Nick Hedges’ photographs for Shelter 1969-72 In 1968, Shelter employed Nick Hedges to document the oppressive and abject living conditions being experienced in poor quality housing in the UK. We commissioned the work in an effort to raise consciousness about the extent of unfit living conditions and to illustrate, in human terms, what the real […]
One of the most pleasing spin-offs from the launch of our show at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has been the blizzard of positive press coverage for the show. Added to this, the BBC commissioned and made a short film about Colin McPherson’s work, which has been released on the corporation’s website today. Focusing on […]
To coincide with our new exhibition, ‘The Ties That Bind‘, on now at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until April 2016, Jeremy has published a book of his work, ‘Unsullied And Untarnished’, portraying the Common Riding festivals of the Scottish Borders. The same work forms Jeremy’s contribution to our SNPG show. ‘Unsullied And Untarnished’ is photographic portrait […]
Our exhibition at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – “The Ties That Bind” opens soon. To accompany the opening of the exhibition, we will be presenting our work and talking about our projects at the Portrait Gallery, on Saturday 26th September from 2-3pm. The event is free, and all 4 of us will be speaking […]
We are less than a month away from the launch of our forthcoming exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, which opens on 26th September 2015. Curated by the gallery’s Curator of International Photography, Anne Lyden, The Ties That Bind brings together Document Scotland’s four photographers who each present projects which have been […]
In the last six months I have been shooting a project which examines Scotland’s links with the slave-based sugar economy of Jamaica in the 18th and 19th Century. I visited Jamaica in early Spring and shot photographs of properties which were owned Scottish plantation-owners owned and which grew sugar-cane using the forced labour of African […]
Earlier this week photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert represented Document Scotland on a panel discussion held in Edinburgh on the topic of ‘Photography in Scotland’. Organised and hosted by Ratio 7:1 photography collective, a new collective of students of photography from Napier University, and held to coincide with their ‘Dismantle’ exhibition which is currently showing, the evening was deemed to […]
EMPTY SHOP, by Kenneth Gray Starting in July 2014, the Empty Shop series came about more by chance than planning. Whilst walking my dog around Edinburgh, with a camera ever-ready, I started to see shops which had lain empty for some time, stripped of fittings and ready for let or sale. Desolate and unused and […]
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 […]
Over the last few months here at Document Scotland we have been pretty busy, however, we always make time to see new work. Here we take a look at some of the work by graduates from Edinburgh Napier University 2014 which was on show earlier this year in their degree show and also at Free […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
As our inaugural Document Scotland exhibition, “Seeing Ourselves”, opens this week in Glenrothes, we are featuring a blog each week for the duration of the exhibition from all contributing photographers. The feature is called, “Why I Took this Picture”, and needs no further explanation. First-up, Stephen McLaren, on his photograph, “Dolly”. “When the weather disappoints […]
In 2013, Colin McPherson looked back at a moment in time 20 years previously, and delved into his archive of photographs to show some contrasting sides to Auld Reekie, his home city of Edinburgh. Here he explains more about the process: “The portfolio of images Document Scotland presented last week to mark the 20th anniversary […]
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 […]
It’s evening, autumn 2012, and I’m at the desk, digging back through the hard-drive of my memory, looking for an evening some thirteen years that is filed away in some dark corner. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edinburgh, 1999. Eve Arnold too. I do have memories… I also have photographs. Can I trust either? Much as I love […]
“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 […]