IAN STEPHEN assesses an important retrospective of the work of Lewis-born photographer Murdo Macleod.

IT’S A very fine piece of programming. With the Heb Celt back on form and visitor numbers high, An Lanntair’s main gallery showcases a selection from 25 years of international class press photography from Shawbost man Murdo Macleod.

Murdo’s graduate show, as a student for Napier College, was an intense and full study within a narrow range. It illuminated not many square feet of Edinburgh, but by narrowing the range brought astonishing depth into his study of a community of homeless people. The images are memorable because there was a commitment to get beyond the sensational to the humane.

Twenty five years on, Macleod is a major figure in a competitive field. I’ve been stopped short, reading the Guardian or Observer many times over the years and not been surprised to see his by-line by a shot that often says more than the writing can. Portraiture has always been a strong part of his work and the title of this show, Face, signals that.

My feeling after a first visit was that there are two main strands to the work, within that gathering. One is a hunt for the eyes of the famous and one is a finding of the nature of a person whose life would often be overlooked. The blazing green eyes of Tilda Swinton form a potent example of the first, and the angles of the hat and the needle of a junkie recall the theme of this gallery’s first show of twenty five years ago.

There is often an implied narrative in both strands. Another portrait of Swinton has her set by the Findhorn river, so the allusions to water and the angle of the approach suggest a mythical context.

An early photograph of a Shawbost woman has her looking vaguely towards the lens but her fleece of hair is the foreground to a background of fleeces and fleeces, a major part of her life. I published that particular image, lang syne, in Siud an t-Eilean – an anthology of poetry and photography relating to Lewis (Acair, Stornoway) and it’s lost none of its power.

It reminded me of a photograph which is not here – a portrait of kettles and pans perched on a Rayburn – another example of a narrative you have to sense. It is more likely to be a wake than a christening, but the framing is a very powerful tool to catch the smell of a community.

Another earlier image which resonates is achieved by catching the moment when four churchmen are looking seaward at Crossbost, Lewis. There is a bit of the western in the observation, emphasized by very fine hats, but I don’t think it’s satirical. There’s too much of a feeling for people, anonymous or famous, for that.

I’d recommend anyone who visits the exhibition or is interested in seeing a gathering of Macleod’s work to visit his website (see links below). His coverage of the foot and mouth crises makes an exhibition in its own right. If there had been space for it, I would have liked to see a selection of these gathered together to reveal the concentration Macleod still applies to his area of study.

Whether it’s full-on portraiture or the more oblique angle of approach, the work alternates from high definition colour to a black and white that can be super sharp or grainy according to the purpose. Of course many of the studies of the famous work by drama ­ arranging the context and the pose, as when the crime writer Ian Rankin personifies the armed robber with the stocking over the head.

But the photographer’s eye goes beyond that and catches the moment when the guard is dropped and more is revealed than the sitter might have wanted. The Bill Clinton shot catches the man truly off guard. The there is the Gordon Brown shot where the man under stress shields his eyes to reveal by what is not shown.

So this is a large body of large-scale works. Because of the dramatic impact of the colour work and the tight compositions, some of these are hung high and alternate with complementary or contrasting work so the height of the space allows you to cope with more works than if they were hung along lines.

There is probably still too much to take in, for the space and the show will benefit from being presented in a larger scale venue. A very good quality catalogue has been produced and it would be terrible if all the work involved in gathering and mounting a retrospective of this scale is for one venue only.

It would be good to see this show return An Lanntair to a position where an exhibition curated in Stornoway goes on to a national and international tour. If it does, I’d hope to see at least one section where Macleod’s ability to sustain his intense and accurate vision of a world within a world is followed through.

These images of the burning carcasses have the strange twisted glamour of Coppola’s Apocalpyse Now, in moving images or Michael Herr’s Dispatches (from Vietnam) in writing. The latter is surely a fair comparison with Macleod’s impressive achievement – where reportage is art and art is reportage.

Don’t bypass the foyer exhibition, where a historic diary of Lewis life is presented with the photography of an astonishing Lewisman from the same village as Murdo Macleod: “I am not the first or last photographer from Shawbost.” The diary of Tarmod an t-SeÚldair includes an astonishing anecdote of surviving a spill on a bike when a stray adder crawled over the face and neck arteries of the writer.

This man went on to be awarded an honorary doctorate for his published study of the adder. He became passionate about photography and some of his glass plates of contemporary village life, from an insider’s point of view, have survived. Macleod’s comments on the subjects revealed by his predecessor could well be applied to an approach implicit in his own work:

“They are immersing themelves in modernity and flaunting it in the doorways of their blackhouses. They deny any notion thatthey live on the margin.”

Be sure and continue up to the bar where Leila Angus’s full-on colour drama documents the poses and moves and high energy dance of the Heb Celt. These relate very well to the main exhibition and show something of the potential for carrying the art throughout the space.

© Ian Stephen, 2010

Links

• Murdo Macleod

• An Lanntair

• Ian Stephen