Documenting Britain

Hebridean Taxi Portraits

My Documenting Britain project will be a series of portraits of native Gaelic speakers living on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. During the period of the project, I will live on the island and work as a taxi driver.

A journey to Stornaway

Light falling. In the austere landscape between Easter and Wester Ross, twilight darkens occasionally framing rooms of strange luminous geometry, glimpsed through undrawn curtains. Loch Broom reaches landwards, a hooked finger drawing back to the sea, The Minch. Somehow it is a relief to final meet the sea.

Failing to succeed.
Or failing, to succeed.

I sat The Knowledge. I failed. I expected to. But I know now exactly what I have to do to pass.

Place names conjuring the past, conjuring other places. Canada Crescent. Queensland Road. Exile. Emigration. Berisay Place. Ensay Court. An island dreaming of other islands. Seaforth Road. Leverhulme Drive. Naming those who tried to possess an island.

This place is a port, a cradle on the edge of the sea; a charged place. Partly land, partly sea. Neither one thing or the other. It is a threshold.