Craig Mackay: Salt Of The Earth
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Craig Mackay's Salt Of The Earth was first shown in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland in 2010, a rugged photographic line-up of the well-kent of our shores. But if the cultural portrait roster in this re-showing in Stornoway runs from John Byrne to Sharleen Spiteri, from Alan Cumming to Alex Ferguson, it also leaps over the water, when it can, to scoop up the diaspora, finding, in its path, some rather surprising subjects.
"That was the most exciting thing about the exhibition, for me," says Mackay, "The idea that lesser known or more abstract people such as Jack White and Roseanne Cash were included too. People whose heart was Scottish but who were a bit displaced."
The title is, says the photographer, "a little bit tongue in cheek". He talks about the biblical attitude of being a 'good people' and tells me that at the time there was a sense that Scotland had given quite a lot to the world, but didn't really like talking about it. Mackay's subjects were found "through word of mouth," he says. He'd photograph one subject and ask them who they thought he should photograph next. "Sharleen Spiteri suggested Hardeep Singh Kohli, and so on."
Mackay's portraits are immediately striking. "I think the most successful type of portraits are as much a contribution from the sitter as the artist," says Mackay. "Because you've got a camera in your hand and because of the proximity, it breaks down barriers very quickly."
Born in 1960 in Inverness, Mackay worked as a welder before studying photography at Edinburgh's Napier University. He works from his studio in Brora in Sutherland. "My own personal work is a bit more surreal and incorporates landscape. But people do fascinate me. I can be really happy in the middle of people, and happy far away from them too. It's a life of extremes."
Sarah Urwin Jones
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