PHOTOGRAPHIC prints by some of Scotland’s leading photographers are to be sold at bargain prices to raise money to deal with the impact of lockdown on mental health.
As well as raising funds for a Scottish mental health charity, the month-long online sale is also intended to give the public a chance to buy work by well-known photographers at an affordable price.
It is also hoped the initiative will also help make the art of photography more widely known.
All proceeds of the sale will go to mental health organisation Support in Mind and their Edinburgh location The Stafford Centre to help deal with the impact of Covid-19.
The 50 top photographers include Tom Hunter, Jane Brettle, Chris Leslie, Calum Colvin and Garry Fabian Miller as well as emerging talents such as Csilla Kozma, Alice Myers, Simon Murphy, Lindsay Perth and Oana Stanciu. Prints of their work are being sold for £50 each.
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The sale, organised by Edinburgh-based photographer Rebecca Milling, was inspired by similar successful initiatives in England and is supported by Studies in Photography, the biannual journal published by the Scottish Society for the History of Photography.
“The effect of the lockdown is going to be so far-reaching on people’s mental health,” said Milling.
“I can see that continuing, as people have been having to self-isolate for such a long period of time and have not been able to work.
‘‘I think it is really going to take its toll on people so I wanted to do something that felt really positive and this seems like a good charity to support, particularly at this time.”
She added: “As well as raising money for this important charity, the project promotes the sale of photography enabling people to buy outstanding photographs by well-known photographers at an affordable price.
“It gives them the opportunity to show their work and also the chance to feel like they are helping out as well by donating their prints.”
Iain Mitchell from Support in Mind said the sale would not only benefit the charity’s Edinburgh service but their work across Scotland.
“Huge thanks go to the team at Studies in Photography, as well as all the talented photographers who are taking part and have kindly donated their work,” Mitchell said.
Scottish documentary and portrait photographer Margaret Mitchell, whose work is in the National Galleries of Scotland Collection, is among the photographers the sale features.
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Her art ranges from exploring communities and children’s worlds through to long-term documentation projects on environment, opportunity and social inequality.
The image donated is from the series In this Place and reflects not only on the personal but also the political and has social inequality at its heart.
Glasgow-based Simon Murphy has donated an image of John Byrne, the Scottish playwright, to the sale. Murphy is fast becoming one of the UK’s premier portrait photographers and specialises in celebrity portraiture, music, fashion and travel. He won the Portrait of Britain Award last year.
Born in Zimbabwe and brought up in Scotland, Sekai Machache has a particular interest in W E B Du Bois’s notion of “double consciousness”, which expresses the psychological challenge of having African heritage whilst living in the West.
Her donated work is from her series Invocation, which brings to the fore the contradictions and inherent biases present in societies’ representations of black women.
EDINBURGH-based Wendy McMurdo is also featured and has exhibited internationally, including at London’s Photographers’ Gallery, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. She has been named as One of the Hundred Heroines by the Royal Photographic Society.
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Susan Derges’s practice reflects the work of the earliest pioneers of photography but is also contemporary in its experimentation and awareness of both conceptual and environmental issues. She exhibits widely and her work is in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Hara Art Museum in Tokyo.
Another contributor is Edinburgh-based David Eustace, whose work is also recognised worldwide and is held in museums such as The National Portrait Gallery, London, RSA, GoMA and private collections of Aberdeen Asset Management and Deutsche Bank.
The sale runs until July 24 at studiesinphotography.com
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