Biography

While still a student at the Polytechnic of Central London in the late 1970s, Chick Chalmers travelled to Orkney. He took a series of photographs in the islands which subsequently formed a book, documenting the unique character of Orkney life. Chick Chalmers believed in the skilled photographer's capacity to capture a revelatory instant, refusing to crop or otherwise manipulate his work. His output during the 1980s was relatively small probably because of the amount of criticism that documentary came under at that time. His photographs nevertheless remain among the classic examples of the documentary genre.