We are are big fans of Document Scotland and have been following their work since they first began in 2012. For the first of our ‘Featured Collectives’ MAP6 had the opportunity to speak with Document Scotland’s three members to get a further insight into their work.
© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
Can you tell us a a little about Document Scotland, how you began, and what were your intentions when creating the collective?
Document Scotland began in a bar in Beijing, in 2012, discussed over beers by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and Colin McPherson, two Scottish photographers who’d known each other for many years, and were on a photography assignment in China. By the next morning we’d enlisted a third Scottish photographer, Stephen McLaren, and very soon after we got back to Scotland, Sophie Gerrard joined the group. All four of us had been living or working outside of Scotland for some years, and with the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in our sights we knew it was time to return home, to see our country, and to photograph at this important period. We also wished to highlight the breadth and quality of documentary work being undertaken now, and to try and redress the balance where documentary photography from Scotland seemed to have finished in the 1970s.
Can you tell us more about each member, what are your individual practices and interests?
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert has been working professionally for 30 years or so, with his work appearing in all the main newspapers and magazines worldwide. As well as editorial work, he photographs for corporate and NGO clients, he was a principal photographer for Greenpeace International for two decades. Through his work he’s travelled extensively, photographing on assignment in over 100 countries, and across many oceans. But in saying that he’s just as happy working on a story or self-initiated project in Scotland, photographing as a way to learn about topics himself. His images have been widely published and exhibited.
© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
Sophie Gerrard began her career in environmental sciences before studying photography in her home town at Edinburgh College of Art and completing an MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at The London College of Communication in 2006. Working regularly for clients such as The Guardian Weekend Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, The Independent and The Telegraph Saturday Magazine and on long term self initiated projects, she pursues contemporary stories with environmental and social themes. A recipient of a Jerwood Photography Award, Fuji Bursary and several other awards, Sophie’s work has been exhibited and published widely in the UK and overseas and is now held in a number of national and private collections. She is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery in London.
© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land
© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land
© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land
Colin McPherson has been photographing in Scotland and abroad for the last three decades. He undertakes long-term projects alongside commissions and assignments for a number of newspapers and magazines and is represented by Getty Images. Colin’s work is published internationally and held in archives and collections such as the Scottish national photographic archive and the University of St. Andrews University Library’s Special Collections. His photography has been featured in more than 30 solo and group exhibitions and his major Document Scotland projects include A Fine Line, The Fall and Rise of Ravenscraig, When Saturday Comes, and Treasured Island, the last of which was his contribution to the collective’s 2019 touring show entitled A Contested Land.
© Colin McPherson, from the project Catching the Tide
© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line
© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line
You have all been working professionally as photographers for many years before Document Scotland, why did you feel the need to collaborate and create a collective?
We felt that with the Independence referendum coming in 2014 that all eyes would be on Scotland and it would be a great opportunity to promote documentary photography from our country. We were all keen to be back photographing in Scotland, some of us had lived abroad for many years (Jeremy in Tokyo for 10-years, Sophie in India and London, Colin in Liverpool). It would also be a new way of working for us, bringing new challenges and opportunities.
© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land
How do you work together as a collective, do you have individual roles, and what is your creative process like?
We each bring something different to the table, whether that is networking skills, or organisational skills or bid writing, or website work. We each have our strengths. We talk frequently, we’re in touch most days, that is crucial to keeping it all going, and when busy on projects we have frequent Zoom/Skype chats, we delegate tasks, and keep an eye on how we are progressing with deadlines.
Creatively we work on our own projects, occasionally sharing work to each other for comment. When we have a group show coming up then ideas and work is discussed and viewed more often, but ultimately we trust each other to do our own photography.
© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line
In 2018 you premiered a major new show A Contested Land at the Martin Parr foundation in Bristol, before it went on to tour a number of galleries in Scotland. Can you tell us a little more about the motivations behind the work and how people reacted to the work?
We were invited to have a show at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, and for that we wished to provide a portrait of contemporary Scotland, moving away from images of tartan kilts, Highland shows and cattle. We wished to show the country we know and love, with all that makes it a modern, vibrant country. The show was well received wherever it travelled. After the Martin Parr Foundation, the show was beautifully presented at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, and then at a small arts centre in Dunoon Burgh Hall. As with all shows we do, we work hard to collaborate with the host venue to provide talks and to generate as much publicity as possible around the work and exhibition.
