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Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

Alba Dubh

Black-and-white landscape photograph of a snow-dusted mountain in Glen Alladale, lit by a pale shaft of light against a near-black sky, with small trees in deep shadow at its base
Winter Snows, Glen Alladale
(1:34pm Friday 31st December 2004)

Alba Dubh (Dark Scotland) is a series of dark black-and-white Scottish landscape photographs made from source images mostly taken between 2004 and 2006, then later reworked after moving to Aotearoa New Zealand. The works return to Scotland through mountains, lochs, islands, coastlines, forests, roads, cloud and changing light.

Dark tonal reworking draws out atmosphere, weight and instability in the landscape. Cloud presses down, light breaks through, water catches brief illumination, hills recede into shadow, and landforms appear both solid and uncertain. The black-and-white treatment does not simply make the images older or more dramatic. It allows the photographs to sit somewhere between record, memory and return.

Many of the photographs began in direct experience of the land: hillwalking, travelling, looking across water, moving through weather, or stopping at the edge of a road, path or ridge. The date and time held in many titles keep each image attached to a specific encounter, even as later reworking opens it again from a different distance. Alba Dubh is shaped by this tension between lived land and altered memory: Scotland as remembered place, weathered image and darkened return.

  • Black-and-white landscape photograph across Lochan na h-Achlaise, with ice-patterned shallows, winter shrubs, boulders, still water, reflected trees and snow-covered Blackmount peaks beyond.
    Frozen Landscape, Blackmount
    (10:43am Sunday 19th February 2006)

  • Dark black-and-white mountain landscape with a snow-covered ridge cutting diagonally across the frame, lit sharply against a near-black sky, with a faint glen and distant hills to the left.
    Snow Field, Beinn Achaladair
    (3:18pm Saturday 4th March 2006)
  • Dark black-and-white landscape photograph of a stunted Scots pine beside Loch Tulla, its twisting branches silhouetted against pale sky, water, small islands and distant Highland hills.
    Caledonian Pine, Loch Tulla
    (3:45pm Wednesday 1st December 2004)
  • Black-and-white landscape photograph at Loch Etive, with two brightly lit snow-covered peaks against a dark sky, a still loch in the middle ground, and a large rounded boulder in the foreground.
    Snowblind, Loch Etive
    (9:56am Thursday 17th February 2005)
  • A black and white landscape photograph looking toward the Arrochar Alps in the Southern Highlands of Scotland, with dark moorland foreground, a fence line of white posts across the middle distance, and a dramatic clouded sky with pale light on the right horizon.
    High Hills, Arrochar Alps
    (2:06pm Wednesday 4th January 2006)

  • Black-and-white landscape photograph from the Scottish Lowlands, with two bare winter trees silhouetted on a dark ridge and a pale band of last light glowing along the horizon.
    Last Light, South Lanarkshire
    (5:59pm Friday 4th February 2005)
  • Near-black black-and-white landscape of Loch Lomond, with dark wooded foreground, low silhouetted islands, faint water bands and distant hills receding into mist beneath a heavy dark sky.
    Misty Darkness I, Loch Lomond
    (12:48pm Saturday 2nd April 2005)
  • Black-and-white landscape photograph on the Isle of Rum, with a tall jagged rock pinnacle rising from a dark ridge, thin cloud bands across the sky, and the distant Black Cuillin of Skye faintly visible on the far-right horizon.
    Sentinel, Isle of Rum
    (3:29pm Saturday 14th May 2005)
  • Black-and-white landscape photograph at Blackmount, Scotland, with snow-covered peaks lit against a dark sky and boulders and reeds in a still foreground lochan.
    Cold Light, Blackmount
    (7:44am Saturday 4th March 2006)

  • Dark black-and-white landscape on Rannoch Moor, with two large snow-covered mountain flanks opening toward a pale glowing gap in the cloud, and a small reflective pool low in the shadowed moorland below.
    Cloud Gap, Rannoch Moor
    (3:37pm Sunday 19th February 2006)

  • Black-and-white landscape photograph of Ben Nevis beyond part of the Aonach Eagach ridge of Glencoe in silhouette, with the snow-patched summit faintly lit against a near-black sky.
    Dark Nevis, Lochaber
    (7:28pm Thursday 21st April 2005)

  • Near-black black-and-white landscape in Glen Alladale, Scotland, with a lone Scots pine in silhouette and snow-covered craggy mountains partly obscured by darkness, mist, driven snow and blizzard behind it.
    Lone Pine, Glen Alladale
    (2:06pm Friday 31st December 2004)
  • A black and white landscape photograph of two dramatic basalt formations on the Trotternish ridge, Isle of Skye, beneath a heavy storm sky, with a small lochan lower left and a road with a white car visible on the far right.
    Trotternish Clouds, Isle of Skye
    (9:42am Friday 5th August 2005)

  • Black-and-white landscape photograph of dark, jagged hills on the Isle of Skye under a heavy clouded sky. A narrow band of light falls across a sloping valley, while large rock forms sit in deep shadow.
    The Prison, Isle of Skye
    (9.30am Friday 5th August 2005)

  • Near-black black-and-white landscape photograph on the Isle of Rum, with a rounded peak, dark moorland, faint distant hills and a rough rocky path in the foreground.
    First Steps, Isle of Rum
    (1:59pm Saturday 14th May 2005)

  • Near-black black-and-white landscape at Loch Lomond, Scotland, with misty hillsides barely visible on the far shore and a single fallen branch lying in still shallow water.
    Silver Bough, Loch Lomond
    (4:34pm Friday 10th December 2004)

  • Near-black black-and-white landscape of Loch Lomond, with a dark conifer treeline in the foreground, mist lying in horizontal bands across water and wooded islands, and layered hills beyond.
    Misty Darkness II, Loch Lomond
    (4:49pm Saturday 2nd April 2005)

• LANDSCAPE •