...A' tilleach a Hallaig anns an theasgar, anns a' chamhanaich bhalbh bheo... ...Back through the gloaming to Hallaig Through the vivid speechless aix...

...A' tilleach a Hallaig anns an theasgar, anns a' chamhanaich bhalbh bheo...

...Back through the gloaming to Hallaig Through the vivid speechless aix...

Gavin Smith is a photographer based in the Highlands with an interest in the relationships between people and places, buildings and landscapes, memory and belonging. This poignant collection of photographs and poetry explores the Highland Clearances

The Scottish Highlands, contrary to the image projected in countless tourist brochures, are not one of the last great wildernesses in Europe but in many parts can be more accurately described as a derelict landscape from where most of the families who once lived and worked the soil have long gone.

The Highland Clearances shaped both the pattern of land ownership in the Highlands and the physical landscape itself. I’ve visited many Highland Clearance ruins over the years and often have the same disconnect between the mottled stones fading into the landscape and the imaginative leap needed to visualise what they must have been like as living communities. There are stone remains, yes, but wide open spaces too. Those spaces are loaded with presence and memories.