ALASTAIR COOK | McArthur’s Store
These remarkable, striking photographs were taken over several summers on the working harbour in Dunbar where Alastair was artist in residence. They show Dunbar’s fishermen, their boats and their work. McArthur’s Store, where Alastair was based, dates from 1658 – it was more than a place to work, it was central to Alastair’s practice. The images you see here were developed in a tiny darkroom in the Store and the adjoining room was often filled with the chatter of visitors.
INTRODUCTION
guinevere glasfurd, 2017
The portraits included in this collection were produced using a technique called wet plate collodion, that dates back to 1851. The process captures an image directly onto glass or tin, which has been coated with collodion then steeped in silver nitrate to render it sensitive to light. Wet plate collodion balances light and time – the photographer’s decision – with a chemical process involving cleaning, washing, dipping, coating, mixing, fixing and drying. When the image first appears on glass, a little smoky at first, it is startling. It’s like witnessing a magical trick. It seems like alchemy, or something mercurial, but wet plate collodion is a skilled craft. The fact that these images wear that craftsmanship so lightly is testament to Alastair’s control and ability. At a time when it has never been easier to capture someone’s image, the photographs in this book display an older craft. What sets this work apart is its sheer physicality: the portraits are sensuous, vital, vulnerable, proud. When I look at them I feel as if the image might lift off the page, or that I have gone into the image in some way. These images are a reminder of the clear, abrupt power of the human face and the pleasure there is in looking. Alastair has spent time working with poets and writers and this is evident in his work – the images unfold and open to the viewer as a poem or story might. They reveal themselves slowly. They reward the patient eye. I am drawn to them again and again.
McARTHUR’S STORE
“Arresting and nostalgic, contemplative and intriguing… Cook’s portraits create their own atmosphere and intrigue. Rooted in place, they reflect its spirit, at once harsh and poetic; the tracings of light from a northern sky on raw Gilesmetal.”Sutherland,
The Times ‘McArthur’s Store’ is a series of work made within the fishing community of Dunbar, a small town on Scotland’s Eastern Seaboard. For two summers I made wet plate collodion portraits of the fishermen in McArthur’s Store, originally a mid-17th century girnel on Cromwell Harbour. Now fully restored by Dunbar Harbour Trust, the building is inhabited by fishermen who rent stores for the repair and maintenance of their creels. I took up residence in the Store beside these working fishermen in 2012. The men are supported by their community and the Dunbar Harbour Trust, which owns their building, yet are perpetually concerned with increasing fees, demanding safety measures and a dwindling market. Like me, they are selfemployed family men and yet they work somehow together as one. There is not one who would not command respect. This work was initially funded by Creative Scotland as part of North Light Arts contribution to Year of Creative Scotland 2012 and Year of Natural Scotland 2013 but this crept annually to a fifth year, thanks to the Dunbar Harbour Trust’s support. The project now draws to a close with this exhibition and accompanying book. I would like to thank Emma, Charlie and Rose for their patience and support these past five years, and to extend these thanks to John Irvine, Nicky Bird, Al Brydon and Kenneth Gray for taking the time to look, listen and impart. Thanks are also due in no small part to Carl Radford, Katie Cooke, East Lothian Council, Creative Scotland and Dunbar Harbour Trust. This exhibition is dedicated to the fishing community of Dunbar and the memory of Noel Wight. alastair cook, 2017
WET PLATE COLLODION Wet plate collodion is a photographic process invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 and was the primary method of capturing images on glass or metal plates from the early 1850s until the 1880s. It is a wet process and must be completed before the plate dries, easily ten minutes or so in our genial Scottish weather; this timeframe brings an involvement from the subject, who bears witness to the production of a unique and revealing image from beginning to Iend.attended a lecture at Edinburgh College of Art by the photographer David Gillanders in 2009, where I snuck in amongst the students to see his incredible work on the plight of the Ukrainian street children. At the end of the talk he showed a few sepia images of boxers (a subject I am passionate about) and passed a small bottle around. I sniffed it and was immediately thrown back to being a young boy: my father is a veterinary surgeon and used something that smelled like this to put the animals to sleep for surgery, an event I attended regularly in lieu of after school care. Ether came to mind though I was not sure. I found its smell beguiling. David’s bottle contained collodion. So, what exactly is it? Well, it is in essence a fantastically pungent liquid that assists a light sensitive solution of silver nitrate to adhere to a substrate of metal or glass. Each glass plate is prepared by hand, must be fastidiously cleaned and edged with egg white; the collodion gloop is neatly poured on the plate and then submerged in the finely pH balanced silver. Since beginning this project, the process has undergone a quiet renaissance – it is not an immediately straightforward process and I relish that it is often tricky, however practiced I feel or confident on the day – wet plate collodion has the propensity to unravel the best practitioner. My intention was to record these fishermen using this process simply because it is sensitive at the ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Our skins are translucent, just, and these men have worked outside their whole lives, beaten by all weathers offering a suggestion that we are actually peering beneath the skin.
alastair cook, 2017
Eddie Macfarlane, fisherman
Casey Brunton, fisherman
Danny Gallagher, welder
Neil Brunton, fisherman
Mick McLaughlin, welder
James Bisset, fisherman
Eddie Johnstone, fisherman
Liam Brunton, fisherman
Denholm Blair, fisherman
Noel Wight, fisherman
Rowan Davies, fisherman
alastair@alastaircook.comwww.alastaircook.com|@alastaircookBookdesignbyKennethGraykennethgray.co.uk
“The thing that flicks switches in me when I see Alastair’s portraits is that I don’t see them as portraits at all, I see them as people in all their wonderfulness, variety and immediacy. They provoke the same visceral excitement as when you bump into a beautiful, recognised but unknown stranger. One of those moments where all the difficulties and disappointments of being human seem to evaporate and what remains is just understanding, empathy and absolute joy of being there with all these amazing folk. This is so rare a sensation when confronted with a photographic portrait.”
“Arresting and nostalgic, contemplative and intriguing… Cook’s portraits create their own atmosphere and intrigue. Rooted in place, they reflect its spirit, at once harsh and poetic; the tracings of light from a northern sky on raw Gilesmetal.”Sutherland,
Mark Tweedie, Photographer 3456 07734 174 728 |
ALASTAIR COOK | McArthur’s Store McARTHUR’S STORE is a new collection of wet plate collodion portraits and contextual pinhole photography of the fishing community in Dunbar, made at this historic creel store between 2012 and 2017. This work is dark, mercurial and truthful.
The Times