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 […]
Sophie was really pleased to be invited to take part in Green Week 2014 at London College of Communication this month. Sophie took part in Survival a symposium debating sustainability and its communication and looking at the role environmental photography can play in media representation. Sophie showed a few projects, E-Wasteland and The Dunes and […]
Alan McCredie, an Edinburgh-based photographer, had the genesis of a great project-idea in October 2012. Realising that the Independence referendum was exactly 100 weeks in the future, he decided he would start “100 Weeks of Scotland”, a photographic endeavour to record events and scenes from all over Scotland in the lead up to the referendum. […]
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 […]
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 […]
No, it’s not the members of Document Scotland lining up for their annual photograph but rather War, Death, Pestilence, Famine, otherwise known as the Four Dwarfmen of the Apocalypse, who featured in the Easdale community pantomime held on the tiny island in Argyll just after the New Year took shape and photographed by Colin McPherson. Unlike […]
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 […]
Saturday 21st September, 2013: thousands come to march in support of a ‘yes’ vote in the following year’s Independence referendum. Edinburgh provides the venue and historic backdrop for this milestone event. Document Scotland photographers Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and Colin McPherson were on hand to document the day. As the crowds gathered in the High Street, so […]
E-Wasteland is a project which Sophie Gerrard undertook in India to highlight the problems created by the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste known as “e-waste” generated annually worldwide. In Europe and the US, we throw away an old computer, on average, every 2 years. In the US for every new computer bought, an old […]
Margaret Thatcher‘s passing in April 2013 brought to an end the life of one of the most controversial and influential post-War British politicians. The Conservative leader, who had served as Prime Minister from 1979 until being deposed by her own party in 1990, divided opinion. What cannot be doubted, is that she changed society and […]
The A41 Project was Colin McPherson‘s year-long exploration of the causes and effects of inequality in our society, which used one of England’s celebrated Trunk Roads to metaphorically illustrate the concepts behind the photography. Here he explains the background to the project and how it materialised: “The A41 Project had its genesis at Look11, the […]
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 […]
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 mission: put down the bevy, pick-up the camera and bring a bit of festive cheer by photographing Scotland leaving 2012 behind. Witness the renewal of friendships, goodwill being shown to neighbours and strangers alike, and reflect a desire for better times ahead. Document Scotland wishes all our colleagues and the wider Scottish photography community […]
In honour of Scotland’s patron saint and also of Document Scotland’s first ever St. Andrew’s Day together as a collective in 2012, we decided to undertake a little group project. Each of our photographers took a wander with our cameras to see what was happening in our neighbourhoods, we found ceilidhs, balls and festivities. Some […]
In 2012, Glasgow Rangers Football Club were wound up and relegated. They started again at the bottom of Scottish Football League. Document Scotland’s Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert followed te team as they embarked on life in the Third Division. ‘These images are part of an ongoing project, a document of an unusual, exciting and historically unprecedented year […]
The Dunes by Sophie Gerrard is her landmark series which looked at the environmental and personal challenges and costs a community endured as they faced up to a multi-million pound development which would alter their lives forever. “Sophie Gerrard’s project The Dunes, is about a Site of Scientific Interest in Aberdeenshire that Donald Trump has […]
In 2005, Colin McPherson was commissioned to travel to Brazil to report on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. During his trip, he made a surprising discovery: “In the middle of the Brazilian Amazon jungle, on the banks of the mighty Tapajos river, the intrepid traveller comes across a truly lost city: Fordlandia. Named after […]
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 […]
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 […]
In 2004, Document Scotland photographer Colin McPherson visited the newly-built Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood before it opened. Here he explains the details behind the commission: “Exactly one month before its official Royal opening in September 2004, I was granted a preview of the newly-completed Scots Parliament building in Edinburgh, forever after to be known […]
Easily the most pleasurable aspect of working on assignment as a documentary photographer is meeting and getting to know the people you photograph. One of my most memorable experiences was being commissioned to travel to the Hebridean island of Eigg to do a profile of the island’s postman, John Cormack. Like the protagonists in the […]
Document Scotland photographer Colin McPherson presents a portfolio of monochrome images entitled Working Way Out West, which looks at aspects of life on the western fringes of Scotland. “I’ve been fortunate to spend much of my working life as a photographer on Scotland’s long and rugged west coast. Often described inaccurately as ‘remote’ (from where?) […]
From 1996, Document Scotland photographer Colin McPherson spent a number of years looking at the lives of Scotland’s Tibetan clan, Buddhist communities who were based at locations around the country. The work has been published at home and abroad. Here he reflects on the work. “My first encounter with Scotland’s clan of Tibetan monks and […]