Studies in Photography.

Studies in Photography. Celebrating both historic and contemporary photography in Scotland.

The society examines both historic and modern photography in Scotland through the organisation of talks, workshops, visits to collections and exhibitions. Our bi-annual publication, Studies in Photography, contains articles, interviews, book reviews and includes the transcripts of the Society's annual Photographer's and Annan Lectures. We urge anyone passionate about the art of photography to con

sider joining SSHoP, and help recognise Scotland's contribution to this important and exciting artform.

Studies in Photography has long been a champion of emerging talent and the final exhibition in our William Street Galler...
21/08/2026

Studies in Photography has long been a champion of emerging talent and the final exhibition in our William Street Gallery sees three of our gifted New Contemporaries reunite in the group show Cadence.

Laetitia Heisler is a French-German visual artist based in Berlin. After studying dance at the Conservatory of Southern France and performing as a singer in a rock band, Laetitia turned to analogue photography and has since worked across experimental image-making, textile, and installation.

Gabriela Pieniążek is a Polish photographer based in Scotland. She is a recent graduate from the Professional Photography Undergraduate program at Robert Gordon University. In 2018 Gabriela was awarded the Student of the Year Award by the British Institute of Photography with her series ‘The Hollow Men,’ which also won in the Visual Arts category.

Graham Williams is an Edinburgh-based photographer whose work explores themes including transience, place and the passing of time. Working primarily in portraiture and the everyday environment. Graham’s work considers connection, cycles of change and renewal, and finding moments of quiet significance within the rhythms of everyday life.

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1 Laetitia Heisler : Life and Death Bond

2 Laetitia Heisler : At the wrong Place

3 Gabriela Pieniążek : The Statue no.2 Claim {from The Pain of mOther Triptych}

4 Gabriela Pieniążek : The Pain of mOther Triptych {installation shot}

5 Graham Williams : Continuum {detail}

6 Graham, Gabriela and Laetitia with Robin Gillanders (photo Iain Stewart)

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Cadence runs until 29th August
Open Weds-Fri 12-5pm

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We are delighted to celebrate two hundred years of the Royal Society Academy by including the work of two RSA Academicia...
20/08/2026

We are delighted to celebrate two hundred years of the Royal Society Academy by including the work of two RSA Academicians in our current exhibition Cadence.

Wendy McMurdo studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Wendy’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and solo presentations at galleries including: Centro de Fotografia, Salamanca, Spain; Belfast Exposed; Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow and National Galleries of Scotland: Portrait - where a twenty year overview of her work The Digital Mirror is currently showing.

Wendy is the first woman photographer to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture. She lives and works in Edinburgh.

Norman McBeath is an Edinburgh based photographer and printmaker whose work is guided by an interest in the individual and our immediate environment. His portraits are held in the National Portrait Galleries in London, Edinburgh and Canberra.

As well as working individually Norman has collaborated with award-winning writers and poets, with work shown widely in Britain and North America. These including Jeanette Winterson, Paul Muldoon, Kathleen Jamie and Edmund de Waal.

Collections include the British Library, National Library of Scotland, Harvard University, University of Texas, Emory University, Special Collections University of Edinburgh and University of St Andrews, Fitzwilliam Museum, the Royal Scottish Academy and Yale Center for British Art.

Norman was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2022.

📷 : Wendy McMurdo, Intermediate Object v (Flora), 2019

Norman McBeath, Forest Fragment I and Forest Fragment II, 2020.

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Cadence
1st - 29th August
Weds-Fri 12-5pm

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Studies in Photography
6 William Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NH



Cadence features striking work by Scottish based photographic artists using a variety of techniques to construct their i...
20/08/2026

Cadence features striking work by Scottish based photographic artists using a variety of techniques to construct their imagery.

Sylwia Kowalczyk is a Polish artist based in Edinburgh whose work explores themes of memory, perception, and transformation.

Sylwia’s torn, layered compositions draw from the visual language of Surrealist collage, and reflect a playful, sometimes unsettling way of seeing — one that questions what is real, what is remembered, and what is imagined.