© Document Scotland's exhibition A Contested Land at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery
© Document Scotland's exhibition A Contested Land at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery
Four photographers made individual projects for the show, can you tell us a little about each individual project?
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert showcased a selection of work from the streets of Glasgow, from the myriad of demonstrations and rallies that had been taking place over recent months and years. Always a politically opinionated city, Jeremy wished to show that there are numerous nuanced political views held over Scottish independence, or Brexit, not just Yes or No, Remain or Leave.
© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
Sophie Gerrard’s work focused on the expansive peat bogs of Scotland’s Flow Country exploring how this precious environmental resource has been desecrated and denuded over generations, and how these almost magical places are being revived and reinvigorated through careful and considered conservation. This is no abstract notion: survival of the peat bogs is a touchstone for the health of the nation. Once seen as ‘fair game’ for industrial-scale exploitation, Sophie poses a metaphorical question, asking us to consider our relationship with local and national areas of outstanding beauty and how these places of natural resources fit into Scotland’s topography and consciousness, linking people to the land, and vice-versa.
© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
History is the starting point for Colin McPherson’s visual exploration of life on Easdale, the smallest permanently-inhabited Hebridean island on Scotland’s long, varied and sparse west coast. Once the epicentre of Scotland’s renowned slate quarrying industry, this fragile parchment of rock, sitting two hundred metres off the adjoining island of Seil, has become a by-word for repopulation and reinvention as its current community continues to battle traditional adversaries: economics and the environment. At its height in the 19th century, Easdale housed four hundred people; the quarrying provided work for the men and the slates they produced roofed the world, from the cathedrals in Glasgow and St. Andrews to the New World. When an epic storm decimated the island in the 1880s, the island went into decline and depopulation, only for a new band of pioneers to resettle and revive Easdale nearly a century later. The photographer’s personal connections with the island date back thirty years, and in this series he offers a contemporary commentary about the parallels with the past and how many of the 65 current residents live their lives.
© Colin McPherson, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land
Building on previous work which looked at the historical ties that bind Scotland with slavery through the sugar industry, Stephen McLaren returned to the theme to explore and examine the hidden and almost forgotten link between Edinburgh’s wealth and the slave trade with Jamaica. In the immediate aftermath of this year’s Windrush scandal, it is a timely and forceful reminder that the past, in all its forms, is immediately around us. Behind the front doors of Edinburgh’s New Town lies the legacy of British colonial exploitation. With each pound passed down through the generations, Scotland distanced itself from its inheritance as architects and perpetrators of the widespread and cruel exploitation of many thousands of bonded and chained men, women and children. Stephen’s work does not exist merely to prick our consciousness, but to start a national conversation about acknowledging an historical wrong and discussion about reparations. It should also force Scotland to examine and re-evaluate the relationships with people and communities within and outwith its own borders.
What projects have the members of Document Scotland been working on lately?
Since A Contested Land we’ve continued working on our own projects and undertaking assignments. In between assignments, Jeremy continues photographing the Roman-era Antonine Wall across Scotland; Colin continues photographing football culture and Easdale Island, and Sophie continues her work photographing female farmers and their landscapes all over Scotland.
© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land
Can you tell us a little more about your Patreon scheme and any plans for the future?
Since 2012, Document Scotland’s website has grown to be a great resource for those looking for information about documentary photography from our country. We showcase not only our own work but also the work of many photographers. But this website and the work involved to make it happen, and the salon events (evenings of photography and discussion held in galleries that we facilitate and host) take time, and have costs. To continue we needed to make it more sustainable. We also rely on funding for our own projects, one of the important ethos of Document Scotland is that we try to have all that we do externally funded. Thus, during Covid-19 lockdown in early 2020, we decided to launch our Patreon supporter’s platform. We felt that we had earned the trust enough of our supporters that some of them would understand that for Document Scotland to be resilient and sustainable then we have to ask for contributions to enable us to continue. It is early days but already we have seen the benefits, we’ve engaged more with supporters, we’ve been producing exclusive content for them which has leads us to create new work, make new contacts and work slightly differently. It’s exciting for us to build a new platform and community, and for us to further that which we love, showcasing great documentary photography from Scotland.
© Document Scotland's The Ties That Bind exhibition, including Unsullied And Untarnished at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
You can find out more about Document Scotland on their website below.