Scottish National Portrait Gallery exhibition documents Scotland’s people in photographs

Like the population itself, the census changes over time. For instance, this year’s survey carried, for the first time, a voluntary question about one’s gender identity (a fact that led to consternation among some opponents of the Gender Recognition Act).

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh has taken the occasion of this year’s census as an opportunity to provide a pictorial accompaniment to the survey. Titled Counted: Scotland’s Census 2022, the exhibition considers the population study both horizontally (in terms of providing a snapshot of present day Scottish society) and vertically (in relation to changes within the nation that are indicated in past censuses).

The show begins with images that reflect the diversity of present-day Scotland. For example, a lovely, untitled black and white image from Kim Simpson’s series Girls and Their Mothers – which shows a black mother being embraced by her young, mixed-race daughter – reflects the photographer’s interest in ethnic diversity.

Simpson’s own child is mixed-race, and she was concerned to witness the negative, racial stereotyping and other oppressive behaviour that her daughter faced. This contrasted starkly with her own experience, as a white girl, growing up in the same Scottish town.

Although motivated, in part, by concern over racism within Scottish society, the photograph (which was taken in 2015) is a tender, and ultimately hopeful, piece.

Arpita Shah’s photograph titled Sari (2013), from the series Purdah, The Sacred Cloth, shows a middle-aged Hindu woman whose origins lie in the Indian subcontinent. The traditional attire of the picture’s title reflects the woman’s pride in her origins. The look of equanimity on her face indicates, perhaps, a certain level of contentedness.

The pain of the search for asylum and the material difficulties that refugees often face when they settle in Scotland are subjects of Chris Leslie’s remarkable 2013 photograph Bird Man of Red Road. Taken from a series titled Disappearing Glasgow, the picture shows Jamal, a lone Kurdish refugee from Iraq who, for fear of deportation by the authorities, continued living in his Home Office accommodation in the infamous Red Road flats, even after they had been earmarked for demolition.

Jamal’s nationality is expressed proudly in the flag of Kurdistan (a stateless nation that crosses the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey) that hangs in his window. The man’s isolated position, high up in one of the Red Road tower blocks, is emphasised by the adjacent block that we can see through his window. There is also a very definite pathos in the tenderness with which Jamal looks at the small bird that is his companion.

Judah Passow’s superb black and white photograph of an elderly Scots-Jewish woman reading the poetry of Robert Burns – from his series titled Scots Jews: Identity, Belonging and the Future – is a brilliantly succinct reminder of the complexities of ethnic and cultural identities. The picture’s emphasis on both the woman’s Jewishness and her Scottishness points towards the immeasurable benefits that inward migration has brought to Scottish society.

More than that, the photograph also reminds us of the crucial importance of migrant communities being able to integrate at their own pace, melding the cultures they bring with them with those they find here in Scotland. Subtly, but pointedly, it is one in the eye for the unpleasant minority who demand nothing short of assimilation – a giving up of one’s culture – on the part of new migrant communities.

Indeed, Passow’s picture begs the question as to what kind of Scottish or British culture the would-be cultural police officers would have migrants assimilate to. Scotland and the other nations of the current UK have been multicultural hybrid societies, not just for decades, but for centuries. The exhibition – which also includes a picture by Shah of a Muslim woman wearing the niqab face veil – is strong (but by no means completely representative) where modern Scotland’s ethnic diversity is concerned.

In Craig Waddell’s remarkable series Masc, the show also addresses issues of gender diversity, particularly in relation to queer identity and notions of masculinity. The photograph of Oskar Kirk Hansen, who sits, bearded, wearing an opulent blue gown and an ensemble of jewellery – including, prominently, a set of large pearls – is both a distinct nod towards, and a knowing subversion of, the classical tradition of portrait paintings of women.

HANSEN’S pose – which, in its off-the-shoulder arrangement of the gown, deliberately echoes the implied eroticism of many classical paintings of women – is simultaneously luxurious and defiant.

In referencing the historical purpose of the census (which began, on a Britain-wide basis in 1801) the exhibition boasts some pictures from the early period of the photographic camera. These images provide fascinating insights into life in both rural and urban Scotland in the late-19th and early to mid-20th centuries.

Alexander Hutchison’s picture (dated to around 1890) of assembled members of the population of St Kilda appears like a ghost from Scotland’s past. Inhabited for more than 4000 years, the island’s last human resident departed in 1930.

Paul Strand’s 1954 photographic portrait of Norman Douglas of South Uist is an image of Hebridean stoicism. However, in a mere captured moment, it is also an enigmatic suggestion of an entire life.

By contrast, Thomas Annan’s photograph (dated 1868-71) of Close No. 46, Saltmarket, – from his series on working-class life in Glasgow – depicts the deplorable conditions of life for hundreds of thousands of Glaswegians.

Taking us across modern Scottish society and back to the earliest photographs of the country’s people, this is a fascinatingly diverse, excellently curated exhibition.

Counted: Scotland’s Census 2022 is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh until September 25. Admission is free. For further information, visit: nationalgalleries.org