Alternative readings of the Scottish Highlands & Islands: Margaret Fay Shaw and Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson

• Main Author: Brownrigg, Jenny
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Croft; Donaldson; Jenny; Moyes; Rovaniemi; Stirling; Tait; Wylie; Lapland
• Online Access: http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/4875/; http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/4875/1/GSA_script_finaledit.pdf

By looking at examples of Margaret Fay Shaw and M.E.M. Donaldson’s work from 1920s'-1930s', this 35 minute paper assessed 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 presented their aims, methods and examples of their work. I also referred to film-maker Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990), who moved to Shetland from Glasgow to live on a croft, producing her first film 'A Crofter's Life in Shetland' (60 mins) in 1931. In order to contextualize Shaw’s and Donaldson’s approaches to the Scottish Highland & Islands landscape and its communities, I compared their outputs to others including Werner Kissling, John Grierson, Paul Strand, Robert Moyes Adam and Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. I used this to illustrate how Donaldson, Shaw and Gilbertson captured the changing face and fate of remote Scottish communities. I concluded with looking at the work of Shaw and Donaldson through the lens of Fife-born, Edinburgh photographer Violet Banks (1896-1985) who journeyed through the Hebrides in the 1920s and 30s. This paper was part of a symposium entitled 'Through a Northern Lens: Women, Picture and Place', co-organised by Dr Frances Robertson (GSA) and Dr Nicky Bird (GSA), which took place 28.10.16 at The Glasgow School of Art. The other speakers were Dr Mervi Lofgren (University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland) with her paper 'Women on Their Own: Single Female Photographers of Finnish Lapland at the Beginning of the 1900s'; Dr Sarah Neely (University of Stirling) with her paper 'Flowers are the Trees of the North: Margaret Tait, Isobel Wylie Hutchison and other ways of Looking in Film'; and Shona Main ( PhD candidate, University of Stirling/ Glasgow School of Art) with her paper "I just went with them and they paid no attention to the camera at all": Jenny Gilbertson's early films 1931-35'. This symposium aimed to develop conversations and research links around the role of early 20th Century women photographers / filmmakers and representations of ‘the North’. The focus was on image-makers who were working in the politically charged atmosphere of this period, with class- and international conflicts very present in the minds of artists and their publics. The presentations explored such subjects as the role of the domestic and the everyday, the relationship of peripheries to the centres of culture, the question of earning a living and how women developed status as serious professionals.