Each month, we’re sitting down with one of our Academicians to discuss their practice, influences and upcoming projects. This month, we're talking to Norman McBeath RSA about portraiture, photopoetry, and the process of making photogravures.
You have collaborated with award-winning writers and poets to create books of writing and photography, one of which is Perdendosi with Edmund de Waal HRSA, which you submitted as a Diploma Work to the RSA Collection. What does the collaborative process between photographer and writer look like for you?
I find working with writers and poets hugely stimulating. They all bring different insights and depths to the joint work. Sometimes – as with Perdendosi – I produce a body of work which I invite a writer to respond to. Edmund de Waal has talked about what a profound impression it made on him, during Covid, to receive the box of photographic studies of leaves that I sent him which started off our collaboration. Other times the text and photographs take shape at the same time. In a recent book – the Seafarer – the poet Matthew Hollis worked up a new translation of the Old English poem of the same name, and, at the same time, we looked at photographs that seemed to resonate with the themes which were emerging. We also had what we called a ‘Sea Chest’ – a digital 'trunk' where we shared music, images, phrases – all to stimulate our collective creative process. It's always been really important as part of any collaboration that we should not be trying to match photographs to text (or vice versa) in a literal way. It is more about capturing a mood or evocative thread. In one of my collaborative works with the poet Robert Crawford (Chinese Makars), we actually included a manifesto for photopoetry about how poems and photographs should encourage each other’s obliquity, and how the pairing should be about revealing rather than explaining. I think it's very important that both text and photographs should stand in their own right while at the same time bringing more depth, so that each gains from the pairing.
Norman McBeath RSA, Perdendosi XII, photograph
Over seventy of your portraits are held in the collections of the National Portrait Galleries in London, Canberra and Edinburgh, and some of these portraits are currently on show in Celebrating 40 Years of Scotland’s Photography Collection at Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery. Are there any sitters from your portraits you'd love to photograph again?
That’s an interesting question. I hadn’t thought about that. I actually really value the fact that my portraits are of a person in a particular time and place and haven’t felt the wish to repeat that at a later date.
Portraits are one of the most exciting aspects of my work. What's most important of all is establishing some sort of relationship with the sitter – a mutual trust. For me that's key to the whole thing. What I'm looking for all the time during the session is something meaningful about the person in front of me.
I'm not keen on portraits that are more about the photographer than about the sitter because they can never get that fleeting closeness. When I worked with the poet, Paul Muldoon, he wrote that I had ‘that rare ability to allow nothing, least of all himself, to come between the subject of a photograph and the perceiver’. I think that applies to my portrait work too.
You mention the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition, Celebrating 40 Years of Scotland's Photography Collection. I particularly like their decision to include an account of the portrait session by some of the sitters. There can be so much more of interest in a portrait than just a framed print, particularly when the sitter is eloquent and sympathetic to the situation. I was very touched when I heard the poet Jackie Kay CBE saying of our session: ‘But I do remember sitting for this particular photographer because he was charismatic in a fairly quiet way. And his camera did all the talking and I felt myself. So I didn't actually feel like I was posing or sitting or doing anything really. So I feel as if he just caught something of me.’
Norman McBeath RSA, Jackie Kay CBE, photograph
A printmaker as well as a photographer, you specialise in photogravures using a traditional etching press. What do you enjoy and what are the challenges of using this technique?
What I love about photogravures is the subtle tonal range and the sensuous texture of the finished print. I first learned how to make photogravures at Edinburgh Printmakers when I came to Edinburgh around 20 years ago. It was an epiphany, the impact of which I've never forgotten. I've always printed my own photographs and quickly found that I could transfer those skills to this form of printmaking.
A photogravure, by the way, is very much like an etching but with a photograph used to make the printing plate, which is then inked up and printed. I like the fact that this is a fragile layered process where the end result is very much dependent on both technical skill and an artist’s eye. The American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams talked about the negative being the score and the print being the performance. I think this is equally true of photogravures.
It is a wonderful feeling turning the big wheel of the printing press and waiting to see what emerges. The challenge of course is that, no matter how much care and attention you put into it, you never quite know whether the end result will reflect your original idea. But there can be wonderful surprises there too!
Norman McBeath RSA, Birds of Paradise, photogravure
What influences your practice?
The simple answer is 'almost everything!' I don't mean to be flippant in saying that but I'm continually looking at things, people and all manner of circumstances in terms of photographs. I'm taking pictures in my head all the time. I'm very sensitive to the light that's around me and I've been doing this for so long that it's quite intuitive and calm, despite it sounding the opposite. I see it as a state of readiness. I even do this when I'm walking around at night. I've always been fascinated by how the dark can, paradoxically, reveal more. I published a series of night photographs which I took in Oxford (Oxford at Night) which showed a different side to a much-photographed city – one where shadows are reversed and where there are no people (just the evidence that they have been there). As Jeanette Winterson wrote in her response to the series: ‘these photographs are sometimes dark mirrors that beckon to a world both revealed and reflected. This is our known world, but it is another world too – not known.’
Above all, I'm influenced by the excitement I feel when I see what's around me wherever I am. I loved reading Henri Lartigue when he talked about the pure sense of excitement and joy that he felt when taking photographs – that really resonated with me.
Norman McBeath RSA, Oxford at Night, photograph
Since being elected as an Academician in 2022, you've sat on the General Purposes Committee and, more recently, on Council. Is there anything new or unexpected your roles have taught you about the Academy?
One of the things I’ve liked about being an Academician is that there's the opportunity to contribute to a wide range of the RSA’s work. I've really valued the genuine sense of community that comes with being an Academician – the feeling of members and professional staff all working together.
I knew before I was elected that the RSA does a huge amount to support emerging and established artists. They offer all sorts of awards, prizes and residencies which can make a real difference to individuals and their development. I’ve enjoyed joining other artists to contribute here.
When I submitted my Diploma work, I was given an extensive tour of the Academy’s Collection and archive – there is such a wealth of world-class work there. It was a privilege to be able to see it. This visit to the Collection also helped me fully understand what an enormous amount of work is done across the board by all the Academy's professional staff. That really was an eye-opener.
And finally, is there anything you can tell us about the work you’re planning for the 199th Annual Exhibition?
This year's submission will be a photograph, a continuation of work I've produced over the last few years which focuses on the natural world. In this series, I've been looking at aspects and details which are not normally seen as subjects for study in their own right – either because they are too familiar or they are perhaps seen as having aged into oblivion. By giving them special attention, I'm offering possibilities of new meanings and associations to develop in the imagination of the viewer. Like much of my work, these studies take a step away from everyday perception and reinforce the sense of the strange and mysterious that lies in the familiar all around us.
Norman McBeath RSA, Shadow Series, photograph
Explore Norman McBeath RSA's work further
You can find more of Norman McBeath RSA's work on his website and on Instagram.
