Alternative readings of the communities and locations of the Highlands & Islands; early women film-makers and photographers in Scotland

By looking at examples of Margaret Fay Shaw, Jenny Gilbertson, M.E.M. Donaldson and Violet Banks’ work from 1920s'-1930s', this 45 minute talk will assess if these women offered a different reading on the landscape of Scotland from their better known male contemporaries. Through archival sources, alongside their photography and literature outputs, I will present their aims, methods and examples of their work. In order to contextualize these women’s approaches to the Scottish Highland & Islands landscape and its communities, I will compare their outputs to others including Werner Kissling, John Grierson, Paul Strand, Robert Moyes Adam and Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. This talk will also, in the context of CAMPLE LINE’s exhibition, refer to the lantern slides of Kissling’s mother, Johanna Kissling, who travelled as a tourist to St Kilda and Lewis in 1905. St Kilda’s inhabitants were oft-filmed and photographed, often as a curiosity of a ‘primitive’ way of life. Johanna Kissling’s photographs will be considered alongside the approaches of Margaret Fay Shaw who visited the island in its last summer and Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, who was one of the official photographers for The Times, documenting the last days before evacuation. Cample Line is a new venue established by Tina Fiske, located in Dumfriesshire, Scotland