Early in November, I photographed a roll of Fomapan 100iso 35mm film which was given to me by Chris Donnelly of Cyan Clayworks, the ceramics studio I featured recently down by the Shore in Leith. If you follow me on social media, you may have heard about this already. The film was photographed for an exhibition that Chris devised featuring black-and-white photography of the Leith area by a small group of local artists and photographers he knows. Chris distributed the film rolls, and on receiving them photographed by each artist, he developed the film and printed a selection of images from each roll in his recently set-up basement darkroom.
Cyan Clayworks then hosted a small exhibition (titled 'Persevere') of the prints in their studio, as part of the 2024 Leith Creative Trail. I always enjoy an opportunity to wander around taking pictures with a film camera, and Leith has been an ongoing area of interest in my life and work since my partner and I moved to Edinburgh nearly 5 years ago (we now live on its periphery). So, I was keen to be involved when I heard Chris was planning this project.
Chris displayed the original negatives and his contact sheets in a folder in the exhibition. Maybe this prompted me to invert the scans he gave me so I could look at them in their original negative form. Or, maybe after so many years of looking at photographs, I'm looking for a different way of seeing them? Either way, I decided this is how I'd like to share them here.
It's not often that I share more than a very select bunch of images from a photo walk, but on this occasion I thought it was apt to post the entire roll, in chronological order, so you can follow my journey around Leith that day, picturing the area with Chris's exhibition and prints in mind.
Once again, big thanks to Chris and Fiona at Cyan Clayworks for including my work in this project. And thanks to anyone who ventured out to see the prints on the studio wall.
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