Ron O’Donnell was born in Stirling in 1952. He studied photography at Napier Polytechnic, Edinburgh and was a trainee photographer at Stirling University from 1970-6.

Ron has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad. In his large colour prints of constructed installations he often uses recycled objects. His work contains witty comments on a range of current issues as well as academic and contemporary art.

📷 : Sylwia Kowalczyk - Untitled from Metamorphoses 2025 & Untitled from Metamorphoses 2026
{Images of specimens held in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History}

Ron O’Donnell - Flesh of My Flesh :: Boys Toys i :: Boys Toys ii

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Cadence
1st - 29th August
Weds-Fri 12-5pm

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Studies in Photography
6 William Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NH

Cadence features work by over twenty of the finest photo practitioners working in Scotland today. Collaborative pieces i...
07/08/2026

Cadence features work by over twenty of the finest photo practitioners working in Scotland today. Collaborative pieces in the exhibition include works by Dr Patricia Macdonald and her pilot husband Angus Macdonald - and Edinburgh based photographer Alicia Bruce working with florist artist Jenny Bell Harman.

Dr Patricia Macdonald is an environmental researcher; an award-winning artist photographer whose powerful, boundary-crossing aerial imagery is made in collaboration with Professor Angus Macdonald. Patricia’s work has been exhibited, published and held in public and private collections internationally. She is the author/co-author of ten books including Surveying the Anthropocene: Environment and photography now, winner of the Saltire Society Research Book of the Year 2022, for Studies in Photography/Edinburgh University Press.

Alicia Bruce is an award winning, working-class artist, photographer, community collaborator and activist. She is interested in environmental issues, portraiture, human rights, equality, equity, feminism, politics of space, territories and heritage.

Alicia is winner of Lishui Photography Festival Expert Recommended Photographer Award, Royal Scottish Academy Morton Award and more.

Alicia’s recent monograph ‘I Burn But I Am Not Consumed’ (Daylight Books, 2023) documents sixteen years of Donald Trump’s impact on Menie, a coastal Scottish community.

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📷 : Patricia Macdonald in collaboration with Angus Macdonald : Braided River and Ancient Pines, Glen Feshie, Cairngorms.

Alicia Bruce with Jenny Bell Harman: Untitled from Glasshouse: A Botanical Collaboration.

Cadence

Studies in Photography
6 William Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NH

Weds - Fri 12 - 5pm
1st - 29th August

We are delighted that Cadence includes artwork by several of the finest contemporary photographic artists working in Sco...
06/08/2026

We are delighted that Cadence includes artwork by several of the finest contemporary photographic artists working in Scotland, including pieces by Oana Stanciu and Sekai Machache.

Oana Stanciu is a visual artist from Romania, living and working in Edinburgh. Her work combines performance, photography, sculpture and moving image to create subtly distorted self-portraits.

Oana has received several awards including a VACMA Award 2023, Stills Award 2022, RSA Morton Award 2021, Ingleby Award, RSA Latimer Award, and RSA Meyer Oppenheim Award. In 2022 she was awarded a Knighthood by the Romanian president for her contribution to Romanian culture in the UK.

Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self, in which photography plays a crucial role in supporting an exploration of the historical and cultural imaginary.
Aspects of her photographic practice are formulated through digital studio-based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting to create images that appear to emerge from darkness.

Sekai was was the recipient of the Royal Scottish Academy Morton Award for lens-based media in 2020 and artist in residence with the Talbot Rice Gallery from 2021 to 2023. She was chosen to represent Zimbabwe at the 60th Venice Biennale in April 2024. Sekai is a founder member of the Yon Afro Collective.

Cadence

Studies in Photography
6 William Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NH

Weds - Fri 12 - 5pm
1st - 29th August

📷 : Oana Stanciu - Grandma’s Shed : Tigri I 2020

Sekai Machache - Invocation III 2017

Studies in Photography cover Winter 2019

You can still catch the very popular Without A Camera in our William Street Gallery for a couple more days. This exhibit...
23/07/2026

You can still catch the very popular Without A Camera in our William Street Gallery for a couple more days. This exhibition is closing on Saturday 25th and then moves on to BOWHOUSE in Fife as part of Space to Breathe, 15th August - 6th September.

