At Gallery Close – Scotland Once Was

Robert Blomfield – The Amateur

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.

Doug Corrance – The Professional

Doug was born in Falkirk in 1947 but since the age of seven grew up in Inverness. He knew his future would either be as a photographer or a chef.

He began on a local newspaper and his training in those early days helped define his street photography style. Working to deadlines and with an uncanny ability to produce results from often unlikely situations was good grounding for what was to follow. He became the principal photographer for the Scottish Tourist Board, as was, and set about creating some of the images that were used to define Scotland globally.

Doug has been shooting Scotland for over five decades and in this period his work has taken on both cultural and historical significance featuring as it often does, a world that has long gone. With a number of books to his name he continues to shoot daily and is rarely seen without a camera in hand.

Compared to many of today’s overly retouched and sanitised images, Doug is a purist, preferring a similar approach used by the likes of National Geographic, using very little or no post production thus allowing the reality of the world to be revealed. He has and continues to capture a refreshingly naturalistic and, against the some trends, upbeat view of Scotland.

The exhibition is free and runs from 19 April 2023 until 20 May 2023 Wednesday to Saturday.

Gallery Close

4B Howe Street EH3 6TD, UK

tel – 0131 466 5083 mobile – 07740 870579