The Way We Were in Orkney

I promised more images from Orkney Photographic Archive. The ones below are by Tom Kent and William Hourston.

Tom Kent - Haying Time in Birsay

On the Orkney Library & Archive website, you can find information about all the photographers whose work is preserved in the Archive. Not all photographers' images are digitised, but Tom Kent's are. Here is a brief biography taken from the website:

"Tom Kent is probably Orkney's most famous photographer. He was born in the island of Eday in 1863 but the family moved to the Parish of Firth on the Orkney Mainland soon after. It was after emigrating to America and becoming a student of renowned Chicago photographer M.J. Steffens that he learned the skills that allowed him to set up shop on his return to Orkney. More than just a recorder of events he had an eye for composition as well as a seemingly unerring ability to be in the right place at the right time. He used the most sophisticated equipment available at the time, but that would still mean having to carry around a large heavy wooden camera and a quantity of glass plates, no mean feat in itself.

The quality of Tom Kent's photographs was recognised outside Orkney and he contributed regularly to professional magazines as well as pictorial publications such as Country Life. Sadly Tom seems to have fallen on hard times in later life and when he died, on 11th August 1936, his passing went almost unnoticed, a sad end for a man who had played such an important part in documenting life in Orkney."

William Hourston - Transporting Sheep

Land and Sea

The images show how the land and the sea are central to the history of Orkney. Fishermen with Ploughs they may have been, but they were also Country Women with Sickles & Quernstones, Rakes & Hens.

Tom Kent - Milling Grain by Hand

Tom Kent - Gathering Whelks 

William Hourston - Salvaging the Scuttled German Ships in Scapa Flow

"William Hourston was born in Evie in 1895. He moved to Stromness in the 1930s and originally ran a billiard saloon and Barber shop, but his true interest was photography. The raising of the scuttled ships of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow gave him an opportunity to exploit his photographic skills and he produced many memorable images of the work over the years.

William had a good eye for the picturesque and took many photographs of Stromness and further afield, producing calendars and postcards of his work. He had trained as a joiner and was able to make a lot of his own darkroom equipment. He was also, for a time, an occasional Lighthouse Keeper on Suleskerry, an isolated rocky outpost about thirty miles west of Orkney. Of course, he took along his camera and recorded the huge numbers of sea birds and seals that frequented the area.

William Hourston served in both World Wars, receiving injuries during the 1st World War that affected him all his life. He continued to live in Stromness, taking photographs late into the 1950s, remaining in the town until his death in 1968."

William Hourston - Plucking a Hen on the Shore

Tom Kent - Transporting a Cow (or is it a horse?) on the Steamer

Tom Kent - Not a Character from Tolstoy

Tom Kent - Scything Hay

William Hourston - After a Day's Work

The Roll of Photographers

There are many more photographers featured in the Archives: William H Wood, Robert H Robertson, David Horne, Wilfred Marr, Dougie Shearer & Donald Shearer of Phoenix Photography, Jack Walls. Their work is not yet digitised, but you can still see it if you go into the Archives and talk to Colin Rendall. 

You'll hear more stories of the chancy ways the archives come to hold the images: Wilfie Marr's work is here after Colin bumped into his widow in the supermarket. Dougie Shearer didn't think anybody would want his images, but Colin assured them the Archives would, and thank goodness for that, for Dougie Shearer captured many of the events, big and small, that happened in Orkney in the second half of the twentieth century.

Bobby Leslie told me that Jack Walls worked in the Kirkwall Hotel, appeared in local operas and carted his equipment up Wideford Hill to take photographs of the surrounding countryside. And it was somewhat heavier than a digital camera!

Orkney Through the Eyes of Women

More recently, women have taken up the camera and added other images of Orkney into the mix. Gunnie Moberg took her camera up high and photographed Orkney from the air; and got right in close and captured details and patterns in rock and weed and flower.

Here is Gunnie Moberg in her garden photographed by Alistair Peebles (copyright Alistair Peebles).

You can see some of her beautiful images in the book on which she collaborated with George Mackay Brown, Orkney: Pictures & Poems.

I think the book is still available to buy from Tam's Bookshop in Stromness.

And of course - if you are a library member - you can borrow it from Orkney Library & Archive!

Copyright Rebecca Marr

Rebecca Marr came to Orkney as Artist in Residence at the Pier Arts Centre in 2007 and loved it so much she stayed. She looks up to Orkney's big skies and down to the amazing shapes at our feet, including the seaweed round our shores.

And there are many others - men and women - capturing the islands as they are today! 

