Photographs

Photographs of Scottish Life Formerly Owned by the Late Murray Mackinnon

28 May 2024

Cathy Marsden

In 2018, the National Library and National Galleries of Scotland jointly acquired The Mackinnon Collection, dubbed “the most important photographic acquisition for the national collections in Scotland for decades.” The photographs were wide-reaching in subject matter: family portraits, farming, industry and landscapes were included to name a few areas, and they provided a pictorial documentary of life in Scotland, transcending class boundaries, from the 1840s to the 1940s.

On June 19th 2024, Lyon & Turnbull will have the privilege of selling the remaining photographs, collected by Dr Murray Mackinnon and later gifted to his son. Murray Mackinnon sadly passed away in November 2021, however his legacy remains as one of the country’s most significant collectors of photography, amassing around 14,000 images in total.

Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs

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Murray Mackinnon was born in Glasgow on the 15th March 1943, studying pharmacy at university and undertaking a PhD before becoming a lecturer at St Andrews. Following a career in the biotech industry, Mackinnon moved to Aberdeen and opened MacKinnon’s of Dyce, a pharmacy and gift shop. The shop presented an opportunity for Murray Mackinnon to diversify, and he became the first business owner in Scotland to open an in-store one-hour film processing lab, allowing anybody to skip the week-long wait for printed photographs.

Photography became Murray Mackinnon’s business and pleasure. He opened The Photo Factory on Bridge Street in Aberdeen, which grew to twenty shops by the time the business was sold to Jessops, and Mackinnon retired, in 2006. Simultaneously, Mackinnon collected photography whenever he could – his first purchase being a small group of 19th century photographs by George Washington Wilson.

In 2018, Mackinnon said that his photographs:

“…cover the day-to-day lives of Scottish people both rich and poor, the work they carried out including fishing and farming, in order to survive, and their social life including sport and leisure.”

The 85 photography lots originally collected by Murray Mackinnon, presented in our rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs auction on the 19th June, comprise one of the finest groups of photographs that we have ever offered at auction here, including calotypes by Hill and Adamson from the very dawn of photography and by the lesser known, but historically important, Ross & Thomson, James Good Tunny and Thomas Rodger, all of whom picked up the torch for Scottish photography after the passing of Robert Adamson.

Annan, James Craig Photogravure of Mrs Rigby from a Hill and Adamson negative

Photogravure by James Craig Annan

There are mesmerising Autochromes, rich with colour from the beginning of commercial colour photography. Thomas Annan and James Craig Annan are featured with a range of photogravures, a process pioneered by James Craig. There is an 1850s album attributed to James Good Tunny with dozens of portraits including the great and the good of the Royal Scottish Academy amongst other long-forgotten sitters.

Lochaber Hydroelectric Scheme Construction, 1926 to 1930

Scottish rural life and the fishing industry feature heavily, documenting the harsh lives lived in the Highlands and Islands. Also fish processing, showing the teams of fishwives who would follow the fishing fleets as they followed the fish down the coast as far as Yarmouth.

Major construction also features with groups of photographs documenting the building of the Forth Rail and Road bridges, the Tay bridge, Aberdeen Harbour, the Lochaber Hydro Scheme and ships on the Clyde.

St Kilda - Photographs, Letters and Postcards

Crucially, as Mackinnon intended, the images reflect the lives lived by Scottish people from the mid-19th century onwards. These range from a salt print showing fisherwomen at Newhaven in the mid-1840s, bent over a creel, to lot 177 featuring a collection of family portrait daguerreotypes. A group of early 20th-century photographs, letters and postcards relating to the now-abandoned island of St Kilda is particularly poignant (lot 129), including a postcard of the island’s first midwife who saved the lives of so many newborns.

Scotland’s photographers themselves are not neglected, and it is fascinating to discover a small carte-de-visite believed to be of David Octavius Hill, one of the fathers of Scottish photography, in amongst lot 181. It raises the question of what further aspects of Scotland’s past can be discovered from these photographs by future owners?

Fleming, Ian | Casino Royale | London: Jonathan Cape, 1953 | First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author

19 JUNE 2024 AT 10:00 BST

Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs

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