An Open Letter to Morag MacInnes

ROBIN GILLANDERS responds to Northings’ review of Highland Journey at the Pier Arts Centre

DEAR MORAG,

All exhibiting photographers, and artists in whatever medium, welcome criticism. They set themselves up for it and even negative feedback is valued, but they have the right to expect informed analysis and accurate reporting. Sadly your review was neither.

I’m not going to bother to explain why I made the conscious decision to use B&W and a large format camera except to say that a different sort of picture is made with a 5×4. It tends to be formal, controlled, constructed and considered – you can’t snap with a 5×4. I’m sorry if that seems ‘Victorian’ to you. I’m sorry too, that you were disappointed not to see colourful snaps of happy smiling folks.

Of course the work is flawed. There is so much you could have legitimately criticised. If I were to review my own work, I would say that while it was a serious attempt at documenting the Scottish Highlands and an antidote to endless pictorial coffee table books, it can only be highly partial. Perhaps it is even an arrogant impertinence to attempt to comment adequately on the whole of the Highlands and Islands in such a limited timescale. And there are serious gaps in the ‘story’ – hardly any reference to farming for example.

You compare me with the excellent and sadly missed local photographer Gunnie Moberg I know Gunnie’s work well and am involved in an advisory capacity with the archiving of her work. Surely you could see that I was attempting something quite different in style, content and intent.

The only other photographer you mention is Edward Curtis, because you happened to have a book of his at home. It’s not clear what you think of Curtis’ work, but surely it would be more apposite to draw a comparison with Paul Strand who worked in South Uist in 1953? Look him up, Morag.
You are inaccurate in saying that Muir’s ‘Journey’ took six days. His journey was probably about two weeks; he spent six days in the Highlands.

You constantly misquote me, apparently to justify your demeaning remarks (the first refuge of the tabloid hack). I did not say that “photography takes longer than writing”, I said that the photographic process takes longer. There is a subtle, but important difference.

Perhaps I should have added ‘for me’ or ‘for this project’. But you ’doubt this’… On average each picture in this project took over a day to produce from concept to execution. Clicking the shutter represents a tiny fraction of the work involved. How long did it take you to write your review, Morag? Ten minutes?

Nowhere did I say that Liz in Tain was a ‘really kind and welcoming person’ And nowhere did I say that Pearl in Dufftown was a ‘lovely kind person’. What I said was that ‘her’s is an easy and relaxed friendliness – not put on, showy, or disingenuous’.

Then there is my portrait of Finlay MacLeod on Lewis. You describe him as a ‘crofter, a fighter for rights’ (and want to see him ‘cutting silage’). No he’s not. My caption clearly states that he is a writer and academic. Oh, I know what you’ve done – you’ve got mixed up with my portrait of Allan MacRae, the crofter in North Lochinver. Really Morag!
However you are correct to suggest that the captions are problematic. Really the whole project was conceived principally as a book with considerably more text describing the ‘Journey’ (which is now published by Birlinn). The exhibition captions are intended for an audience that may not know the Highlands and Islands well (the show was first exhibited in Brussels). But I can see that some may find them patronising.

However, I would suggest that you are quite wrong in declaring that captions generally are a ‘bad sign’ and trot out that old nonsense about the picture and the title being all we need. It is the purpose of documentary photography to inform to a wide audience. The photograph describes perfectly but explains nothing. Hence additional text is usually required to tell us important things the picture by itself can’t. I obviously needed even more information to explain the photographs themselves since there are several pictures that you clearly didn’t ‘get’.

Probably my fault, but I was expecting within a gallery environment that there would be an intelligent and engaged audience. Please go and look again at ‘Gentlemen’s Hairdresser’, for example. Try to look at it from a symbolic point of view; look at the details. Why are there ‘no customers’? What do you think the picture is about (rather than simply what it is a picture of)?
And look again at ‘Dundas St. Stromness,’ which you dismiss as a cliché. What do you think is in the picture that makes a different point to all the other pictures of Dundas St.? Why do you think I took that picture? Interestingly Gunnie had a picture in one of her books of Graham Place just along the street. Is her’s then not also a cliché? Coincidentally, she had a cat in her picture too…

I could go on…

Your review constantly seemed like a personal and sneering attack. Have we met? Have I perhaps been inadvertently rude to you in the Stromness Hotel? You say (with curled lip?) that I was an advertising and fashion photographer (that was 20 years ago – how did you know this?) and teach at Napier, and therefore “professional down to his fingertips”. Clearly, for some reason we are not expected to take this as a compliment.

In fact it is difficult not to detect a sneer in virtually all that you write. You use the device of interjecting a sarcastic adverb before quoting me (the second refuge of the tabloid hack), as in ‘the commentary earnestly reminds us…”, and “we are told solemnly that…”
However, I really would not be bothering to write this if you were simply denigrating me. Your contemptuous comments about some of my portrait subjects are frankly disgraceful, while your comment about Jean Urquhart in The Ceilidh Place borders on libellous. Are you really suggesting that she uses immigrant workers because she has an eye to ‘profit margins’?

By demeaning these people, whom presumably you have never met, you ultimately demean yourself.

A lazy review, I think. And unnecessarily, unremittingly, offensive.

Regards,

Robin Gillanders

Editor’s Note: Northings is happy to offer this right of response to Robin Gillanders on Morag MacInnes’s review, and we also acknowledge a similarly dissenting response in the strongest terms from one of the subjects of comment, John Charity. However, having given both main parties their say, we now regard this “correspondence” as closed, and urge readers to make up their own minds, either from the exhibition or the book (see below).

© Robin Gillanders, 2009

Associated Pages

• Highland Journey Book