In the Tardis with Orkney Photographic Archive

It's impossible to spend only a day in the Photographic Archives at Orkney Library & Archive and get to grips with what an amazing place it is and what a resource for the community.

Only the other day on Radio Orkney, I heard a piece about the Westray Heritage Trust who are mounting an exhibition of photographs by Robert Heddle Robertson from 100 years ago, and inviting today's islanders to take photographs of the same locations, in the same seasons. It will give a fascinating insight into how Westray folk lived then and how they live now.

Many of the photographs by RH Robertson came from Orkney Photographic Archives which holds over 2,500 of his glass plates. 

Senior archivist, David Mackie, manages the archive and Colin Rendall looks after it and does the printing of negatives for members of the public. He is passionate about the value of them as an historic collection and as a resource for Orkney, the islands they depict through the ages.

Colin gave me a tour of the archives. First, he invited me into his Tardis, a cylindrical division between the public office and the dark room, where he time-travels regularly back to far off days in Orkney. Well, at least as far back as photography goes.

He told me that the earliest dated photographic print held here is this one from 1863 of the Channel Fleet in Kirkwall Bay. It came as a surprise to me to think of photography being around at the same time as a naval fleet made up of sailing ships. There are possibly earlier photographs too among the collection, but with no dates on them, that can't be verified.

Waving in the Light

While I was there, Colin was dealing with a customer who wanted a print of an aerial photograph of East Road in Kirkwall. In the dark room, he showed me the process he goes through to create a negative from the existing print and then develop it. 

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I noticed Colin waving his fingers above the developing photograph. This, he tells me, is how you control how much light gets through, so that more detail will show up on dark areas of the print. And sure enough, suddenly the dark shadows at the edges lifted to reveal bushes and plants. 

To an amateur like me whose only experience of manipulating photographs has been in the digital age through Photoshop, this was fun!


Equipped to Develop

I'm used to the slick-looking tools of the digital era, so the machinery housed in the back rooms of the archives look like museum pieces. And in a sense they are. Except that equipment like this which will develop film, is increasingly hard to come by. As Archive Technician, it is Colin's job to keep the machines in good working order, so that they will continue to provide prints of the thousands of glass plates and film negatives stored by the archive. 

Negative to Print

Colin looked out an example of a glass plate and the print that was made from it so that I could photograph them - with my little digital camera! - for the blog.

Glass plate negative

The print from the negative

This is a Tom Kent photograph of two little girls standing in Dundas Crescent, Kirkwall, taken between 1898 and 1936, the period covering his work, but clearly, going by the style of the clothes, dating from the earlier years of the 20th century if not the end of the 19th. The details, the 'nowness' of the instant captured, with the long shadows cast by that day's sun, are astonishing.

Tom Kent

The Drowned & Stony Road to Conservation

Colin is quite convinced that digital photography will never match film for the quality of light and detail, so it is in all our interests to preserve what we have in Orkney Photographic Archive and guard it with our lives. 

But there has been many a blood-curdling mishap in the process of collecting and safeguarding the work of our early photographers. In the 1930s two young boys came across some dirty old pieces of glass down a lane off Broad Street in Kirkwall. They lined them up against a wall and threw stones at them. What lay in smithereens at their feet when they'd finished were some of Tom Kent's plates. 

RH Robertson

A truck load of the glass plates of RH Robertson was intercepted on its way to be dumped in a quarry in Westray. 

And a diver diving in Stromness harbour found some funny looking pieces of glass with dark markings on them. They turned out to be the photographic plates of William Hourston.

William Hourston

Luckily, the archives still hold 4,830 of Tom Kent's plates, 2,917 of RH Robertson's and 1,045 of William Hourston's, as well as many images by other photographers. Between 1867 and 1914, forty two photographers were listed as working in Orkney.

I asked Colin what message he'd like to get across to people in Orkney about the archives. In the mildest, gentlest tones possible, difficult to convey in the bold type necessary to make it stand out, he said,

'Don't throw away old photos or negatives. I've had folk saying to me, I wish I'd known this place was here, I wouldn't have burnt my granny's old photos. I didn't think they would be of any interest. 

'Please let us be the judge of that. Take them here and we can make copies of them and give you back the originals. Or we can keep them here and preserve them. Family photographs can be valuable social documents, showing how work, culture, customs, clothes, buildings or even scenery in the background have changed over time in Orkney.'  

