LAURIE CAMPBELL began photographing wildlife at the age of 14. Today he is one of Scotland’s leading natural history and landscape photographers. His picture library is the most extensive of its kind by any single photographer working in Scotland. Laurie lives on ‘both sides the Tweed’, since his home in Berwick upon Tweed is a stone’s throw from the English border. Laurie has supported Sùil an t-Solais from its original idea. We are delighted that he has kindly agreed to specially create for the Festival a kaleidoscope of Hebridean wildlife through a loop system of digital images.
MAOILIOS CAIMBEUL lives in Flòdaigearaidh, Skye. Since retiring from teaching, he has returned to his first love - writing. With others he is working on a Gaelic thesaurus, due for completion in 2009. Maoilios has published five collections of verse and his life’s work, with parallel translations in Irish, was launched at the Aos Dana book festival by Coiscéim, Dublin in 2007. Maoilios sits on the Creative Council of Urras an Taobh Sear, and his contribution to Ceumannan (the eco museum of Staffin Community Trust) has been immensely valuable.
CAROLINE DEAR enjoys the challenge of creating photographic images which show more than you can see. She works in black and white using the landscape, and specific elements of it, supported by research. Recent projects include ‘annaid’, (an RIAS millennium award) which explored early Christian sites on Skye. She was a director of An Tuireann (the arts centre on Skye) for a number of years and has been a member of Scottish photographers since its inception in 2002. Caroline lives and works in Na Faingean, Skye.
SÌNE GHILLEASBUIG did the ground work for Sùil an t-Solais, The Skye Photography Festival. Along with Maoilios Caimbeul on the Creative Council of Urras an Taobh Sear, she is writing the interpretation for 10 Staffin sites. Sìne wrote a long essay poem on Skye which informed The Storr - Unfolding Landscape for nva Europe in 2005. Her working life has centred around the cultural heritage of the Gael. She loves the connectedness of the Gaelic world.
PHIL GORTON is an artist using photography as a means of expressing his own visual viewpoint. Whilst acknowledging traditional environmental landscape values, his personal work involves close-up abstraction, extremes of colour and contrast, unusual angles of view and an exploration of textural form. The pictures are intended to stimulate and challenge conventional perception of photographic form on the island, both in the visualising process and the use of colour, light and shadow.
JOHN LOVE has recently retired from Scottish Natural Heritage in South Uist. A biologist from Inverness, he has a lifelong passion for remote islands - at home and abroad. His books are many and include Rum – A Landscape without Figures and The Return of the Sea Eagle – a huge undertaking which could not have been accomplished without him. John records his love of seabirds in fine ink illustrations. While he is an authority on St Kilda, John’s favourite place is the lesser known north Rona, to the north east of Lewis. Who better to inform the 2007 exhibition of early Highland conservationists than one who has tread all of their paths? Along with his wonderful photographic archive accumulated from the decades of his career, we are hoping that John will remember to bring his fiddle to the festivities of Sùil an t-Solais.
ALASTAIR MCINTOSH is a land reform campaigner who was at the forefront of the community buyout on the island of Eigg and the opposition to the superquarry on Harris during the 1990s. Raised in Lewis, Alastair is the author of an excellent book called Soil and Soul – People versus Corporate Power. A visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the Universtity of Strathclyde, when Alastair puts words onto a page there is clearly ‘earth in the ink’. While sensitive to his carbon footprint, Alastair faithfully travels to share his important vision that we must reclaim our humanity and our world. His recent book of poetry challenges us ‘to cherish and be cherished’ so that we can better belong to our soil. It is Alastair’s conviction that Love and Revolution roll together, and the book’s cover features the stunning photography of Rhona Mackinnon.
RHONA MACKINNON is a young photographer who is captured by artistry in nature. She sees symmetry in the rings to be found in shell, rock and bark. Leaves fall to the ground in patterns but our crowded brains seldom notice. Rhona’s work makes us look again. Rooted in the Hebrides, she is self taught. She sees Sùil an t-Solais as an opportunity for a personal turning point to move more meaningfully into photography. Along with the work of Sìne Gillespie, she will focus upon the importance of outdoor education in a future for Gaelic, and a reclaiming – through photography and naming - of what has been lost to a society which spends so much time engaged in a virtual reality.
CAILEAN MACLEAN comes to us with a wide range of skills. Though decades have now past since he studied geography and geology, these disciplines have given him a keener eye for his photography of Highland landscapes. Cailean is self taught in photography as in much else. He belongs to a family that is drenched in what we call ‘dùthchas’ – the deeply intimate relationship of Highland man to his native soil. Cailean has produced many audio-visuals including Skye Light for Aros Isle of Skye. His radio programme ‘Crunluath’ on the topic of piping ensures the continuity of a family passion. Cailean’s broadcasting skills ensure that his business Skye Media is in demand.
