We continue our series of Artist Profiles as we talk to photographer Frances Scott about her interest in geography, her influences, and how she has been using Orkney memories to keep her going through the COVID-19 pandemic when she has been unable to travel home.

Frances Scott walking the coastline of Tankerness in 2016, photograph by Mary Grieve

I have spent my life moving about, but Orkney has always been home - I spent my early childhood in the Scottish Borders before moving back to Orkney, where I attended Papdale Primary and Kirkwall Grammar School. I studied Communication Design at Glasgow School of Art, specialising in photography. I also went on exchange for a term to OCAD University in Toronto, Canada. I moved home to Orkney for a few years after graduating, and now live in Glasgow where I work at the art school as a photography technician. I get home as often as I can to maintain my links with Orkney, although that has been made difficult now by the pandemic.

I spent my childhood in the landscapes of Caithness and Orkney, scrambling over rocks and exploring cliff edges, year-round in all weathers. At school, my favourite subject was geography. I love learning about how landforms are made, the way people interact with and change them, and how these landscapes can get into your psyche. This feeds through various mediums where I draw my inspiration - the photographic work of Gunnie Moberg, Mark Ruwedel, Alec Soth, and Noémi Goudal, the drawings of Sylvia Wishart, and the writing of Amy Liptrot, Robert Macfarlane, and Kathleen Jamie. I suppose I’ve got a bit of a leaning toward Bernd and Hilla Becher too, since I like finding and capturing strange and sometimes eerie structures.

Photography is a way of capturing fragments of the world so I can keep them for myself. My work is very often about journeys I make through places that are significant personally, so getting outside and exploring is important. Being in motion is good: I make links and form new ideas best when I’m flying, driving, travelling by boat, or walking.

I usually make my photographs using black and white medium format film (though I’m not opposed to working in colour). I seem to have found my home in using a digital/analogue hybrid - making my pictures on film, and then scanning and editing them digitally. I like the space between creating a photograph and seeing it days, weeks or even months later when working with film.

I also use writing in my work - this usually starts with a lot of note-taking, which sometimes evolves into more considered writing over time. This is a way of recording things I want to keep which can’t be captured in a photograph.

At the moment, I’ve been working on a long-term project to walk the coastlines of Orkney, and this is my first project which hasn’t been led by photography. For this work, the experience of walking has become the centre of my process, and everything else follows. I use various methods to record my walks - GPS tracking, handwritten notes on maps, as well as copious numbers of iPhone photos, most of which I keep for myself - they’re not something I’d exhibit, but they help me remember and retain the atmosphere of each moment spent walking.

When titling individual photographs, I keep it fairly simple and factual, normally just its subject matter or location. It’s when I’m giving a name to a series or a book that I spend a lot of time seeking out the right word or phrase which will encapsulate it. I like to look for my titles in the writing of others (both factual and fictional), reappropriating found phrases – for example my second book on Toronto’s ravines is called ‘Darker Even In The Day’, which came from a poem by Margaret Atwood, while I found the name from my project ‘Undertow’ in The Observer’s Book of Sea and Seashore. Finding the right name is a bit like looking for a perfect stone or shell on a beach - you have an idea of what it might look like, and you know it’s out there - you can carry one around for a while to see how it feels, before finally putting the best one in your pocket to keep.

Any advice to other artists?

As an (almost) recent graduate, this piece of advice is aimed at artists who are starting out: there is power in numbers. Form links with other artists and designers, make your own creative community, organise crits and discuss your work with others. My creative practice had pretty much ground to a halt after graduating, but when I grouped together with other Orcadian graduates to form the Móti Collective in 2016 it created a lot more opportunities and exposure than I was getting on my own, giving me a real boost in motivation and confidence.

Attend lots of talks and events, make new connections and keep learning (one of the best examples is ØY Festival in Papay, a concentrated weekend of art, music, talks and performances which can’t fail to inspire). Keep an eye on all these talks now taking place online due to the pandemic - previously many of these would have been inaccessible for people based rurally.

Don’t beat yourself up if making work seems unapproachable or impossible. Sometimes, life takes over - you might have a full-time job that leaves you with no time, energy or reason to make work. When I was in that position, I got some really good advice from curator Jenny Brownrigg at a workshop at the Pier Arts Centre. She said ‘Look at it out of the corner of your eye’: approach your creative work sideways, little by little, and let it grow without pressure.

How are you managing in the current situation?

Earlier this year I finished working on my first photobook, ‘Undertow’, which is about my project to walk the coastlines of Orkney. I spent February and March promoting the book, doing a lot of travelling to do artist talks and launch events (very kindly hosted by the Pier Arts Centre and Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow), so I have been treating this time as an opportunity to rest, to pause and reflect. Right at the beginning of lockdown, I was asked to write about about ‘Undertow’ for The Drouth Magazine, and it was nice to discover that even though I couldn’t come home, I could still visit Orkney in my memory and imagination (thedrouth.org/undertow-by-frances-scott/ )

This situation of uncertainty and worry hasn’t been conducive for me to think about new projects, and I don’t have access to my usual photographic facilities, so I’ve moved away from making work to absorbing the work of others - listening to online talks, looking at online exhibitions, and doing a lot of reading. Some highlights: Street Level Photoworks’ livestream artist talks, Stills’ podcast ‘Photography Down The Line’ (which has an episode featuring Rebecca Marr), and Samantha Clark’s new book, ‘The Clearing’, which I very much enjoyed. I’ve also been converting a room in my flat into my first ever studio, which is exciting.