Celebrating 40 Years of Scotland’s Photography Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
It was only during the 80’s that museums and art galleries started seriously collecting photography as art.
The National Galleries of Scotland officially began its collection in 1984 – so this exhibition celebrates the forty year anniversary with a snapshot of some of its 55,000 treasures.
Included are examples from the very early years of photography, with images dating back to the 1840s, when Scottish artists played an important role in the scientific and creative development of the medium.
The first piece you encounter is ‘Self Portrait’ a striking silver gelatin print by visionary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose gift to the Scottish Galleries marked the beginning of its modern collection. This image, reflecting his own mortality was made the same year he started the Mapplethrope Foundation to promote photography and support HIV/AIDS medical research.
As befits the Portrait Gallery there are plenty of subjects you are bound to recognise. What Scottish photography exhibition would be complete without The Proclaimers, John Byrne and David Tennant? Some of the images are iconic, one of the first pieces purchased for the collection is Oscar Marzaroli’s ‘Castlemilk Lads’, a stunning gelatin silver print from 1963. You can also see the iconic image, captured by Annie Leibovitz of John Lennon and Yoko Ono clasped in a naked embrace. Hours after this Polaroid shot was taken, Lennon was shot dead.
An entire wall is dedicated to a series of images of Newhaven Fishwives, by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, who set up the first photography studio in Scotland in 1843. They were based at Calton Hill in Edinburgh and created their work through a process known as calotype, which is very similar to negatives produced today. This is an example of the first social documentation through photography. There is a huge catalogue of their work in the national collection that can be viewed at the Portrait Gallery by appointment.
In a section featuring female photographers there are pieces by photojournalist Lee Miller and haunting images by one of Britain’s first female photographers Julia Margaret Cameron.
A display cabinet with two lovely personal scrapbooks is part of the Mckinnon collection of 16,000 pieces of Scottish life between 1840 and 1940 which is currently being catalogued for future reference.
And you can see a stunning aeroplane shot by daredevil Alfred Buckham, who hung out of planes to get dramatic aerial shots – and whose work will be the subject of a future exhibition, which curator Louise Pearson promises will be thrilling in every sense of the word.
The exhibition is free and runs until March 16 2025
