HELEN GARDINER admires a new exhibition of photographs by Alistair Peebles

ALISTAIR PEEBLES’ exhibition of photographs is overall a study of definition: of how spaces created for human endeavour are defined, and of the ways in which their character changes through time.

In today’s world of frenetic urban activity, the rural idyll that beckons to the imagination is perhaps somewhat romanticised within all of us. Peebles’ telling vision cuts through this sentimental notion. 

His series of studies of defined spaces, photographed mostly in Cromarty, but also elsewhere in Scotland and in eastern USA, show with a rare clarity of perception the futility or pathos of our narrow human attempts to establish borders and practise definition in the face of nature and the processes of time.

The series is nonetheless uplifting, with a sense of hope conveyed in nature’s power of renewal, and it reminds us that our environment and boundaries are always transient.  That promise of renewal is the over-riding message portrayed here.

The quality of these photographs transcends their medium. ‘A Turn in the Road’ is possibly itself a definition, as in “a lifting of the veil”, a glimpse of the knowable with the human spirit.

© Helen Gardiner, 2005