The new exhibition from Document Scotland photography collective, including my Let Glasgow Flourish photographs of street protest in the city, has now opened at the Museum of European Cultures (MEK), in Berlin. Reflections on a Changing Country (German title: Ansichten aus einem Land im Wandel) will be on show until 20th November 2022.
The exhibition opened last Thursday in front of a packed audience, with the festivities continuing on the Saturday afternoon with a tour of the exhibition by curator Susanne Boersma, accompanied by myself telling the background to the images and bodies of work.
With reviews in the press, in Berlin Morgenpost and Berliner Zeitung, and representatives of the Scottish Government in Germany in attendance, the opening days of the show were a resounding success.
This is our photography collective’s first exhibition in Germany and coincides with the 10th anniversary of our formation. The exhibition features projects by Document Scotland’s four founding members, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard, Colin McPherson and Stephen McLaren.
The special exhibition Reflections on a Changing Country takes place within the framework of the 18th European Cultural Days which is dedicated to the culture and heritage of the country, seen through the photographs of the collective. Combined with an extensive programme of cultural events, the exhibition presents a nuanced picture of Scotland as a multifaceted nation.
The four bodies of work on display will be: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s Let Glasgow Flourish, a hard-hitting series of images looking at street politics and protest in his native Glasgow taken over the last decade, work from Sophie Gerrard’s long-term project Drawn to the Land about women farmers in Scotland, Colin McPherson’s Treasured Island, an intimate profile of life on Easdale, the smallest permanently-inhabited Inner Hebridean island and A Sweet Forgetting by Stephen McLaren which examines the historical links between this country and Jamaica’s sugar industry and slavery using contemporary photographs.
All images © Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, all rights reserved, 2022.