Scotland Once Was - Photography Exhibition
This exhibition, at Gallery-Close from 20th April, is of photography by Robert Blomfield and Jim Downie of a Scotland now gone.
About Scotland Once Was - Photography Exhibition
Robert Blomfield
Born in 1938, Robert Blomfield was practising street photography in the UK from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. This pursuit ran alongside his medical studies at Edinburgh and subsequent years spent as a junior doctor in London. His use of the camera was unobtrusive and fly on the wall, seeking interesting or amusing scenes in a postwar world that was changing at breakneck speed.
From early on he admired the two great French photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau, whose work challenged him to see more (and be seen less) with the cameras he now carried with him everywhere – initially a small Leica borrowed from his father, later a pair of Nikon F SLRs. In those days he was mainly using black and white film (usually Kodak Tri-X) and did all his own developing and printing.
An engaging manner and healthy disrespect for authority allowed him to get close to a myriad of subjects, and the work he produced from this period forms one the highest quality archives of the era. It includes striking images of the changing face of Britain’s inner cities through to the peace movement of the late 1960s. Children playing in the streets held a particular fascination.
Robert suffered a stroke in 1999 which forced him to hang up his beloved but heavy Nikons. Switching to a small digital camera, he continued to snap away at everything around him. In December 2020, he passed away just a few short weeks after he had realised his long held ambition to have a book of his photos published. His family continues their work of sharing his wonderful photographic legacy.
Jim Downie
Jim is a former art director who turned his hand to photography haviong worked with some of the biggest names in the business. He has produced a remarkable series of pictures based around family photographs he found in a shoe box in his Mother’s house. Over lockdown he set about revisiting the scenes of these family ‘snaps’ and rephotographng the locations as they are now. The original images are superimposed over the top in a kind of visual game that wil no doubt serve as an inspiration for others to follow.
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