University news

A new exhibition of photographs by William Fulton Jackson, held in the University of Glasgow’s Archive, will open this weekend in North Berwick’s Hope Rooms.

William Fulton Jackson’s meticulous chronicling of life in Scotland at the outset of the twentieth century is often faultless in execution and his technical skill as a photographer is mirrored and indeed, complemented by the detail with which he saw the world he lived in.

Lesley Richmond, Director of Glasgow University’s Archive Services and author of An Edwardian Family Album, said of Jackson’s family photographs: “This collection provides us with a close up view of the life of the middle classes in the Edwardian Era, while his views of other people and places, often at a greater distance from the camera, reveal more of society at large prior to the First World War. Whether Jackson meant to document the culture of this time, or whether his subjects were merely there to assist his love of photography, the result has been an impressive and often beautiful set of images which help develop a tangible sense of the atmosphere of Scotland in the pre-war period. Jackson is an important documentary photographer recording the world around him not just a curious tourist”.

The exhibition of his photographs of East Lothian is on display from the 7th of July in North Berwick’s Hope Rooms. Photographs in the exhibit range from portraits of family, friends and servants to striking rural land and townscapes.

The exhibition, which will run until the 15th July is a taste of Jackson’s work with the full collection of photographs held at Glasgow University Archive numbered at over 14,500. Whilst the exhibition and a large amount of the full collection focus on Scotland, and more particularly East Lothian, Jackson was well-travelled and many of the images document his travels, from Northern Europe to Egypt. What makes the collection a particularly useful record of Edwardian history is the careful written detail which accompanies the images in many of the albums. The photographs are an invaluable research resource offering both an atmospheric and factual sense of what it was to be a man in middle class Edwardian Scotland.

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Notes to editors

For more information please contact Kate Richardson in the University of Glasgow's Media Relations Office on 0141 330 3683 or email K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk

Information on the exhibition can be provided by organisers John Fergie on 01620 850710 or Bill Nimno on 01620 850381

First published: 6 July 2007