Death of true innovator for Dundee art college

Joseph McKenzie, ‘Father of Modern Scottish Photography’

Internationally-acclaimedphotographer Joseph McKenzie, who established the photography department at Dundee University’s Duncan of Jordanstone Art College, has died.

Known as “the Father of Modern Scottish Photography”, Mr McKenzie was one of the most ambitious and prolific post-war photographers.

He only used black and white images and his most famous – and sometimes controversial – work focused on urban decay.

Born

in London

in 1929, he was educated in Hoxton and then, during the war, at Cranborne in Dorset.

After conscription and regular service in the RAF as a photographer from 1947 to 1952, Mr McKenzie studied photography at London College of Printing from 1952-1954.

He was invited to introduce photography as a lecturer to St Martin’s School of Fashion, London, in 1954, and was later appointed lecturer in photography at Duncan of Jordanstone, a position he held until he retired from the post in 1986.

Throughout his career Mr McKenzie won international recognition and was elected an associate of the Royal Photographic Society in 1954, a position he held until he retired in 1973.

He was one of the first photographers to put on a purely photographic exhibition in the UK.

In 1965 he embarked on a series of major exhibitions, Glasgow Gorbals Children.

This was followed by Dundee – a City in Transition the following year, a series made to commemorate the opening of the Tay Road Bridge.

Famously it captured images of the city before it was transformed by developers who, he said, “wiped away” much of its architectural heritage.

In 1970 his Hibernian Images exhibitions caused controversy after it compared the lives of young people in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

An attempt to censor his catalogue led Mr McKenzie to withdraw from public exhibitions of his work for many years.

His work is represented in a number of public and private collections, such as the V&A Museum in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland and the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust.

Mr McKenzie’s funeral will take place at Our Lady, Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Tayport at 9.30am on July 24.