By Duncan Macmillan

Published 24th Apr 2025, 10:19 BST

Norman McBeath: Exceptional Subjects, VI William Street, Edinburgh ★★★★★

Story: Selected Works from Edinburgh Printmakers’ Collection, Edinburgh Printmakers ★★★★

Impressions: Selected works from Jerwood Collection, Edinburgh Printmakers ★★★★

With the advent of digital photography, a vital link was broken between photographs and the physical world they represent. All the intricate mechanics of cameras and the subtle chemistry of film – and, evocatively, silver, a precious metal, was central to it – were now history. Initially at least, with a digital camera a print was still the likely expected outcome, although there was no longer any physical limit on the number you could take.

With a Box Brownie as far as I remember you only had eight exposures. You then took your film to the chemist to be developed and that always took time. Nothing was instant. With the arrival of the camera phone, any even notional link with the physical world was gone. Photography became a flood of instant, disembodied images surging like a great tide through cyberspace.

Exceptional Subjects III by Norman McBeath

Norman McBeath is a photographer for whom, in the spite of all this, the beauty of the physical photograph has remained central to what he does. He turned to digital technology with enthusiasm. Thirty years in the darkroom was long enough, he says, and he uses the latest technology with great skill. He does so, nevertheless, to focus our attention on the physical existence of the image, its complex relationship to the outside world and of course its beauty as a thing in itself independent of whatever it may represent. That is why when you see his exquisite photographs in a mixed show like the RSA, for instance, they look perfectly at home among made artworks. McBeath’s latest exhibition, Exceptional Subjects, at VI William Street, is really a piece of visual poetry, a soliloquy on all of this history. There are 15 photos in the exhibition, and 12 of them are also in the artist’s book and portfolio published alongside the show. Both of these latter are exquisitely produced to the artist’s usual high standard and in them the photographs are also supported by poetic texts by Melissa McCarthy.

The objects in the photographs come from a collection of historical objects with links to photography and optics that the artist has formed over the years. The title of the show, for instance, is taken from one of these photographed objects, an early form of light meter. Shaped like a pocket watch but with two dials, this used a piece of light sensitive paper to calibrate exposure time. One dial, only partly visible, was evidently for ordinary use. The label on the other indicates that it was for “exceptional subjects”. Examples of what these might be are listed on the dial and include, for instance, “sea and sky”, “ditto with ships”, and “white statuary”. This is at once intriguing for the device's ingenious functionality, but far beyond that it is intensely evocative. That, the artist says, is his objective and here he summons for us a whole world of photography – does “white statuary” imply travels in Italy or Greece for instance? – that worked at a much gentler pace than now.

All the objects are photographed, as this one is, face on against a matt black ground and in complete isolation. The sequence begins with an image that is a suitably poetic introduction to the whole subject and its imaginative ramifications. It is a photo of a device, beautifully made in veneered wood, that frames a magnifying lens for reading visiting cards. Visible in place through the lens is a card with part of an image of a woman holding a visiting card. So the image again becomes an imaginative opening to the past. There is only one other figure here, a portrait photo of a child standing on a chair. She is perhaps from the 1880s and the way it is presented a whole life seems to be inferred in this single image.

There are photos of devices used by opticians long ago, but still recognisably the same as those they use now. A battered leather Kodak camera case is so vivid that I found myself seeing the familiar colour of the leather and the brass clip in this black and white photo. A glass eye bath picks up reflections of the artist’s studio, though not, Van Eyck style, an image of the artist himself. Most evocative of all, perhaps, is a photograph of a camera with a long concertina body seen face on and folded back flat. The rails on which the body extends to provide focal length come forward to be cut off by the edge of the picture. With all its intricate mechanics sharply in focus and the artist’s studio clearly legible reflected in the camera lens, it is an image of potential, of compressed power suggesting the whole story opened up by these remarkable pictures.

Detail from Untitled - Man with Megaphone by Ken Currie

With the level of beauty and physical presence that Norman McBeath achieves in his photographs, they certainly qualify as artist's prints. He signs and numbers them in the same way. Appropriately it is just a short walk from VI William Street to Edinburgh Printmakers where there are currently two shows, Story: Selected Works from Edinburgh Printmakers Collection and Impressions: Selected works from Jerwood Collection. Both are retrospective in character. Indeed the story in the Printmakers’ show is the history of the organisation, told in prints from the archive, over the years since it moved to its previous premises in Union Street. That was in 1984 and the earliest prints date from near that event and include a print by Ken Currie from 1982, still in his early social realist style. Others working then are recorded in a set of mutual portraits, an etching of Adrian Wiszniewski by Sandy Moffat, and vice versa, an etching of Sandy Moffat by Adrian Wiszniewski, for instance. There is also a good etched portrait by Sandy Moffat of Alfons Bytautis, the lead printer in the workshop at that time. John Bellany worked regularly and productively in the workshop with Bytautis between 1984 and ’87 and that story is told here, too, illustrated with The Ruff Bird. one of Bellany’s most fantastical prints. Other notable artists include Victoria Crowe, who is represented by a beautiful screenprint of a mantelpiece laden with evocative objects from 1996, Hugh Buchanan with a luminous picture of St Stephen’s Church, Edinburgh, and Barbara Rae with a dramatic vision of the ironwork of a Spanish door. Both the latter two are stone lithographs. There is a lively etching by Alan Davie, a classic screenprint by Eduardo Paolozzi and John Byrne’s great print Moonstruck. Altogether it is a rich collection that tells a good story.

Installation view of Impressions: Selected works from Jerwood Collection at Edinburgh Printmakers PIC: Alan Dimmick

The selection from the Jerwood collection goes as back as far as a self-portrait etching by Augustus John from 1920. It also includes a beautiful print of mugs and a bowl drawn in outline against mottled black by Ben Nicholson. Nearer in time are a landscape by David Hockney and a rather minimal print by Bridget Riley. More impressive is a pair of prints of lines of pure colour flowing down across the sheet by Ian Davenport, but the most memorable print here is perhaps The Encampment by Paula Rego. It is a deep, dark, many-figured print in etching and aquatint of a gypsy encampment. Nothing bad seems actually to be happening, but there are hints of oddness that create a sinister mood worthy of Goya.

Norman McBeath: Exceptional Subjects until 3 May; Story: Selected Works from Edinburgh Printmakers Collection and Impressions: Selected works from Jerwood Collection both until 29 June

Art reviews: Norman McBeath | Story: Selected Works from Edinburgh Printmakers Collection