The Point of the Deliverance - Will Maclean, RSA

“A photograph is a distilled ,charmed, disturbing, Intense and ethereal correspondence with the world; A talisman empowered by the ineluctable mystery of the visual.” - Dr Tom Normand (Scottish Photography: A History)

Photography is surely the visual form of our age. It gives shape to our collective and personal memory, records the major events and the intimate incidents of life and distils experience, strands that unite in the work of Alex Boyd .

This is a book that engages with multiple journeys. Journeys into the Celtic nations, most particularly in Western Scotland and in Ireland. Journeys into the history and lore of marginal lands. Journeys, also, into the poetic and lyrical associations of landscape. More elliptically, perhaps, a journey into the nature of landscape photography and its esoteric association with the written word. In these respects this is a photobook of extraordinary depthand insight, not to mention a subtle emotional power.

I first became engaged withA lex Boyd’s photography in his publication ‘Isle of Rust: a Portrait of Lewis and Harris’, though I was aware of his diverse activities as a curator, awriter and a photographer. I found his interest in the early history of photography intriguing. Most especially, his interest in the wet-collodion process and the ways in which this technique released a kind of mystic quality in the imagery. Since that introduction to Alex Boyd’s photography I have followed his projects on St Kilda, in the north-west of Ireland, in the hills of Skye, and on the Faroe Islands.

I have found the sense of empathy in his photographs compelling. Equally, the attraction to a mood of mystery that so resonates in his imagery. In ‘The Point of Deliverance’ these qualities expand and deepen. From the awesome power of Downpatrick Head in the west of Ireland, to the subtle melancholy of The Wreck of the Plassy on the Aran Islands, and on to Cathedral Rock, the Storr on the Isle of Skye these are intensely evocative photographs.

Their elemental character is enhanced by the serendipitous nature of the collodion process. Consequently, these are ingenious photographs of substance and sensitivity. In this photobook Alex Boyd’s imagery is complemented by an introduction from David Gange, a writer already celebrated for ‘The Frayed Atlantic Edge’. The tale of his journey, by kayak, along the coastal fringe of Britain and Ireland is echoed in Alex Boyd’s photographs. More than this David Gange’s unique insight with regard to the marginal landscape allows him an astute understanding of the power of these photographs, an insight that he expresses with eloquence.

‘The Point of Deliverance’ is a photobook that has a magical quality that allows it a kind of afterlife, for these photographs live long in the memory. This is altogether a subtle, evocative, fascinating and spellbinding work.