Originally Posted by
Struan Gray
One problem I struggle with is how to take and present landscape photographs of the Scottish Highlands without falling into the unspoilt wilderness trap. In most of upland Scotland, the conformity between what the land looks like and Romantic ideas of the uncharted wild is anything but an accident. Most often, it is the direct consequence of deliberate policies of land use and ownership, even if those policies were not explicitly concerned with aesthetics.
I am also trying to find ways to indicate the omnipresent signs of the Highland Clearances in these landscapes, but without being too didactic or strident. This is partly driven by a sense of righteousness (it adds insult to injury to photograph the places people were cleared from and pretend that they are, or ever were, wilderness), but also by the contemporary relevance of land reform in Scotland, as community ownership, conscious attempts at ecological restoration, and new forms of land use in general, take over from the old aristocratic and sporting estates.
The picture shows the back way up Ben Mor Coigach. It has become more popular as a walking route since this photograph was taken, and path is eroding fast and becoming more of a scar. The small township below this rise is now mostly holiday cottages, but it was settled by people cleared from a stunningly beautiful area further north (which is now a mainstay of the calender photographers' unspoilt nature canon). This clearance was not some historical injustice, with redcoats fighting claymores amid the mists of time, but happened recently enough that the grandchildren of those cleared were still alive when I first started visiting the area.
The old summer pastures - truly lovely sheilings in sheltered birchwoods - were denied them, so the poor grazing up in the clouds in my photograph was used. Instead of seasonal transhumance, what is now a somewhat brutal start and end to a good day out in the hills was climbed twice a day to milk and tend the cattle. In spring, after a hard winter with too little fodder to go round, some of the cows would be *carried* up that slope because they were too weak to make it themselves. They would then be tended full time until fit enough to care for themselves.
The hill is now owned by a wildlife trust, who have proved to be more open and generous towards the local community than any of the previous wealthy private owners. I find it odd that my thoughts, and my photography, have been channelled into what are essentially classic socialist or even communist patterns of thought - patterns I have never fully agreed with in my conscious political life, despite instinctive sympathy for the underdog. These patterns, and the language used to describe them, are emotive ones, and tend to induce strong reactions in viewers and readers. My problem, and it's an interesting one to grapple with, is how to force viewers to look at a photo like this without getting all misty-eyed and Romantic, and yet not let them dismiss it as just another outdated Red Polemic - I want to stop ideas becoming mere labels.
I don't expect the photo alone to carry the weight of all this intellectualising, but the background information, and feelings, are important to me in making the photograph, and in deciding to show it to others. Current plans - good intentions - are publication along with a written text, which will be more integrated than a conventional photobook essay, but without turning the photographs into mere illustrations.
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