Connections

I had to work quite hard to extract permission from Colin to show the photo above. A talented photographer himself, though modest to the point of self-effacement, he took this picture in February 1978. It looks so like the big seas we've had in Orkney in the past few days, it seemed an apt image to end with. My digital photo of the print doesn't nearly do it justice.

Dougie Shearer

Colin learned his photography from another notable Orkney practitioner, Dougie Shearer, who was also his fiddle teacher. He taught Colin how to process negatives and how to alter the appearance of a print while it was in the developing fluid by lifting out a bit you wanted lighter, and splashing bits you wanted darker. An even earlier version of waving your fingers over the developing print! Colin told me that Dougie was so particular and careful that he passed on a deep and serious knowledge of the processes of photography that has stayed with him ever since.

Thank you to Colin Rendall, David Mackie and Bobby Leslie for the information in this blog. And thank you to David for permission to use information from a paper he produced for the New Orkney Antiquarian Journal Volume 5, entitled, The Orkney Photographic Archive.

Look out for the next blog for more images and information about the different photographers.      

Reflections on Libraries

It's a dreich day. The brightest object in the sky round about is the Flotta Flare, a stack designed to pipe away harmful gases which are burned off high above the ground on the nearby Scapa Flow island of Flotta, the site of Orkney's oil terminal. You can just see it, palely flaring, in the picture left - the scene from my table - if you look closely through the window above the pink candle. And you can see it slightly more clearly on my laptop screen!

I'm nursing a nasty virus so am keeping it away from the library in Kirkwall where I was due to be heading out in the van with Steven Gough who runs the Home Library Service. A full blog post (click link left for that post) on that invaluable aspect of Orkney Library life will follow when the lurgy leaves me and I can accompany Steven on his run. Meantime, I'm staying put with my paracetamol and a brew of root ginger and lemon.

Orkney Libraries and Staff 

This enforced absence from the library gives me time to think about it. Since I started the residency in October, Kirkwall & Stromness libraries, the Archive, the Photo Archive, the Mobile Library and the rest have never ceased to impress me with the service they offer to Orkney. This appreciation is shared by the people who use the service. In a recent small scale survey I conducted during Book Week Scotland. I asked what people's experiences of libraries in Orkney have been. Here are some of the comments people wrote - anonymously - on the forms (separate comments divided off by asterisks):

My experience of libraries in Orkney is ...

Great * good * very good. With children + by self * brilliant. Lovely staff, very helpful * excellent. They provide a wide range of books and staff are helpful and willing to order anything not available at once. * Excellent. Very friendly informative helpful staff with a good range of books to borrow. The website has a lot of very useful information too *very positive * Completely positive. They are both (S[tromness] & K[irkwall]) my home from home. * extremely positive. Very friendly staff, great resources. Good collection + mix of novels + non-fiction. Bookbug sessions are wonderful * Excellent. The staff are so friendly & helpful. They suggest books that they think might be interesting. * Excellent. Staff are courteous and extremely helpful. * excellent * Having recently moved to Orkney and not knowing my way round the library I have nothing but praise for the staff and selection of books. * totally positive – helpful, welcoming, lively * Very helpful + innovative * All are excellent. * warm and welcoming and helpful. * Brilliant!! * Very good. Staff are extremely helpful. * grand places! * Very good, welcoming, helpful staff and family friendly. * very good! – good range of fictional and academic books - a real asset to my academic studies - staff are very genial! * very good choice and friendly staff * excellent * First class service. Excellent staff. * Excellent – great range of titles and media, very well-informed and helpful staff, enjoy book group * the best of all the ones I have been to in Scotland. V positive with helpful, friendly staff * Excellent – Orkney library and the very nice staff make it a really important place for me. * great!  - the old Laing St. Library, now so forlorn had such a lovely booky atmosphere – plus adventures getting trapped/squashed in the racks - ; and the new library is splendid in all sorts of other ways – PLUS GREAT STAFF!!

Orkney Library Staff - the Poster!

Here is how it looks as a POSTER! Go on, click the link! See the kind of art work created by these comments recognising the quality of Orkney Library Staff!

The Plight of Other Libraries

Ann Cleeves, Orkney Library's friend and recent star of the Orcrime Book Festival has the importance of libraries on her mind too. She is involved in the campaign against the closure of some of the libraries in Newcastle. Read her impassioned defence of Cruddas Park Library here. In poignant interviews with some of the library users, she shows how their lives will be hugely impoverished if the campaign to keep the library open should fail. 

We wish you all success, Ann, in your efforts to keep libraries open. 

It is a good reminder of how lucky we are in Orkney. Let's stay lucky!