This Is Scotland

For the past two years I have been working on two books. Both projects are now complete and one of the books This Is Scotland has just been published and the other One Hundred Weeks of Scotland is to be published in November.

This Is Scotland was a collaboration with the author Daniel Gray and was a journey to find, photograph and write about the Scotland that the guide books ignore. Our goal was the real Scotland - the Scotland where most people actually live.

Slowly something began to emerge from the scribbled words in Dan’s notebook and the hundreds of images that I stared at on my laptop. Without really realising it and without seemingly any effort whatsoever we had crossed Scotland from top to bottom. We couldn’t really call it a road trip as most of the time we managed to get home for our tea. We didn’t travel in style – my 1999 dirty blue Citroen will probably never be used by a fictional TV detective, and yet, as I was happily informed by a mechanic after driving for 40 miles with a tank full of petrol instead of diesel “Son, these engines were built by the Nazis to take over Europe. Indestructible”.

All around us though Scotland seemed to be subtly changing. Something was beginning to awaken under the grey winter skies, and as the seasons advanced would come more and more to the fore. Here was a nation seemingly looking at itself and being slightly startled by what it saw. The hills were alive with the sound of rhetoric. It was a pleasure to be out and about in the country at this time. Not judging, just watching. The book is a document of the Scotland we found. The Scotland we saw.

Next month I will talk about 100 Weeks of Scotland.

Now that both projects are complete there are other idea in the pipeline and I will expand on these and show work from them in the months to follow