In the largest exhibition of his career, internationally renowned Scottish photographer Alexander Lindsay will showcase his vast and ultra-high resolution landscape photographs from his travels to wilderness regions around the world. These epic images, printed by Lindsay in his studio in Fife, will be up to 8 metres wide and will transform the unique venue of Bowhouse’s Main Hall into an extraordinary Art Gallery.
In parallel, Alexander and his wife, art advisor and ex Sotheby’s specialist Sophie Camu Lindsay, have created an Events Programme at Bowhouse to gather experts in their field to consider Photography from its origins through to the contemporary scene. There will be a spectacular Symposium of talks, presentations and panel discussions. Highlighted will be the hugely important contribution to the medium made by Scotland and St Andrews.
The Photography Exhibition: Lindsay will introduce a new body of work The Abandoned Edge, created in the Outer Hebrides and St Kilda in Spring 2022. The theme focuses on the shifting boundaries between man and nature and the traces left by communities in retreat from the Scottish islands over the course of the 20th Century.
Immersive landscape photographs from Lindsay’s decade-long travels through wilderness regions at and beyond the edges of human influence will include defining work shot in the Atacama Desert in South America, the mountainous Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming USA, Scotland and across South Africa, Namibia, and Lesotho.
At the core of Lindsay’s landscape work is his desire to document it faithfully and reverently: “The magnificent desolations on the surface of our planet are a shrinking reality to which I and my cameras are magnetically drawn”.
The finished images demand attention: a sensory immersion, a fresh and vicarious thrill that fuses classical landscape depiction with the best of epic cinematic composition. They are the latest expression of his life’s journey as a photographer, documentary filmmaker, deep ocean explorer and artist. All the works will be for sale.
Lindsay will also present film footage from his pioneering deep ocean filming of the wreck of the Titanic, his award-winning combat filming during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and his video artworks.
The Symposium: Playing a crucial role in photography’s pioneering era, from both technical and artistic perspectives, Scotland holds world-class collections of photographs that will be brought to light during a series of events held over the three weeks of the exhibition. The full events programme will include the following, amongst others:
Earth’s Wonders Captured by Drone: Sunday 17th July, 6pm
Islay Petrie and JP Andrews are young photographer/film-makers who create astonishing imagery around the world with their drones. Petrie has travelled the globe with her drone in a backpack, whether by motorcycle or living out of her SUV traversing the USA. JP is one of two British brothers who created Abstract Ariel Art, specialising in mesmerizing imagery of planet Earth from above. This contemporary art event will reveal how they plan their expeditions and make a living with these latest photographic techniques and will provide tips and tricks for taking images with a drone.
‘Art and Nature’ - In Conversation with Richard Demarco: Friday 22nd July, 6pm
With a camera always at hand, Richard Demarco, of the ground-breaking Demarco Gallery and co-founder of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, has recorded the past 75 years of the international art scene in Scotland. And in so doing has created a unique and fascinating documentation of the performance art of Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, and other artists that he brought to Scotland. Alexander Lindsay will discuss with Demarco his life at the forefront of the Scottish Art and Theatre scene, and his huge contribution to the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe.
An Evening of Stories and Music from the Western Isles, with the Isle of Harris Distillers: Saturday 23rd July, 6pm
Calum Barker from the Isle of Harris Distillery will recapture the spirit of a traditional Western Isles Cèilidh, with stories and live music inspired by Harris, St Kilda and the Outer Hebrides. They will outline how the distillery is set up to support the local island community, and there will be an opportunity to taste their award winning gin.
Exploring and Documenting the Wreck of the Titanic: Friday 29th July, 6pm
Alexander Lindsay will discuss his expeditions to film and photograph the wreck of the Titanic 4km below the ocean’s waves. He was ‘Director/Producer of Film and Photography’ for two expeditions to the wreck, and his team developed the largest lighting arsenal ever to be lowered to the ocean floor. He worked with, amongst others, the Cousteau family and Hollywood director James Cameron. Lindsay's Titanic imaging involvement continues to this day: the pioneering digital techniques he developed for recording the wreck have led directly to the methods he employs for his large scale landscape photographs.
The Story of the Mackinnon Collection, “Scotland’s Photograph Album”: Saturday 30th July, 6pm
Blake Milteer, curator of Photography at The National Galleries of Scotland and National Library of Scotland
This talk will draw attention to the unparalleled collection of Scottish photography amassed by collector Murray MacKinnon and now in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland and National Library. Photographs by leading visionaries and early photography practitioners including Fox Talbot, Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron and Roger Fenton among others, represent Scottish life and identity from the 1840s through the 1940s – a century of dramatic transformation and innovation.
How Astronomical Images have changed in the last 200 years: The story of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh: Wednesday 3rd August, 6pm
Andy Lawrence, Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, will bring exclusive pieces from the ROE collection and will cover Scotland’s huge contribution to how we see, photograph and understand the Universe, from the earliest mountaintop imaging to the amazing latest deep space pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, a million miles above our heads.
The Lindsays of Balcarres: A Century of an Ancient Fife Family in Photographs: Saturday 6th August, 6pm
In his recently published book The Lindsays of Balcarres, Ludovic Lindsay explores and presents his recent ancestors’ remarkable untold stories over a century, from the birth of photography in 1840. This extraordinary collection of hitherto unpublished images by both family members and pioneering photographers of the age illustrates one Fife family’s involvement in arenas as diverse as astronomy to the arts, coal mining to agriculture, exploration on great ocean-going yachts to military endeavours, and politics to scientific and technological advances.
The individual symposium events will be free to attend but places must be booked via www.alexander-lindsay.com as numbers will be limited.
The exhibition is designed to appeal to all ages and is free to visit. Open 10am to 6pm seven days a week.
Personal Tours, interviews, or Studio visits to Lindsay’s nearby home are available by request.
For information & symposium tickets please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/alexander-lindsay-photography-exhibition-events-486699
Image: Dragon Hill, Iquique (Chile)
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