Undiscovered Scotland

 

Can we simply write "Wow! Buy it." and call that a review? On reflection, it might help if we gave some reasons for our enthusiasm for "Scottish West Coast Isles in Photographs" by Alastair MacDonald Jackson.

Photographs can serve many purposes, especially in a modern world in which just about everyone carries a camera with them at all times, and when the opportunities for publishing photographs have never been greater. In today's throw-away society there can be a tendency to think of photographs as ephemeral, even disposable, and that is perhaps true of selfies posted on Instagram or Facebook, to be admired, or not, by friends and then forgotten. Photographs of Scotland are also hardly a rarity. We publish tens of thousands of them on this website, all taken and published with the aim of showing what the country, or more usually a particular place or visitor attraction within the country, is like to visit. And there are Facebook groups, some with hundreds of thousands of members, dedicated to showing off photographs of Scotland.

Against this background it seems fair to ask whether there remains room for the more traditional approach, of photographs gathered together and published in book form. On the evidence of "Scottish West Coast Isles in Photographs" by Alastair MacDonald Jackson the answer is a resounding "yes". The author is originally an islander himself and his love for his subject matter comes off every page. The photographs themselves are wonderfully atmospheric.

The book begins with a short introduction. This is itself a superb evocation of island life and well worth reading. We suspect, however, that most buyers of the book will skip straight on to the photographs. They are divided into three sections. "Island Seasons" can essentially be though of as about light and the way it changes the atmosphere of the islands. "Island Places" is largely about buildings and settlements, and "Island Life" is mainly about people and transport. As we said at the beginning of this review: "Wow! Buy it."