From Dundee with love
Hailed as the Godfather of modern Scottish photography, the late Joseph McKenzie documented his adopted city of Dundee and its resilience in turbulent times
Each cobbled street, rusty sign and quirky corner of Dundee abounds with community spirit and pride, writes Rosie Morton. The perfect muse for any would-be photographer, of course, but it takes an extraordinarily gifted eye to record a city’s social history as lucidly as the late Joseph McKenzie, the ‘Godfather of modern Scottish photography’.
Born in East London before relocating to Dundee in 1964 to become Head of Photography at Duncan of Jordanstone College, McKenzie fell for the city’s ‘wonderful light and eroding urban texture’, as well as its people’s unyielding resilience in the face of adversity. Recording life from the 1960s to the late80s in two of his most celebrated essays – ‘Dundee: City in Transition’ and ‘Hawkhill: Death of a Living Community’ – his images juxtapose the confidence of the 1960s that saw employment at an all-time high, with the following decade’s struggles to solve poor housing and industrial decline.
Though his discipline was frequently banished to the sidelines – used as a tool for illustration and advertising – McKenzie was resolute in his mission to shift perceptions, defining photography as a fine art. Capturing fleeting moments of unguarded reverie, his images are snapshots of a dynamic city working tirelessly to remodel itself.
‘Joseph felt a real kinship with working people,’ explains fine and applied art manager Anna Robertson, who has helped curate an exhibition of McKenzie’s work at Dundee’s The McManus Museum. ‘He liked giving people a heroic quality. He either goes straight in on the face, and you see the little wrinkles and highlights in their eyes, or he’ll find a way of elevating the central person to make them appear much larger than life.’
Taking just one photograph at each location and painstakingly printing every image to achieve either a cold blue or warm sepia tone, McKenzie was revered as ‘a darkroom alchemist’ by his student Calum Colvin who is now himself an established photographer.
‘Joseph loved photographing people, but he also photographed the texture of eroding buildings, or of dandelions growing out of guttering,’ says Anna. ‘He saw beauty everywhere. Sometimes in the most weird and wonderful places.’
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His images are snapshots of a dynamic city working tirelessly to remodel itself