45 Sun Pictures in Scotland (2015)

                        Cromarty

In September 2014 during the first Referendum on Scottish Independence I was on a residency in Cromarty where I'd made some solargraphs. The exposures were begun before the referendum and ended after it had taken place. After the referendum it became clear very quickly that nothing had been resolved. The strange time compression of the solargraph seemed to capture the mood of irresolution quite well. I decided to travel to the 45 most populous cities and towns of Scotland and put up my home made cameras, filled with photographic paper, to be left exposing for a month. The full series was exhibited in the Grace and Clark Fyfe gallery in Glasgow and the Kaunas Photography Gallery in Lithuania during 2015.

                        Arbroath

                        Clydebank

                        Dundee

                        Glasgow

                        Inverness

                        Rutherglen

                        Stirling



All images © Frank McElhinney

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'On the Edge' Donegal residency (2019)

Image
Whooper swans flying in darkness I am currently in Donegal for the month of November photographing, among other things, wild swans at dusk and dawn and even wilder Atlantic waves. Thanks to Street Level Photoworks and Artlink I am on a residency here, living in the small but lively town of Buncrana with a studio space at Fort Dunree. The swans migrate here from Iceland every winter. Four years ago I began a project about migration. I was prompted by the tragedy of what was happening in the Mediterranean at that time but wanted to focus instead on Scotland. Many Scots who are opposed to welcoming people from other countries forget their own history, both national and familial. In 2015 and 2016 I travelled throughout the highlands and islands flying a kite and a drone to make aerial images of abandoned settlements. Some of the settlements were forcibly cleared as long as two hundred years ago. When visiting those, usually desolate, places I always asked myself where all the...
Read more

Flight (2022)

Image
  Whooper Swan - Inch Levels, Donegal In the year 1845, 8,259 people were buried in Glasgow. In the year 1847, that number had increased dramatically to 18,889. What happened? In 1845 blight ( phytophthora infestans ) destroyed the potato crop in Ireland and in 1846 the same thing happened again, this time also affecting the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Although the blight abated temporarily in 1847, so little seed had been planted that year that the yield was meagre. In short, widespread starvation meant that many thousands of migrants arrived in Glasgow from Ireland for several years after 1845. At the peak of summer 1847 up to 10,000 Irish people arrived during some weeks. The condition of those arriving was often wretched. People were malnourished and diseased and had little or no money with which to provide food and shelter for themselves. Those who could afford it quickly made for Liverpool and then America. The poor begged and threw themselves upon the charity of the C...
Read more

Kingshill (2018)

Image
Patrick Durkin, was born on a tenant farm in County Mayo. He came to Scotland and became a coal miner at Kingshill No.1 colliery in Allanton near Shotts. He died due to the accumulation of coal dust on his lungs leaving behind a wife and nine surviving children, including my mother. Thousands of people worked in Kingshill No.1 during its fifty year life span. It was one of the first pits to be nationalised. After it closed in 1968 the land above ground eventually became a small nature reserve. The large 'bing' I used to climb as a small boy was levelled off and trees were planted by the council. The woods, ponds and lichens encouraged the return of mammals, amphibians, insects and birds. The summers are full of colourful flowers and butterflies. You'd never know this was once the site of heavy industry, except sometimes in winter when the vegetation dies back you can see the black slag of waste coal in certain areas breaking through the surface. I began photogr...
Read more