Then next up in William Street is our group show CADENCE, opening 1st August.

Bringing together work by twenty photographers, CADENCE will in fact be the final show in our West End home at 6 William Street. We are delighted to take this opportunity to celebrate the work of many of the fine folks Studies has had the privilege of working with over the last decade. Studies in Photography is more than just a place, and will live on as an organisation for publications, exhibitions and events. The exhibition title denotes a sequence coming to a moment of pause rather than an ending; a comma, not a full stop.

Featured artists are :: Jane Brettle, Alicia Bruce/Jenny Bell Harman, Susan Derges, Robin Gillanders, Alexander Hamilton, Leititia Heisler, Sylwia Kowalczyk, Patricia Macdonald, Sheila Masson, Norman McBeath, Wendy Mcmurdo, Ron O’Donnell, John Perivolaris, Gabriela Pieniążek, Oana Stanciu, Iain Stewart, Rachel Travers, Andy Wiener, David Williams and Graham Williams.

📷 :: Norman McBeath/Graham Williams

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Without a Camera :: 24th & 25th July, 12-5 pm

~ Gallery closed for hanging until 1st August ~

CADENCE :: 1st - 29th August, Weds-Fri 12-5pm

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Studies in Photography
6 William Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NH

Guggenheim Fellow, photographer, and educator Pradip Malde brings his landmark monograph From 'Where Loss Comes' to the ...
08/06/2026

Guggenheim Fellow, photographer, and educator Pradip Malde brings his landmark monograph From 'Where Loss Comes' to the Studies in Photography gallery for an evening that reaches beyond the work's difficult subject matter into larger questions of how photography can prompt us to investigate and think about what holds human communities together.

Join us on 25th June at 6pm in the gallery to hear him share his journey, inspiration, and thoughts on creating discourse from photography.

More details here: https://events.humanitix.com/artist-talk-from-where-loss-comes-with-pradip-malde

Images credit of the artist.

Thanks to Sara Stevenson's article in Edinburgh Life Magazine we have had so many wonderful visitors to our exhibition o...
03/06/2026

Thanks to Sara Stevenson's article in Edinburgh Life Magazine we have had so many wonderful visitors to our exhibition of Hill & Adamson prints, with many locals of Newhaven sharing their stories and memories. You can pick up a copy in our gallery, as well as our new book on the Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth.

If you are interested in learning more about the social documentary and photography of these striking women, we are hosting a Portrait Workshop lead by award-winning photographer Alicia Bruce. We will have two models in authentic period fisherwife clothing to photograph!

Join us on Friday 12th of June at 10am. Spaces are limited. Booking your space here: https://events.humanitix.com/portrait-workshop-after-hill-and-adamson

Images: (1) Jeannie Wilson, (2) Mrs Flucker, Hill & adamson, calotype (about 1845, National Galleries of Scotland. (3) Elaine, Susan and Eilidh.

A great event at Studies in Photography gallery yesterday afternoon. A launch for Sara Stevenson's remarkable book The F...
24/05/2026

A great event at Studies in Photography gallery yesterday afternoon. A launch for Sara Stevenson's remarkable book The Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth celebrating DO Hill and Robert Adamson's amazing photographs from the 1840s Excellent piece of academic research.

We even had some genuine fisherwomen in attendance!

Exhibition downstairs at 6 William Street

We currently have an exhibition of Hill & Adamson prints in our Lower Gallery to celebrate the launch of Sara Stevenson'...
14/05/2026

We currently have an exhibition of Hill & Adamson prints in our Lower Gallery to celebrate the launch of Sara Stevenson's new book on the fisherwomen of Newhaven.

Visit our gallery to see a selection of beautiful prints for sale, and pick up a copy of the book while you're at it!

Exhibition runs until 25 July 2026. All prints for sale.

Image:
'The Bird Cage', Misses Watson
Printed by James Craig Annan from calotype negative
Photogravure
1909 (printed), 1843-1847 (photographed)

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6 William Street
Edinburgh
EH37NH

Opening Hours

Wednesday 12pm - 5pm
Thursday 12pm - 5pm
Friday 12pm - 5pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm

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