Frances Scott

Frances Scott’s stark, bleak images staggeringly depict “the overlooked, the in-between, transitional spaces in [a] landscape”, reflecting something of a resurgence in the admiration of the forgotten, of the bygone.

The geometric structures which often dominate Frances’s photographs are at times harrowing, at times imposing, but always impacting. They are “imbued with silence and stillness”, and as a result exquisitely promote the dialogue between the natural and the constructed which Mark Ruwedel examined in ‘Westward the Course of Empire’.

Of her many influences, including Ruwedel, perhaps the most enlightening was Susan Sontag. Frances told us how Sontag’s writings enforce the importance of note-taking and reflective writing, which serve “as a method of counteracting the ability of photography to [in Sontag’s words] ‘both loot and preserve, denounce and consecrate’”.

By interrogating these spaces with her writing and journey-making, Frances is able to eclipse her own memories with her photographs, with both her notes and images connoting different senses to the landscape.

Frances’s success is in some sense then the result of a very intimate examination of her photographic subjects, be they pylons, bridges, rock faces or seas. In apprehending these places in such a considered manner, Frances is able to translate their invariably captivating qualities beautifully.

Now, having moved from Glasgow back to the Orkney Islands after graduation and lacking the facilities to develop her own film, Frances told us of her longing to thrive once more in the hustle of a bigger city. It will undoubtedly happen soon enough, although we hope the subject matter of abandonment remains ever in her mind.

frances-scott.co.uk

A9 – Telegraph

A9 – Pylon

A9 – Independence Now

A9 – Dunbeath

A9 – Dalwhinnie

Tidelines – Rendall

Tidelines – Quarry

Tidelines – Tyres

Tidelines – Yesnaby

Tidelines – Smoke