ANNE MARTIN is a Gaelic singer from Kilmuir and most of her repertoire is drawn from Trotternish. Skye’s songs were heard amongst the pinnacles of The Storr by people from all over the world when Anne performed at the internationally acclaimed event The Storr - Unfolding Landscape. Anne has toured the world both as a solo singer and with some of the West Coast’s finest musicians, often with the harper Ingrid Henderson. The Martins have been in Trotternish for centuries, and Anne herself has a keen knowledge of her indigenous heritage. She partners her husband, John, in their business, Whitewave: Skye’s Outdoor centre.
JON PEAR was initially a Documentary and Reportage photographer but since moving to Skye, he has developed his passion for wildlife and landscape photography. He is constantly inspired to capture Skye's ethereal atmosphere and enjoys the technical and artistic challenge that this brings.
COLIN PRIOR is reckoned by many to be Scotland’s foremost landscape photographer. As his work testifies, his mission to capture the essence of beautiful places has been accomplished. Colin is Glasgow based, and while he would love to have joined our festival, his calendar is full since he has commitments worldwide. Nevertheless, he is taking the time to reproduce especially for Sùil an t-Solais, on large canvas, previously unpublished panoramics of Trotternish. The images will be warmly welcomed and will be displayed at the Festival.
DUGALD ROSS had his first crofting museum as a teenager in Staffin. Since then, he has built up an extensive knowledge of the outstanding geology and archaeology of Skye. In the early 1990s, it was verified that he had discovered dinosaur footprints. This was a turning point for Dougie, whose focus at the museum evolved into an amazing collection of fossils and Jurassic relics. Dougie is a crofter and stonemason craftsman. His museum is one of a kind in the globe. But the day he discovered the footprints of a family of young dinosaurs, in hot pursuit of their mother, was the highlight of his working life.
JOHN WHITE runs Whitewave - Skye’s Outdoor centre - from his base in Kilmuir. John doesn’t mind whether people go for a simple walk down the croft or a challenging rock climb: he is passionate about “getting folk outdoors”. Along with his wife Anne Martin, John is a focussed individual who enjoys new challenges. On completion of an MSc in Outdoor education and twenty Skye winters, John cut and pasted his family out of the (as it turned out, dreadful!) Highland winter of 06/07, by visiting the Indian sub-continent and then touching ‘down under’ during a five month world tour. His family’s story in words and photographs of ‘Trotternish to the Taj Mahal’ is a highlight in the Festival’s programme.
MARTIN WILDGOOSE has a unique knowledge of every corner of Skye having studied it for decades through the lens of the archaeologist who was previously a farmer. Martin is the man who originally discovered Skye’s first mesolithic site. The excavation in 1994 was a very exciting moment for Staffin. Our understanding today of Skye’s ancient landscape has been significantly enhanced by the good-natured patience and skill of Martin Wildgoose. He has laboured at all of the major sites. The best known in recent years is Uamh an Achadh Àrd – the immense underground ‘high pasture cave’ by Na Torran in Strath, Skye. As the soil tumbles from the shovels, we wait with baited breath for the island’s millennia to yield up yet more stories to keep us enthralled.
GUS WYLIE needs no introduction to communities with a Hebridean identity. He holds a special place in the hearts of people with a Trotternish heritage ever since he took it upon himself thirty years ago to photograph our grandfathers and sisters as they sheared their sheep in the fank - or battled with wind and rain on the road to school. If life in the Hebrides from its foundation of crofting is a good illustration of ‘real people in a real place’, then Mr Wylie has certainly gifted us ‘this tough beauty’. He has said that his Hebridean undertaking “made me the person I am today”. Well, the photographs of Gus Wylie communicate to us that his humanity is at one with that of the Hebrides. His work encapsulates ‘the knot in the basalt’, and we are thrilled that Mr Wylie is willing to travel the length and breadth of the UK to be with us for Sùil an t-Solais, The Skye Photography Festival.
The Design for Sùil an t-Solais
Our designer, Peter McDermott, has been living in south Skye for more than a decade. His business – McDermott Creative - is
responsible for much of the graphic design work on the island. In weathering the storms created by this Festival, Peter travels the extra
mile to get a good job done. After the dust has settled, he will be able to focus once more on creating watercolours, a skill which
attracts for him an international following. Taing chridheil a Phàdraig.