Fresh dispatch from abandoned Scottish island that has intrigued photographers for more than 100 years

The images trace the life and losses of an abandoned island in the Outer Hebrides over more than 100 years.

Now, a new exhibition brings together the work of three photographers drawn to Mingulay, which was left by its last permanent resident in 1912, over a century with the photographs documenting the fading of an island population, the remains they left behind and the powerful natural elements that continue to dominate this place.

The most recent work on show at Return to Mingulay, now open at the Wardlaw Museum at St Andrews University, comes from world-class photographer Craig Easton, who visited Mingulay in summer 2021 with his full-plate camera, a tent and a little hope that the boat which dropped him off would return in five-days time.

That trip, his second attempt to get to the island after the first landing was abandoned due to the sea swell – was inspired by Edinburgh photographer Robert Moyes Adam, photographer and artist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, who ventured to Mingulay in 1922 to document the empty island. That, too, was also a return trip with an earlier collection of Adam’s photos from 1905 capturing some of the last islanders to live there, when written accounts documented their desire to leave.

Traces of the homes once lived in on Mingulay, now reclaimed by nature. PIC: Digital version of 15"x12" platinum/palladium print on 24"x20" paper. © Craig Easton 2023.

The work of Easton and Adam will be brought together with that of Margaret Fay Shaw, the celebrated America photographer and folklorist, who stayed on Mingulay in the 1930s and worked as a cook for visiting summer shepherds, with her diary entries recording the takeover by nature of the deserted village where the roofless houses started filling up with blown sand.

Easton’s work, who series from Mingulay has now been bought by the university – which also holds the Robert Moyes Adam collection – said: “It was during a visit to see the photographic collections at the University of St Andrews that I came across Robert Moyes Adam’s negatives and hand-written ledgers of his two visits to Mingulay.

“I knew Robert Moyes Adams work but I didn't know how special Mingulay was to him. It was lovely reading these handwritten notes of him going in 1905 when people were still there and going back in 1922 once it had been evacuated. I wanted to revisit.”

Easton was named Photographer of the Year at the 2021 SONY World Photography Awards for his portraits from the Bank Top neighbourhood in Blackburn with a portfolio of his Fisherwoman series – which followed female workers on the traditional herring routes from Shetland to Great Yarmouth – also acquired by St Andrews University.

Photographer Craig Easton on Mingulay in August 2020. PIC: Craig Easton.

Absent of human life, deserted Mingulay gave the photographer different ground to tread.

Easton, a member of Document Scotland photo collective, said: “You know, I am a documentarian, I describe myself as a documentary photographer but I think that the definition of documentary photography is broadening and needs to broaden so yes – there are no people there on Mingulay – but however it is socially, anthropologically and geographically interesting.

“I wanted to see how Mingulay had changed. I definitely wasn’t going to recreate Adam’s photographs. I didn’t go and stand in the places that he stood. It was much more being inspired by that work and making new work in response to it. I am still working in a way that is similar to how he worked, using sheet film and a big wooden plate camera.”

Easton said the landscape, which has evolved in the absence of humans and grazing, was “hard work” to navigate with the island cliffs the third highest in the country, after St Kilda and Foula.

A visiting summer shepherd on Mingulay in the 1930s, taken by folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw. PIC: Courtesy of Canna House Photography Collections © The National Trust for Scotland”.

The physical exertion of Adam’s crossings of Scotland the early 20th Century became a signature of his work, with the photographer scaling height for his favoured down shots and traversing rough Highland terrain to get to the heart of his landscapes. A classic photograph of Adam shows him slightly distracted during a group shot while ‘botanising’ and puffing on a cigarette.

His photographs became powerful agents of change with Adam campaigning to save Glen Affric from being destroyed by a hydro-electric scheme and sending four of his best photographs of the area to the media to highlight the threat they faced. Parliament inserted adequate safeguards into the Bill which allowed the developments to ensure the landscape was protected.

In 1905 on Mingulay, which he visited with his brother, Robert, Adam’s subjects included two girls collecting peat and a man aged 98.

That year, islander Moray Campbell Finlayson wrote: "We spend the winter months lonely and dull but I hope summer shall get us relief as we shall be like prisoners during the bad weather… I am hoping to leave Mingulay soon."

Photographer Craig Easton travelled to the abandoned island of Mingulay in 2021 with the work now featuring in exhibition which charts images from island taken over more than 100 years. Digital version of 15"x12" platinum/palladium print on 24"x20" paper. PIC: © Craig Easton 2023

The final evacuation of Mingulay followed years of struggle for survival, in part caused by overcrowding as people evicted from neighbouring islands during the Highland Clearances sought out a new home.

In 100 years, the population trebled to just over 160 people in 1885. There were more families than crofts to house its people, with the main village frequently hit by illnesses such as influenza and typhoid as conditions grew unsanitary. It was hard to get a doctor – or a priest – to visit the island.

The fishing business became unbearably hard and dangerous given the lack of a safe landing spot with the island’s men increasingly going to Glasgow to work in the shipyards and gas works.

Mingulay, once self sufficient, increasingly looked beyond its shores to survive. Now, the exhibition looks in, once again.

•Return to Mingulay is on display at the Wardlaw Museum in St Andrews University from today until Sunday 7 January 2024