As I Found Her: A Portrait of Eigg is Danny North’s photographic portrait of one Hebridean island, its people and their way of life. The project stemmed from the photographer’s desire to belong somewhere and the joy he felt when he discovered Eigg. Visiting the island four times in 2016-17, the photographer set out to document Eigg’s tight-knit community of a hundred residents and the sense of belonging that radiates from this. The portraits were made both inside the islander’s homes and in the expansive landscape. In the background there is a much broader narrative about what it might mean to live on an island, any island, away from the mainland and at the mercy of nature.
In this interview curator Louise Pearson speaks to Danny about the project and five works from the series which have entered the National Galleries of Scotland collection.
This interview was conducted in February 2022.
Welcoming new artists to the collection
We want to show you who lives in Scotland today and Art Fund are helping us do that.
Census year is an opportunity to think about who isn’t in our collection. We know some of you don’t see yourself in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. We want to change that.
There are lots of new acquisitions in Counted: Scotland's Census 2022. We hope they give you a sense of the wonderful range of people living in Scotland.
We’ve worked with photographers from a range of backgrounds. For many of them, it’s the first time they have had their work shown in a gallery.
We’ve got plans to do more. We’ll be commissioning new portraits over the next few years. We’re thinking about what else we can do to make it a Portrait Gallery for everyone.
We’d love to hear your views. Get in touch by emailing feedback@nationalgalleries.org
