Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 10 July, 2011

PHOTOJOURNALIST John Bulmer had made a name for himself in the Sunday Times as a pioneer of colour photography, transforming the gritty monochrome of cities in the north of England into pastel tones, when he came to Orkney in 1964 to work on a story, Britain’s Lonely Islands, with travel writer Eric Newby.

Wanting to capture Orkney’s long evening light, he discovered most people were abed by the time the light was right, so he returned in the autumn during the gales and mists in 1976 for Geo magazine.

Bulmer’s practice was to drive round until he saw something, nothing was prearranged. This reactive method saw him capture moments in Orkney’s social history, on the brink of change. This photography is journalism, pictures of record, but they have a poetic atmosphere through his eye for a good image.

Woman milking a cow

This may be stills photography, rather than the moving image of film which he later worked with, but the images are far from still. There is fluidity and movement, drama and action in what amounts to a photo-documentary. Washing blows at a 90 degree angle outside a croft and at another washing line a woman’s own clothes billow against her form.

Washing is a favourite subject for Bulmer. Sheep on the shore in North Ronaldsay offer a timeless scene against the shifting backdrop of the sea while a family scene on the island has a boy teasing a dog by holding a rabbit by its hind legs while the father fixes barbed wire.

Blurred figures feature ephemerally passing permanent buildings, treated as subjects in the Stromness street and in the isles a sturdy two-room dwelling, the water pump and buckets in the foreground.

He took pictures of daily life; a woman with a headscarf milking a cow in the field; a lone figure on the road passing hay stooks after harvest; cattle being transported by boat and sheep being herded to market through Kirkwall, illustrating the relationship between rural life and town and sea.

His portraits reveal he got on well with his subjects as real warmth crinkles the eyes of even the serious close-up studies. . Women outside Walls Kirk on Hoy are dressed in their Sunday best, prayer books clasped, but are laughing out loud at their photographer. Compositions include a husband and wife in their kitchen, the working man eating from a bowl in Wyre, while another amused couple are outside their manse with their onions hanging in strings across the wall.

Ladies outside Walls Kirk on Hoy

The 33 photographs were taken in Mainland Orkney, Hoy, North Ronaldsay, Fara and Wyre. Some of the subjects are unnamed and the Pier Arts Centre is hoping visitors who can identify people will make a note in an exhibition book.

Bulmer, who was from Herefordshire from the famous cider-making family, was part of a group of British photographers which included Terence Donovan, David Bailey and Don McCullin, and were known as the ‘Young Meteors’. Bulmer went on to photograph all over the world, including taking famous images of John Lennon and Yoko Ono before moving into documentary films.

He is now cataloguing his vast collection of images for exhibitions, such as this in Orkney. We are fortunate indeed that Bulmer came here and his work adds to the rich record of photographs by Gunnie Moberg, Rebecca Marr and others, and we can see some of them for the first time.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011

Links

• John Bulmer
• Pier Arts Centre