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 […]
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 […]
Spring 2013 was one of the coldest on record – it almost never really came. Farmers all over Scotland were concerned and anxious that by mid April, there was still no sign of grass, that’s pretty much unheard of. 15 foot snow drifts on Arran over Easter and -5 degrees recorded in Fort William added […]
It was the second Rangers away game I’d been to for my, at that time, new project ‘Life In The 3rd’. I wished to follow Rangers FC as they travelled around the country and through the Scottish footballing 3rd Division, taking in the small towns and lesser stadiums of the land. I’d just recently returned […]
As the old maxim in publishing goes, celebrity sells. So I was delighted to encounter Rod Stewart on a scrubby patch of land, a few short yards inside Scotland. Not the real McCoy, of course, but an invocation to attend a musical tribute to the great Jockney singer at some nearby watering hole. An evening […]
Document Scotland were delighted to be interviewed by The Dundee Courier about the exhibition ‘Seeing Ourselves’. Stephen spoke with Jennifer McLaren and explained a little about what brought us together, our aims and our passions and how we curated the exhibition.
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 […]
It was a foggy, cold morning and I decided to make a round of Shotts fields to find some nice and quiet landscapes.I was driving the A71 to West Tarbrax Farm when I noticed this back road blocked by 2 huge tractor tires. It was my “Wow! Look at that”. It was the way the […]
(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 […]
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 […]
Document Scotland are delighted to announce that to coincide with our first collaborative group exhibition, ‘Seeing Ourselves’, we’ve published a newspaper showcasing the fine documentary photography work from the show. A certain amount of the papers will be available for free at the gallery and exhibition, to thank you for making the effort to come […]