I’m an island lover, certainly. Having visited and photographed many of Scotland’s islands, I had never been to Colonsay. It’s a place I’ve heard so much about from friends and colleagues. So it was a wonderful opportunity to visit for a Document Scotland project this May. My approach is always to gravitate towards people, after […]
There are less than a week to catch 2 exhibitions featuring work by Sophie Gerrard this month. ‘209 Women’ at the Open Eye Liverpool and ‘Sixteen’ at Format Festival in Derby. Both exhibitions finish on the 14th April 2019. If you are in Liverpool or Derby do try and see them. 209 Women Open Eye […]
This interview by Sophie predates Margaret joining Document Scotland. The final project has 100 images and ran from 2015-2019 Over three Halloweens (2015-7), Margaret Mitchell photographed children who visited her home as Guisers. Their highly individual costumes displayed not only their originality but also conveyed aspects of the inner world of the child. Sophie spoke […]
The British Journal of Photography recently announced their shortlist of photographers for their Portrait of Britain photo project, and we’re delighted that photographers and work from Scotland made the cut. Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert‘s portrait from Langholm Common Riding (from his Unsullied and Untarnished book of the Scottish Common Ridings) was selected, as are two portraits be Edinburgh-based Euan Myles (and […]
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 […]
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 […]
Celebrating 175 years of Scottish Photography in the home of Scottish Photography We at Document Scotland are very pleased to involved with the first ever St Andrews Photography Festival 2016 where we will be presenting a Document Scotland public exhibition and a free Salon afternoon of talks, multimedia and discussion about documentary photography in Scotland. […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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
At a recent Street Level Photoworks ‘In Focus’ event, looking at book publishing, which we attended, we had the pleasure of listening to Lucie Rachel discuss her book-in-progress, ‘Mother Father’, a story documenting the relationship of her parents. Impressed with the work, and Lucie’s approach, we asked if we could showcase it here. Lucie kindly […]
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 […]
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 […]
Gregor Schmatz has recently finished a BA Photography at Edinburgh Napier University. Document Scotland caught up with him and had a chat about his ongoing degree show project about Methil in Fife, Scotland. DS: Tell us a little about yourself Gregor, and why you decided to make this particular project. GS: I was born in […]
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 […]
As the 2015 UK General Election campaign gathers pace, we are being bombarded by soundbites and overwhelmed by statistics whilst politicians appear on every television screen, newspaper and website we look at. There’s no getting away from politics, for the next couple of months, at least. So we at Document Scotland are going to add […]
We delivered four lovely boxes of prints and a hard drive of digital files to St Andrews this week and are very pleased that Document Scotland’s work has now become one of the most recent acquisitions to the St Andrews University Special Collection. Document Scotland started working with Marc Boulay and the University of St […]
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 […]
This important and timely exhibition showcases groundbreaking new work from some of Wales and Scotland’s contemporary photographers. Document Scotland, formed in 2012 by Colin McPherson, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard and Stephen McLaren, are responding to the global audience looking at Scotland at this, one of the most important times in the country’s history. Formed in […]
The opening evening of Beyond The Border at Impressions Gallery in Bradford on Thursday 3rd July was a great success, thank you all so much for coming. We were delighted to see so many new and familiar faces there, enjoying the photography, the conversation, the wine and of course, the Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers. Document Scotland […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘My Addiction, My Photographs’, by Graham MacIndoe Over the past few years Scottish-born photographer Graham MacIndoe has been on what you could call a ‘character building’ trip. From the highs of a successful career in advertising photography to the highs of a serious drug addiction, and the inevitable descent into a world he never thought […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Starting a new series is always a tentative process: The fulfilment of an idea that may have been gathering momentum in a closet somewhere in a corner of your mind. Will a story translate from idea form to visual reality? Will I waste my time working on something that may lead to nothing? The night […]
(c) Sarah Fishlock, 2013, All Right Reserved As one might expect when photographing Iraqis who were resettled in Glasgow after having worked with the British government and forces in Iraq, the security of my subjects was paramount. I learned to make alternative portraits – images that did not explicitly reveal faces or identifying features, but […]
Scottish photographer Niall McDiarmid was recently awarded a prize for portraiture in the International Photography Awards for his current Crossing Paths portraiture project, an ongoing project which stands as a social document of the looks and styles of people on the streets of the UK at present. Niall kindly agreed to answer a few emailed questions from Document Scotland about the background to […]
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 […]